Reviews with content warning for Cultural appropriation - Dune

After sitting with this book for a long time, and annotating it fully to get my thoughts out, it has become evident that this a 1 star book. Worldbuilding…good (although as a science major the ecology in this book is absolute shit). Anything else that is supposed make up a book (characters, pacing, writing, plot, etc) was not only mediocre but truly horrendous. This book is the definition of telling not showing. Frank Herbert refused to allow a single drop of nuance in this book. So open your gullet and read this book if you love being spoon fed terrible writing!

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tinyjude's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

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prouvaire's review

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adventurous reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.5

i kind of forgot that i actually managed to finish this.

several lasting impressions:
- the characters are interesting. they might annoy me, i might not care about their survival, but i definitely want to know them.

nooo liet kynes don't die, tell me more about the ecology of arrakis, of your long term plan before paul and his mother co-opt it for their pseudo religious purposes...nooo

- in dune, to know more about a character is to know more about the world in which the story takes place, which for me is the best way to inform the reader of your cool, cool worldbuilding

- and yes dune's world is cool. herbert knew his stuff. it's fascinating how realistic the world feels, you can imagine how the economy and political systems grew from and adapted to the confines of the ecological landscape

- weird to see terms that i associate with religion pop up here as...well, religious terms, of a kind...

- something something reading this in 2021 is sobering (sorry future historians but i'm not elaborating)

favorite scenes:
- when liet kynes was going to fix paul's special desert shoes thingy, and found out that paul had worn his shoes perfectly, as if he was NOT wearing them for the first time (which he was). that was chilling
- the many, many vision sequence of paul foresighting the jihad

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