Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Dune

Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

Dune by Frank Herbert

74 reviews

b0ygenius's review against another edition

adventurous challenging slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

mild spoilers ahead ??? kinda ???? i tried to be as vague as humanly possible

after spending a literal month reading this book i am finally done. oh my god.

book 1? show stopping jaw dropping i was gagged the whole time omfg. THE END?????? no like i was screaming. it was so intense from start to finish. and tbh that is all bc of my man duke leto atreides omfg. i was rooting for him from the start simply because he is played by THE oscar isaac in the 2021 movie and tbh i think he was my favorite character. like he came he saw he SERVED!!!!!!! this part was sooo good based on this i thought dune would become one of my all time favorites but unfortunately. this was most definitely the peak of this book and tbh i was thinking of giving this like a 3.5/5 but i loved book 1 so much that i can’t give it anything lower than a 4

book 2 tho…. omfg. soooooo sloooowwww i literally spent like a week reading book 1 and a week reading book 3 and then book 2 took me two weeks bc it was just so BORING omfg the first like 150 pages were just [redacted] and [redacted] wandering around the desert and it was boring. and one of my main problems with this book is that some things weren’t explored as thoroughly as they should’ve been like some side characters were given such a large role in the beginning of the book and then had 0 appearance for literally 400 pages only to appear at the end of the book briefly again. and some characters had such unsatisfying deaths especially the ones at the end like it just felt like we never got a satisfying ending to the arcs of a lot of the characters who died.

book 3 was also kinda boring the end was alright but again i thought it was so unsatisfactory. like we spent, not even an exaggeration, like 350 pages building up to this so you would think it would be some grand dramatic end but it rlly wasn’t. go girl give us nothing. paul at the end was cool tho he was rlly badass and kinda hot tbh 😦 i was so conflicted abt him for a lot of the book i kept flipping back and forth between liking him and not liking him but in the end i think he had a really great arc and his development was done pretty well but his like prescient awareness or whatever stuff was kinda hard to follow. and it was hard to follow his the development of his abilities.. like it was hard to tell just how powerful he was he would do things or have some vision or whatever and i would be like “damn since when can he do that???????” maybe that was on purpose but either way i did not like it. paul was kinda giving me whiplash but whatever

i can definitely see why this book is considered one of the greatest sci fi books of all time and i could see how this influenced later sci fi stuff like star wars and i definitely do not regret reading this but this definitely isn’t for everyone bc it is very very long and it can be hard to follow at times and there is a Looot of world building (but tbh i didn’t mind the amount of world building as much as i thought i would, i rlly liked how intricate and immersive and thought out the world is). i personally did not find it that hard to read and i think that’s because i learned some of the basic background info abt the characters/the world/the politics/etc before i started reading. like the house system, the main characters, the spacing guild, bene gesserits, the butlerian jihad, etc etc and i think that really helped me so if you want to read dune i would recommend looking at some beginner’s guides there are plenty online

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norwegianforestreader's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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dayelb_'s review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is not a book to blow through. This book is an investment. You’re not just going to get a good story, you were going to get an understanding of a whole New World! This book takes you on a journey of characters that you may grow attached to that don’t stay with you to the end, a journey of a character that you grow attached to immediately but then start to have strong reservations about in the end, and a multitude of characters that by the end of the book you just don’t know where to place how you feel about them. I can’t wait to get to the sequel . Frank Herbert is by far one of my favorite authors now!

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ariep's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I really enjoyed this read!! I loved the writing style and the world building. The characters were very interesting, and their development and change throughout the book was incredible. There are many reflective and poetic moments throughout the book that I really loved.

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lunaloewenherz's review against another edition

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adventurous inspiring slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.25

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claudiamacpherson's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Embarking on the odyssey that is this book, my only expectation was that I would be confused, having been warned (correctly) by Booktok that Herbert’s worldbuilding is of the variety that throws you in the deep end and expects you to figure it out. With Zendaya and Timothee Chalamet as my motivation, however, I flew through the first hundred pages or so (which, in my opinion, were the most confusing), and was quickly sucked into the world of Arrakis. The first 100-or-so pages of confusion aside, the worldbuilding was incredible—not only did the scientific explanations in this science fiction novel make sense (as a former biochemist, poorly researched or explained science is one of the biggest reasons I rarely read this genre), but I also found myself becoming extremely conscious of my own water use. In the (likely not-too-distant) future, water will be a much rarer and more valuable resource. This made me wonder whether Herbert suspected as much when Dune came out, or if this all came from his imagination.

I’ve heard about a lot of controversy surrounding the content of the novel, and I’m still not sure where I fall in the debate. My initial impression was that this is a classic white savior story (it definitely gave me blue-people-Avatar vibes), and Herbert definitely uses some orientalizing imagery—yikes. On the other hand, Paul doesn’t seem to be the glorified hero that so many stories have; in fact, as the story progresses, he becomes more and more clearly flawed. If this was Herbert’s intention (and I confess, I don’t know enough about Herbert or the historical context of the novel to determine whether or not it was), then the novel could be a critique of the white savior narrative. But then again, if it’s not obvious enough, then this message is lost of many readers and will be used to justify that which it critiques. To me, the much more obvious problems were the rigid gender roles (this man really wrote a novel set far in the future and thought men would still be in charge of everything?). Of course, the Bene Gesserit have power, and I did find that whole concept fascinating (not the eugenics, but the idea that they planted folktales and prophecies in various communities that could be used as protection for their own whenever they might need it). But despite their power, they have all taken a backseat role, and besides their order, we meet only a few other named female characters. I also don’t like the concept of multiple wives/concubines (again, this feels problematically orientalizing).

The added information at the beginning of each chapter (usually from Princess Irulan) was interesting (though sometimes confusing). I have never minded spoilers in the way that some people do, so I kind of liked that Dune essentially spoils itself with this framing.

I was surprised, however, when we learn (somewhere around halfway through the novel) that Princess Irulan is actually alive concurrently with Paul—I had been imagining her as a scholar farther in the future, recording this history a generation or two later.

As a side note, I found it very funny that Herbert named whole planets and invented multiple new civilizations, but named his main characters Paul and Jessica (rather along the lines of Tolkein coming up with several entire languages, but calling the location of the story’s climax “Mount Doom”).

Happy ending meter (no specific spoilers, just the general vibe of the ending):

I don’t know that this could really be called a happy ending, though it’s honestly better than I was expecting (I wouldn’t have put it past Herbert to kill Paul in the end). It’s not exactly a cliffhanger, but definitely feels unfinished, and I’ve already put the sequel on hold at my library!

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