Also sorry to be a heretic, but Dune is…badly written? 13 year old son and I are 70 pages in and I just don’t care about these overwrought storylines.
@JohnBrady I hadn’t even thought of the power flattening thing — just the sameness of the sentences as in a mediocre genre book, the endless backstory shoehorned into dialogue, needless complications. (But yes, my boy did say: well, let’s keep going and see if there’s some riding of sand worms…)
@ablerism I also found it difficult to get into, took about halfway through, but once it gets going it’s so good.
@ablerism This is the correct take! (I am not alone in the world of nerds!) It has interesting world-building and ideas, but it just is not a particularly good *novel*.
@chriskrycho I suppose in a way this is good news — that some strength of idea can overcome bad prose — but it's pretty nails-on-chalkboard at the moment.
@ablerism I hope the ideas help in the end. I cannot say my experience was promising in that regard, though. 😂
@ablerism Enjoy! I can't always tell when a book is worth pushing through and when it's best to give up. And of course, everyone likes different things.
@ablerism totally agree! But also agree with other replies on this thread: the ideas make it worth sticking it out, I think. I especially like what it does with the white savior trope.
@ablerism Yeah, I struggled through that one. I know people like it because Herbert is considered a master a world building. But I didn't feel any need to go back and read the sequels to revisit that world.