I kept reading for a surprise ending. There isn't one.

This reminds me of a well-written Twilight Zone episode. If that is your thing, you will love this. The story is fascinating and the conclusion was a good follow through of the world Herbert had created.

Note: the story is a product of its time—it has multiple uses of the “n” word.

I found the first half of this book amazing, and then it sort of drops off in the middle. Right after he visits the factory. I was loving the mystery of this town, the characters, the way it was written. It has some of Herbert s most beautiful descriptions and prose ever.
And unlike something like The White Plauge, the characters were actually likable and bealivable.The town also felt like an actually real place and very unique.
Then, a hundred pages in the descriptions stopped, and the plot kicked in. That is to say, a bunch of mysterious stuff happened to our main character, and none of it was explored enough, or take a shot every time, an interesting question is asked out about Santaroga to a character or to the reader and they just don't respond, or its never answered, quite irritating. Our main character seemingly has to choose between Santaroga or the outside. Having this same existential crisis, switching sides multiple times a chapter over and over, depending on the mood the writer was in at the time. There's some cool stuff about conscience that's not explored enough, and it's done way better in Dune anyway. I love how in the first half we don't villanise the townspeople, and they feel like real characters just to make them cartoonist unintentional murderers and child labor exploiters,which is also never explained. The ending chapters are also really boring and not satisfying at all. Oh yeah, and multiple uses of racial slurs for no reason. At one point, the main character tells the love interest, "Get out now or I might just grab you and rape you." Straight had to put the book down. 2.5⭐️

Another well-written Herbert novel. You never quite get to the truth of things, but it doesnt really matter in my opinion. I felt I could identify with the main character Dasein rather well, and understood his motivations at the end of the novel, something that other readers had complained about. Unlike most Herbert books, i felt this had a fair amount of closure - which was welcome relief.


The target of Herbert's research this time around was psychology - indeed dream interpretation is a recurring theme in this novel as well the blurring of conscious and unconscious and collective unconscious.

My favorite Frank Herbert novel.

This time around, 4 stars.

The Santaroga Barrier is my favorite Frank Herbert novel. I originally read it in 1988, a few weeks before I read Dune (1965). When I started the road narrative spectrum project, I knew I wanted to re-read the novel for the project.

In thirty-two years I've forgotten a lot, although the basic gist stuck with me. A man goes after his girl friend when she unexpectedly leaves college. She's a native of a mysterious and insular town that in modern parlance would be called "off grid."

Reading it now as an adult and a college education, I see that from the very first paragraph, Herbert has peppered his book with psychology/philosophy terms to give a deeper meaning to his novel. Put another way, he's giving an informed reader a shorthand or not so secret handshake to know what's going on before the protagonist does.

3333CC (couple rural maze)

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2020/comm...

Worth going into this one blind, as I did. Has a great twist at the end. An interesting spin on utopian literature with a hint of horror and mystery. I haven’t read any Frank Herbert before this and found it stylistically a bit stiff. If you’re curious about Herbert and don’t want to invest the time in a larger book like Dune I think this would make a good entry point.

One of Herbert's minor stand-alone stories, this 1968 story still, more than a quarter century after I read it, earns my respect for its imaginative intelligence. A town in California seems immune to all corporate influence and somehow impervious to any type of marketing pressure. The untimely deaths of investigators sent to understand this phenomenon, the existence of 'Jaspers': a supposed elixir that can enhance the lucidity of the average mind, the intrepid analyses of Dasien, the latest investigator, the possibility of the existence of some sort of collective consciousness, Dasien's near misses with death and his developing romantic attachment with a local girl all made this a thoroughly engaging read. Very well done, and along with several of Herbert's other shorter novels, ample proof of the richness of his creative imagination.

Frank Herbert was most known for his Dune novels, but his other stories are definitely worth checking out. Some of his other stories are better than others, and I will say that this is definitely one of the better ones. It happens in current day (well, the current times while Herbert was writing it) and centers around a town with some mysterious rules. I was a bit surprised at the ending, but the story itself is nonetheless overall good, and I would recommend it as one of Herbert's stand-alone works.

The Santaroga Barrier (1968) was pure Frank Herbert. He describes a town that insulates itself from the messed up outside world through the help of an ever pervading hallucinogenic substance - that everyone in the town takes. Our hero, Daisen, is sent into the town to figure out what makes it tick. The ensuing story is full of societal troubles (i.e TV, war) and one town's grand solution - a collective, drug induced subconsciousness. Herbert's storytelling this time around, unfortunately, is somewhat disconnected and frantic (maybe like the drug). And the end, although predictable, was unsatisfying. Still... this is a must read for fans of Frank Herbert.

I enjoyed this book and the dystopian twilight zone style mystery it set. It was a constant twist trying to understand the need for yaspers and why the people couldn’t live without it or what they desired from the doctor. The Steph ford wife danger left plenty of suspense and me glued to reading. I have read mostly Frank Herbert’s Dune and this was far removed and a brilliant work. If you like suspense you will enjoy this novel.

This was a weird book. It began in the exact same way as did Hellstrom’s Hive, with a protagonist who works for some nebulous “organization” that wants to infiltrate a small, insular community. We are told that Gilbert Dasein has been sent to perform “market research,” however, so that’s a bit more info than we were given in the other novel.

tIn addition to that, Dasein also already has a tie to the Santaroga community--one of its members is his college sweetheart, whom he has not seen in several years. Other than that he is seen as an outsider--the Santarogans do not trade with or purchase many goods from anyone outside their community. All food is grown and produced within the valley, and all of it is infused with what is at first cryptially called “Jaspers.” The locals are eager to share this food with Gilbert, and he slowly finds that he is becoming dependent on it, and that it changes his metabolism and thinking after ingestion. Basically, Jaspers is a stand-in for a more mysticism-imbued LSD, embraced not by the stereotypical hippie commune, but by an incredibly conservative community of traditionalists. Regularly ingesting Jaspers connects them subconsciously and allows them to tap into a sort of very quite hive mind, though it falls short of outright telepathy. It also seems to imbue them with a very strong fear of the outside world, and this ends up nearly costing Dasein his life as the community members subconsciously make a concerted effort to kill him with a series of “accidents.”

tI was disappointed to read in the end that Dasein “goes native” and swears off his pre-Santaroga life after marrying Jenny. I suppose I was offended by the way they had treated him and would not have given in so easily, but I may also be biased against the use of psychedelic drugs altogether. I would not say that this novel was better than Hellstrom’s Hive, and although it contains some interesting ideas, I did not think they were groundbreaking. It does, however, contain 100% fewer weird diatribes against women, so there’s that!

This book was really weird. A sort of "I don't actually know what's happening most of the time but it's still really compelling so I don't want to stop" kind of weird, and I think I had a grasp on the ending, but I'm not totally sure.