Picked this up ahead of the movie. I knew some stuff about Dune - mostly Sandworms and deserts and lack of water - but I was basically going in with fresh eyes.
Now having read the book - I don’t know how I feel about this one. The world is cool, and the actual story is great. But the writing is just such a struggle to get through. The prose is just so stuffy and boring. It’s hard to find the actual story in there.
Getting into it - it is a steep learning curve. The books starts by introduced you using all these crazy words: Bene Gesserit, Gomezes Jabbar, Kwisatz Hederach without much handholding. Which is cool, but also tough. Sidebar: it also makes it kind of funny that the main characters are just like “Paul” and “Jessica.” Also there's a character named “Duncan Idaho” that I just can’t take seriously. (Maybe because it makes me think of like Joe Montana or Johnny Utah).
But I like the story - the twist on the chosen on narrative - and the characters. Paul’s journey has some twists and turns and was super interesting. I liked the Duke and felt for him - what do you do when you know you’re brining your family into an obvious trap but can’t say no? The female characters aren't perfectly written, but it's pretty cool that the book opens and ends on these women who may not be emperors or whatever, but are secretly making everything happen behind the scenes.
Overall, I liked it. But I think I would LOVE this same story if it was written by someone else.
Edit: after watching the 2021 movie and rereading the book - this is now 5 stars. Yeah the writing isn't great but now that I'm more familiar with it, I appreciate the world building even more!

Picked this up ahead of the movie. I knew some stuff about Dune - mostly Sandworms and deserts and lack of water - but I was basically going in with fresh eyes.
Now having read the book - I don’t know how I feel about this one. The world is cool, and the actual story is great. But the writing is just such a struggle to get through. The prose is just so stuffy and boring. It’s hard to find the actual story in there.
Getting into it - it is a steep learning curve. The books starts by introduced you using all these crazy words: Bene Gesserit, Gomezes Jabbar, Kwisatz Hederach without much handholding. Which is cool, but also tough. Sidebar: it also makes it kind of funny that the main characters are just like “Paul” and “Jessica.” Also there's a character named “Duncan Idaho” that I just can’t take seriously. (Maybe because it makes me think of like Joe Montana or Johnny Utah).
But I like the story - the twist on the chosen on narrative - and the characters. Paul’s journey has some twists and turns and was super interesting. I liked the Duke and felt for him - what do you do when you know you’re brining your family into an obvious trap but can’t say no? The female characters aren't perfectly written, but it's pretty cool that the book opens and ends on these women who may not be emperors or whatever, but are secretly making everything happen behind the scenes.
Overall, I liked it. But I think I would LOVE this same story if it was written by someone else.
Edit: after watching the 2021 movie and rereading the book - this is now 5 stars. Yeah the writing isn't great but now that I'm more familiar with it, I appreciate the world building even more!

Picked this up ahead of the movie. I knew some stuff about Dune - mostly Sandworms and deserts and lack of water - but I was basically going in with fresh eyes.
Now having read the book - I don’t know how I feel about this one. The world is cool, and the actual story is great. But the writing is just such a struggle to get through. The prose is just so stuffy and boring. It’s hard to find the actual story in there.
Getting into it - it is a steep learning curve. The books starts by introduced you using all these crazy words: Bene Gesserit, Gomezes Jabbar, Kwisatz Hederach without much handholding. Which is cool, but also tough. Sidebar: it also makes it kind of funny that the main characters are just like “Paul” and “Jessica.” Also there's a character named “Duncan Idaho” that I just can’t take seriously. (Maybe because it makes me think of like Joe Montana or Johnny Utah).
But I like the story - the twist on the chosen on narrative - and the characters. Paul’s journey has some twists and turns and was super interesting. I liked the Duke and felt for him - what do you do when you know you’re brining your family into an obvious trap but can’t say no? The female characters aren't perfectly written, but it's pretty cool that the book opens and ends on these women who may not be emperors or whatever, but are secretly making everything happen behind the scenes.
Overall, I liked it. But I think I would LOVE this same story if it was written by someone else.
Edit: after watching the 2021 movie and rereading the book - this is now 5 stars. Yeah the writing isn't great but now that I'm more familiar with it, I appreciate the world building even more!

I enjoyed parts of this and the overall message. It's not as exciting as the first one, but is more a look at the politics and consequences with more dialogue and moral and philosophical questions. Still, it dragged in parts for such a short book. Maybe I'll have to revisit this one some time - it took a couple of reads for me to appreciate the first book!

This was okay. Mostly, this book is just weird. There's some interesting plots and interesting concepts. But it's also bogged down in a bunch of weirdness. Most of the characters are scheming against each other: Alia, Jessica, the blind Prophet, the twins. But there's not a lot of action.
I'm probably going to pick up one more, and then peace out.

Yeah this is where I tap out of the Dune books. It’s even weirder than the last one - and not in a good way. There were some interesting ideas here, but I don’t know if it was worth wading through the book. It’s just so much of Leto talking his philosophy at people. Some of the philosophy is interesting but some of it is just a rambling mess. And some of the discussion about the role of women and sexuality is not great (e.g., all soldiers are homosexuals at heart).