The Dosadi Experiment

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The Dosadi Experiment's basic problem is that the reader can't really partake in its supposedly deeply intellectual plays. An important part of this book is courtroom drama: the main character, Jorj X. McKie, is not only a top notch secret agent, coincidentally he is also the only guy in the universe who was accepted at the bar of the Gowachin court--the Gowachin being frog like aliens who have a legal system with intricate, changing rules and high stakes, the courtroom being an arena.

Herbert tries to convey all this by passages like this:

They provide legal ways to kill any participants--judges, Legums, clients ... But it must be done with exquisite legal finesse, with its justifications apparent to all observers, and with the most delicate timing.

Yet, the pocket is only 300 pages long, and these 300 pages simply aren't sufficient to make the reader a Gowachian legal scholar too, so we can't really appreciate or judge the "exquisite legal finesse" displayed by the characters. It's like watching a game of cricket without knowing the rules. Or to use a review trope: Herbert tells a lot about finesse, but doesn't show any.

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Please read the full review on Weighing A Pig...