Dune - Frank Herbert

⭐ 5.0/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

I started reading this book in the fall trying to quickly get through it before the movie was supposed to come out around Christmas. I almost needed the year extension I got from Warner Bros because i just never wanted to read it. I get the importance this book has in history, but as a modern day read I thought it was pretty dry, overly descriptive and featured some pretty weak writing stylistically.

I resisted negative thoughts towards this book because I feared I would have felt the same thing if I was reading Tolkien today. Both books feature enormous, developed universes that you can tell the creators put a lot of love into and go to great lengths to give the full context. But I think that's kinda where the comparisons end. I love Tolkien's writing style and I love the characters in the Lord of the Rings. I didn't feel anything for any of the characters here. It was a group of flat and one dimensional characters who have one stilted conversation after another. The universe was cool enough, but without a good story happening inside it, I couldn't really be bothered to do the research the book requires. I also didn't love the decision to use the omniscient narration style which mostly made the book feel bloated with so many thoughts, and took us away from the main charterers too often.

I guess part of this is also that I didn't quite get what was going on here. All this abstract stuff about mind-training and prescient vision didn't really make sense to me, and I couldn't really tell where this was sci-fi and where it was fantasy. And by the end, when characters are getting more... magical?.. I felt I was relating to them less and less.

With all that said, I can't say I necessarily hated it? I'm glad I read it nonetheless because of its value in sci-fi and I'm looking forward to the movie later this year.