Reviews with content warning for Torture - Dune

As good as the first time I read it five years ago. Even if you don't like scifi there's so much to Dune that you're bound to find something worth reading among its pages.

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carrionkid's review against another edition

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4.0

The perfect novel if you love inane lore, specific details, ecology, world building, political drama, etc. As much as I do.

Lost a star for the inherent racism of 1960s era sci-fi by white men and exactly how far Frank Herbert took it when he came to stealing other cultures for his space opera.

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owenwilsonbaby's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.5

I really liked this book! It's the first book I've read for fun in almost two years and I think it may have reset something inside my brain. It is very long and the pacing drags at times but the plotting and narration more than make up for it.

I would definitely say I found the first two sections of the book - Dune and Muad'Dib - much more interesting. I think that might just be my personal preference for

tragedies and survival narratives

but the last part felt comparatively weaker, mainly owing to strange pacing, as information was released very slowly and then very quickly. I LOVED the themes of self-loathing and foreboding around an individual's own capabilities. In particular, the

dark prescience and subsequent self-loathing

Paul experiences. The

burdened with 'a great and terrible purpose' line

feels like it was specifically written in for my angsty tastes!

I did struggle with the scope of the world building. Often, in order to motivate myself to keep reading, I would just have to accept that I didn't really grasp all of the wider political and social contexts for the events of a scene. I also had to make peace with the fact that it's a book from the 1960s, so sometimes it's tricky to tell if it's pro or anti capitalist, and also that sometimes its Islamic influences can read a bit islamophobically. Also the blatant homophobia of having the villain

be the only camp and queer coded character but also a paedophile!

Overall it's definitely a good book and a well-deserved classic - I'm more excited for the movie now I kind of understand the plot and world! It is going to be interesting to see how Villeneuve cuts the book in half. I definitely think the first two sections are stronger and will make an excellent film, but I'm not sure the final third will work as a standalone.

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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My husband has been begging me to read this book for a long, long time. He kept hyping it up, and he wasn't the only one - every single description I read of it was light on the plot and heavy on the "Dune is amazing," "the best scifi novel ever written," "Frank Herbert's death was a loss to the world because he wrote Dune" stuff. So I went into it with high expectations and no real idea what the story was actually about.

At 7% into the story, I texted my husband and asked if it got better once they actually moved to the planet Arrakis, because so far:

Paul took a torture test to prove he was human (there was doubt for some reason I guess?)
there was an exposition conversation about a prophesied male savior who could access both male and female magic (I think it's magic?) as opposed to the women who were limited to only female magic
an antagonist got introduced briefly
Paul did duke's son things like having lessons and talking to members of the guard

My husband assured me that it did get better, so I kept going. And it did not. I felt more connection to the character being forced to betray the Atreides family than I did to Paul, his mother, or Duke Leto combined, because he at least had desires and motivations. And that connection wasn't great - I don't even remember that character's name.

It seemed like the story was trying to be about The Prophecy That May Or May Not Be About Paul, but it was actually about politics. The politics of being a proper duke's son and heir, the politics of establishing yourself as in charge on a new planet, politically defeating your political enemies, mining strategies and diplomacy plans and managing troops ... it was boring. So insufferably boring. None of the characters were people, none of them had wants or desires or motivations or even agency. They were cardboard cutouts that shuffled each other around doing politics until something happened to them and they went, "oh, that's what we're doing now" and did more politics about it.

This is science fiction, but the only way you know is by occasional mentions of futuristic technology and the fact that they're on a planet that isn't Earth, with its desert setting and natives whose eyes are solid blue with no whites. (The desert planet Arrakis could have been a fascinating setting if it was in a book where people actually did things.) It could just have easily been dropped in a high fantasy world of elves and dragons, or somewhere in the historical Middle Ages, or almost any other setting with only minor adjustments.

I legitimately have no idea how this book became the world's best-selling science fiction novel. I get that some people enjoy slow stories of politics and resource management, but if I'm picking up a scifi novel that's not what I want or expect. It's too long, too slow, following too many characters with too many names I can't remember, and yet somehow nothing happens. (And from the Wikipedia summary, it doesn't look like that gets any better.) I'm used to old genre fiction not giving female characters agency, but no characters seemed to have agency here. This isn't a science fiction book, or a book about Arrakis or characters or even Paul becoming a gratuitously over-powered scifi hero. It's a book about characters pointlessly doing politics, and a boring one at that.

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mostfrankdad's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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ahalexont's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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