Dune (Dune, #1)

by Frank Herbert

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!


I am a bit torn on the book. First of all, it took me a month to read. If I really like a book, I usually gobble it up within a few days at the most. The thing is, I wanted to like Dune but I just had a hard time getting into it. I already identified one problem that definitely contributed to that. See, I read this on my e-reader. However, the novel comes with a rather substantial appendix. An appendix that is necessary, considering how many new terms the author came up with. But going through the story on an e-reader meant that I didn’t flick back and forth as that’s just annoying, so the appendix was pretty much lost on me, which also means that I was a bit lost reading the book. That means, if you want to read Dune, get yourself an actual copy instead of a digital version, it’ll make the reading experience a lot more enjoyable.

The story is split in three parts with the first essentially being a very long prologue. Herbert spends a decent amount on the world-building and situating the reader in the story. Although it was necessary, I still wanted it to be shorter so we could get on with the story. Considering that technically I desperately needed all the explanation I could get since I didn’t check out the appendix, this is a bit of contradiction, but here we are.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Herbert’s story. I enjoyed his world and his characters but I just wanted him to get on with everything a bit faster. That’s true for the entire book and not just the first part.

The third part is situated after a quite substantial time jump which I found quite irritating. At first I wasn’t sure what had happened. You know, it could have just been a vision Paul was having, so it took me a chapter or two to figure out where we are timewise. I’m not quite sure whether I want the third part to be in the same book with parts 1 and 2. To have it as its own part it may be too short but somehow in my brain I felt a disconnect.