Reviews
I picked this from the shelves on impulse. I wanted to reread it for pleasure, to confirm my memories of the book. Also, I continue my leisurely effort to remember and/or explore Frank Herbert's non-Dune books. And what a fun novel! It's a bit hard to describe. The story takes place in a future where humans and aliens coexist across the galaxy. The plot begins as a villain attempts to kill a Calebian, an alien with the power to teleport anyone across star systems. Our protagonist, Jorg McKie, is an agent of the delightfully conceived Bureau of Sabotage, whose purpose is to slow down the workings of government, and whose agents are a mixture of spies and diplomats. The story is thus a kind of hybrid police procedural and space opera, which means tons of action (multiple transdimensional beheadings), scheming, investigation, alien worlds, aliens, and high technology. Since Frank Herbert wrote it, the novel is also focused on major philosophical issues: language and perception, sincerity and love, and how to deal with death. So what's so good about it, then? To begin with, Whipping Star might be the most entertaining Frank Herbert I've ever read. The BuSab agents are cards, sarcastic and wise-cracking, always complaining about life and frantically trying to out-do each other (you get to be boss of the agency by successfully sabotaging the current chief). The dialog nicely and refreshingly counterpoints the more traditional Herbert-style cryptic wisdom we see with his chapter-heading epigrams. Those are good as ever, too. Whipping Star is also a fine example of world-building. Herbert offers very few infodumps. Instead he has characters name new things (aliens, technologies), then the action shows what they do. The names are often clear or cute: jumpdoor, sniggertrance. Herbert also drops some names and doesn't bother explaining what they represent, which is nice and realistic, as we normally discuss things people from other times wouldn't know. "Look at my internal-combustion car, friends!" - no. I mentioned police procedural, and this really is one. The cops are the BuSab agents, and their setup has all of the subgenre's characteristics: bureaucracy to wade through, legal wrangling, forensics labs, media to use or evade, officers to deploy, canny adversaries exploiting structural weaknesses, intercultural conflicts, and, of course, a good mystery. Since this is a police-sf hybrid, the mystery naturally involves the nature of the universe. It's also a surprise in one way: (view spoiler)[BuSab "sabotages" the crime by helping the victim become healthy (hide spoiler)]. Whipping Star is also very compact and focused. The plot kicks off on the second page, and is only resolved in the final paragraph. It races along with few digressions. This might be a weakness, as we get little information about characters - how can McKie marry that many times? what is Mliss Abnethe's story? - but that fits smoothly in the genres, and characters get good detail for all that. There's also a nice level of surrealism and even fantasy. The crux of the plot - well, I can't say much without spoilers, but it's almost comic. (view spoiler)[The Calebian's room is hot because, well, it's a star! (hide spoiler)] It's also a striking (sorry) image, this surreal scene of a spherical room, where a semi-invisible being is regularly flogged by a disembodied hand from elsewhere in the universe, while characters peep in through windows carved in the air. There's a kind of gleeful invention, almost a lightheartedness, I don't recall from any other Herbert novel. Now I'm off to reread Dosadi Experiment, the next book in this universe, and in good time. Let's see how it fares.
