wryn12's Reviews (458)

This was my first attempt at getting into the sci-fi realm, and well it was a little bit disappointing. I read a physical copy and I listened to the audio book while driving to work. This was probably my first mistake, as the audio book is performed by multiple people. You may think that this is not a bad idea, but when there are two or three people voicing a single character it got rather confusing and I would find myself just rereading the physical copy anyway. I struggled to maintain interest in the story because Herbert would change between overwhelming amount of detail in the world-building to completely skipping battles (or years) that changed the course of the narrative. Additionally, I didn’t really enjoy any of the characters - so there was no one that I was looking forward to reading about after I found myself in slower sections of the story. Paul is probably the most interesting character by far, but he is your typical white, male lead that is from a family of prominence. There are good supporting men around him which help drive the story - but their interactions are often spread out, leaving lulls in the story. The women in the story are garbage. I read a lot of King so I know what it is like to read stories with bad female characters - but Jessica, Alia, and Chani are all abysmal. I almost put the book down during Book 2 when it was only Jessica and Paul because I could not stand to listen to Jessica’s thoughts.

However, I did still give the book a 3. I enjoyed the world-building and the path down which the story is headed. Although, we were given a lot of important information in this first installment, not all of it played a role, which has stirred an interest in the sequels.
So know this, if you plan on reading it, make sure that you are planning to read multiple books instead of treating this first book as a stand alone.

Now I am off to finish The Dark Tower; we will see if I return to Arrakis.