Thats enough Dune
I have officially given up on finishing Dune Messiah. I was a few chapters in, when tough guy from the first book (Duncan) gets introduced as essentially a zombie computer man openly declaring that he’s there to ruin Paul. What even is this?
The movies where great, I really liked them. Not perfect, but I can only point out quibbles off the top of my head for a movie that I watched over a year ago now. Later that year, when christmas was coming around, I thought to myself "Well they got more books and I want more dune... And T from engineering said that if the movie had included the dinner scene then it would have been perfect... so I am a little curious about that, so I might as well start from the first book". So the purchase is made and Dune is slotted nicely into my bedtime book for about a month. And the book, its good.
The first book has some excellent moments, the dinner scene, the confrontation between the baron and emperor at the end, that scene where Jessica and Hannah talk about her creepy daughter, and many more. My personal favorite scene is when Liet-Kynes hallucinates his father as he comes to face his approaching death and his dad just lectures him. Its such a human scene for a character that has to that point been above the whole squabble and, for once in the book, tells you directly what the book is about. The whole project of the book is outlined clearly by his dad here. Paul is a bad guy, its not cause his evil, but because to do what he wants to do he is going to pervert fremen beliefs to his mission, and the consequences will be payed in blood by the fremen. And true right thing to do, is nothing. The fremen have a goal and plan to get them there, its not pretty, but will succeed in making the paradise they dream of. Later lore, may say otherwise, but at this point in the book this much is clear.
On the other hand, the actual experience of reading Dune sucks. The book takes great pleasure in interjecting almost all dialog with several reactions from either character to discuss even the most irrelevant of micro-facial detail that somehow indicates that this person is lying or excited or hiding their intentions. Making it feel like it takes so many god damn pages to get to a point as simple as “this guy is lying”. So many minor plot points that add nothing but filler to the whole story like Count Fenring or the smugglers. I would have just cut them from the already too long book.
Even so, I net positive on the whole thing. The parts I enjoyed I really enjoyed and while there’s a whole lot more I felt just meh about like Alia, the bad does not outweigh the good. I recommend it if you have patience. So then, please excuse me for looking forward to Dune 2 – Dune Messiah – and being genuinely excited to see it was such a short book. Only to read the first chapter in utter confusion to the seemly minor plot points of 1) yea the kwisatz Haderach is special but we actually had one in the basement a few years back till it killed itself, 2) we sent Duncan back to the prison planet to bring him back to life to make him some kind of cool training dummy, 3) so the when the guild gets high to tell the future to pilot the spaceships they can see the future paul has looked at because reasons, and 4) so they had no more kids because the princess has been secretly slipping Chani contraceptive drugs this whole time without anyone having the slightest idea about it. The groan that left my body as I realized that, yes its a shorter book, but only because its 5 times denser woke the dogs. I read a bit more after this, but it was just too tedious. I got the point in the first book and I am fine reading the Wikipedia page to find out what happens next.
In summary, Dune 👍, Dune Messiah 👎, Dune Movies 👍👍, Dune that weird amazon thing 🤷♂️