Whipping Star by Frank Herbert Book Review
I read book two first a bunch of years ago, not realizing that I was jumping into a duology until it was too late. There was so much in that book that confused me. I had hoped this book would help make things a bit more clear. I should have known better.
Everyone knows Frank Herbert’s masterpiece, Dune. What a lot of people don’t know, is that he wrote a fair amount of other things before and after. As those who follow the Kendall Bookworms podcast, I enjoyed his book White Plague. I’ve read a few of his other novellas and novels with lesser enthusiasm. Frank Herbert is really one of those authors that is hit or miss; and he has a lot of misses.
Whipping Star is about an alien being in its spherical pod landing on a beach on a random planet. The Bureau of Sabotage is assigned to investigate. They know it is the home of a Caleban and that the species is disappearing, which is not good since they are the sole being that allows instantaneous intergalactic travel.
Get Joe Kendall’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Our main protagonist is a rough around the edges Saboteur Extraordinary McKie. He is not your typical hero, but more along the lines of an overweight private dick (with an emphasis on the dick). Basically it’s his job to be an asshole to those he is investigating and ruin their plans. This is supposed to be against governments that are going beyond their power, but this is a special assignment.
Special in that if this specific Caleban, Fanny Mae, ceases to exist, then not only are people no longer able to travel the stars without time debts and what have you, anyone that has ever used a Caleban to travel, well they die too. So basically everyone in the known universe, except for a handful of infants will die the moment Fanny Mae dies.
And how is this creature that we cannot comprehend visually or mentally die? By whipping from a crazy, wealthy, horny woman of course. Well, not her, but the alien she hired to do her dirty work for her. McKie needs to find her and stop her at any cost, or else everyone dies but her and her select chosen few that she has taken with her to some mysterious planet.
The biggest, in your face concept this book starts to tackle is the ability to communicate with alien species that are far advanced to you, who live in more dimensions that you can comprehend. We spend much of this novel in dialog between McKie and Fanny Mae, or the secondary characters. Much of the dialog is hindered by the lack of understanding between these different classes, species, beings. Except by McKie. He is an expert on communication with other beings. But even he struggles with Fanny Mae. So he is forced to sitting with her to try and find a common tongue they can accurately communicate at. All the while, he is also trying to stop the whippings from happening and Fanny Mae dying before his very eyes.
I spent much of the novel not understanding much. While it is a quick read, it is a dense read. There are a lot of problems with the writing. There are a lot of weak points in plot and motivations. For such a short book, there are just a lot of boring parts, where you feel like little to nothing is happening. At the end of the day, it just isn’t a very good book.
Frank Herbert has a reputation for having done a lot of drugs when writing. I can’t comment on that too much, but this book certainly feels like a fever dream from too much acid. Thinking about it, I guess I can see where a good novel could be found within this, with heavy editing and complete rewrites. If any of you dear readers ever read what Dune originally was, you would know that the first draft looks almost nothing like the final project, on scale and story. I feel like this is a first draft on potentially great ideas. I know it is hard for writers to make a living, and often they need to pump out works as fast as they can to survive. This has that feeling. I’ve read enough of Herbert’s works to know that he has real talent when he is passionate. This book feels more like he’s collecting a paycheck for writing a half-baked idea.
