Phil Voelker > Recent Status Updates

Chapter 40 - Time has definitely passed! Paul is a Fremen leader now, and he & Chani have a son, Leto Jr., and Jessica's daughter is now a gifted infant impacted by the water ceremony she experienced inside her mom. (Page 402)

Chapter 39 - Time has passed, and Feyd-Rautha is in charge of the Arakas spice trade. His uncle has Hawat advising him and telling him the Fremen could number in the millions. Both are pretty sure Jessica and Paul are dead. (Page 390)

Part 3 - Chapter 38 - Back with the Baron at his home planet worrying about the activities of Feyd-Rautha, assigning the killing of the slave master and all the slave girls to his nephew. The slave boy Feyd-Rautha sent to kill his uncle failed, thanks to Hawat's warning. (Page 382)

Chapter 37 - Paul and Jessica meet the Reverend Mother Ramallo. Jessica is going to take her place through some kind of Vulcan Mind Meld where Jessica becomes the Fremen's new Reverend Mother by taking all the memories of Ranallo & all the Mothers before her. We don't know how the whole experience will affect the baby girl she is carrying. Chani is somehow a conduit in the whole thing.
(Page 372)

Chapter 36 - I found out that Chani is the daughter of the planetologist. So she and Paul both had their dad's killed by the Harkonnens. They made it to the sietch and Paul learns he is responsible for Jamis' wife and children. He finds a complex community ready to pick up and leave in a moment's time. (Page 358)

Chapter 35 - In this long chapter, I'm back to the activity of the Baron and his nephew, Feyd-Rautha. Count Fenring, the Emperor's liaison, and his Bene Geserit wife, Lady Fenring. It's clear the Emperor used his Sardauker disguised as Harkonnens to get rid of Duke Leto. The nephew is having a birthday, and proves his worth to the people in the arena to fight a hypnotized 😵‍💫 gladiator.
(Page 349)

Chapter 33 - Paul's meal from the last chapter was stuffed with spice and sent him into quantum mechanical visions. Now Paul has to prove his worth by fighting Jamis using a crysknife and skills he learned from Gurney. Death is the only way to end this fight. (Page 318)

Chapter 32 - I think Chani, daughter of Liet, has to be the Fremen girl from Paul's dreams. ☁️Paul and Jessica travel with Stilgar's troop to their home tribe. Makers equal Worms and Fremen can ride on their backs. Jessica shows off her soothsaying skills to prove her Reverend Mother prowess. (Page 305)

Chapter 31 - A troop, a sietch, of Fremen, led by Stilgar, capture Paul and Jessica. Stilgar has a real way with words, calling one of his men a "wormfaced, crawling, sand-brained piece of lizard turd!" The Fremen are ready to keep Paul alive but want to kill Jessica for her water. Her fighting skills prove her worth and both get sanctuary in the sietch. (Page 296)

Chapter 30 - Do the worms make the spice? I haven’t figured that out yet. This was a really scientific chapter. The Ecologist, Liet-Kynes,saved Paul and Jessica, but it's going to cost him his life. As he hallucinates the voice of his father, Kynes sees the interconnectedness of Arrakis and what it could become. The Fremen aren't there to rescue him when the planet ends his life and sucks him in. (Page 286)

Chapter 29 - I'm back with Paul and Jessica. They are hoping some distant plants they see mean life. They set off a thumper and walk like the wind, without patterns, to fool the worms. I got a great close up description of a worm and start to discover its relation to spice before they find a slab of rock to protect them. That's where the Fremen found them! (Page 279)

Chapter 28 - I haven't seen much of Gurney Halleck, the minstrel-fighter, since chapter 4. Here he's negotiating with the smuggler's leader, Tuek. Will his 74 fighters join the smugglers or the Fremen? (Page 268)

Chapter 27 - Paul and Jessica maneuver through the vortex of the storm and leave the thopter for the worms. The mom & son make it to the rocks just in time and stay on the move until sunrise. Paul uses his acid/base chemistry knowledge to recover his buried backpack. This scene was hard for me to visualize. 🧐 Paul's bad attitude shows he still needs training. (Page 263)

Chapter 26 - The Baron is sure the storm killed Jessica and Paul. He wants to kill the climatologist, and with Piter gone, the Baron wants Hawat as His new Mentat. He's entrusting his nephew to be his right hand man with the Fremen and Sardauker but will replace him with Feyd-Rautha, whoever that is, when his nephew is no longer useful. (Page 249)

Chapter 25 - Duncan Idaho rescues Paul & Jessica in this chapter. The Dukedom is not dead, because Paul is clearly taking on that role. He is ready to take on the Emperor too. They're in a fortress that has specimens to populate the desert planet, but their refuge doesn't last long. They were discovered, and Paul's amazing pilot skills allow he & Jessica to escape through a dust storm in a thopter. (Page 238)

Chapter 24 - Hawat was at an outpost during the attack of the palace, and he has no doubt that the witch, Jessica, is responsible. Hawat is trying to wrap his brain around the seemingly callous way Fremen view the wounded and dead. All that matters is their water. I thought Leit was the Fremen's god, but it's the ecologist. "A man's flesh is his own, the water belongs to the tribe."
(Page 226)

Book 2 - Chapter 23 - Jessica and Paul waited until dark and are ready to leave the stilltent buried in sand. Paul is working on a way to get the Fremen to help defeat the Harkonnen. It seems like Jessica IS a Harkonnen. I can't figure that out.
(Page 215)

Chapter 22 - Jessica and Paul are stuck in a stilltent on a rock in the middle of the desert. Paul is seeing into the past and into the future. He knows he is the Messiah, a seed that is beyond the Kwisatz Haderach. He is going to go to point the way, and he's surpassed his mother's powers. Jessica finds out the Duke is dead and we find out she is pregnant with a daughter. (Page 208)

Chapter 21 - What a sad chapter. The doctor Did receive his payment for treachery and "join" his wife, but probably not the way he was planning. There was a real spiritual illusion with the Baron as an AntiChrist and Leto suffering in silence. The killer tooth didn't seem to have the hoped effect. (Page 194)

Chapter 20 - Doctor Yueh seems to be justifying his treachery to his Duke by helping Jessica and Paul escape, but he will only be known throughout history as a traitor. He seems very concerned that Leto be bound before he wakes up. This was a super short chapter! (Page 182)

Chapter 19 - I haven’t seen the Baron and his goon Piter since chapter two. Now they have Paul and Jessica captured & bound and are put on a chopper destined to be worm food. Thanks to their Bene Gesserit Ninja, mother and son take over the flight, but they are stuck in the middle of the desert. It feels like they've only been on Arrakis a couple of days! (Page 179)

Chapter 18 - It happened. The beginning of the end for Family Atreides. The Judas doctor betrays Duke Leto, and he seems to have zero remorse. The fake tooth bomb the doctor put in Leto's mouth will be the weapon of revenge for the Harkonnen Baron. (Page 169)

Chapter 17 - Duncan Idaho shows up to the palace drunk on Spice Beer and moans about how there being no escape. He even blurts out the rumor that Jessica is the Harkonnen spy. That leads to a confrontation between Hawat and Paul's mom. She uses her Jedi skills on Hawat and the meeting ends with mutual appreciation.
(Page 165)

Chapter 16 - This long chapter took me to a dinner party full of politics and intrigue. Lots of forces were at work on the planet, and Duke Leto has to navigate through all of them. Jessica and Paul use their "spidey" senses to detect a Harkonnen spy and the preciousness of water was a big part of the table interaction. (Page 153)

Chapter 15 - What a long chapter! I watched the 2021 movie Dune and I well remember the scenes based on the chapter. It was the first big action sequence in the book. I got a description of how the stillsuit works and saw a sandworm in action. The ecologist has something to hide, but he seems to regret his involvement in the assassination plot at the end.
(Page 133)

Chapter 14 - "There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh." I think all of us have had that moment in our lives when we see our parents realistically and not on a preverbal pedestal. Paul sees his dad as a tired marked man that doesn't have all the answers. (Page 112)