A review by harlaw
Dune by Frank Herbert

adventurous challenging slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

It's immediately obvious why this has been one of the most widely celebrated and massively influential scifi works of all time. I have never before experienced a world that feels so wholly and consistently alien.

Frank fumbled the ending of though, which makes the book as a whole land a little weird. Almost as if he was rushing to finish. Also I think he may well have been one of the most homophobic people to have ever lived, so I hope his desicated corpse is spinning like a perpetual motion machine at how committed gay people on the internet are to enjoying the gay people in his books.

This is definitely a bit of a tough one to get through in audiobook format because there is so much brand new world-specific vocabulary that it necessitates a lot of supplemental Google searches and re-re-re-listens. The most disappointing thing about this audiobook, though, was the absolutely baffling choice to use the full cast of voice actors only about 40% of the time. For over half the book, the narrator (who is a good narrator!!) is also voicing all the characters. But I don't understand why he is doing that since this recording has a full cast that plays the individual characters when they speak. So I was very sad at how much I missed out on the actors for Baron Vladimir, Piter de Vries, and Count Fenring, and honestly everyone else!! Super strange and bad production choice.