Spring around here is short lived. Winter over stays its welcome, well into the last week of April, May still has a fair bit of April rains attached to it, then you flick a switch and overnight we get temps up towards 30°C with just a couple of days in the high teens, and low to mid twenties. We have no gradual escalation towards summer. It’s cold and miserable, then like a week and a half to two weeks of mid tier temperatures and then BAM! The summer heat washes over us and that’s spring mostly finished with. This week the kids haven’t even needed to take sweaters to school in the mornings. It was 19°C or warmer by eight in the morning.
I recall May being under ten degrees in the morning, and nearly twenty five in the afternoon, with showers, wind storms, hail and thunderstorms. Nearly impossible to dress appropriately for. It was always both too hot and too cold. Too windy and dry, or wet and still. Hot when you brought boots, and wet when you didn’t. That’s my recollection of spring from grade school. That’s thirty four years ago mind you, but that’s how I remember it. It was either boiling in the direct sunshine, or clouds rolled in and pulled the plug on the heat. There was rarely any inbetween.
Sat down to watch Dune Part Two the other day. I still enjoy it. I feel like the author went off on a tangent because all the rest of the books ever off from what the first book was like. I think you could go back and write a whole new set of sequels if you followed the shape of book one, parts one through three without veering off and abandoning the Harkonmens, and court intrigue, smugglers, water guild, and all that jazz. Lady Fenring and Co all disappear come book two. Maybe killing 60 billion people makes the courtiers and hangers on fade away to save themselves.
The Ix and Tleilaxu come out of nowhere in the rest of the series. No mention of them in any part of the first book. It’s like he had a great idea, and then pivoted right after finishing it to tell a different side of the same story. I don’t think I’m being clear. It’s obviously the same story, but he emphasized different things as he got deeper into it. Ecology and cults of personality really take centre stage after book one. There’s no real great enemy once the Harkonnens get taken out, and house Corrino don’t do much after book three either. Do they ever tell us who the other great houses are, or what they are responsible for? We have flags, banners, and battle field drapery for the Atreides, Fremen and Harkonnen, but nobody else. An armada shows up for the othe great houses but no family names are ever given. It’s a big world and we really know nothing about it. At least with Game of Thrones you know the noble houses and a good chunk of the lesser ones, and a massive list of names. You get none of that with Dune. But it still feels big. Hinted at, alluded to, but almost entirely glossed over.
Maybe more of that is covered in Chapter house which is book five or six, I don’t remember which it is. It’s definitely a choice. I can’t really argue with it. I certainly don’t write like that when I do not down a few words here & there. The tale tells itself well enough without it. Alliances, rivalries and all that jazz. It has to be there. Just never mentioned.
I have some paid work to tackle, thankfully. So I best be about my business. Take care out there. Ciao Bella!
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