Dune

I was dreading starting on this despite having bought the book a while back, but it was a more engaging read than I thought it would be. It's probably well known by now but I'll reiterate that this book is really complex and demands a re-read if you really want to do a deep dive into its themes and messages, but it's probably easier if you do a superficial read-through of the book (and probably the whole series) first to get a hang of the overarching plot. Nevertheless, I was not disappointed and I like the direction that this book is setting up for the rest of the series.

The long and short of the story is pretty simple. Paul Atreides is heir to House Atreides, one of the Great Houses that governs whole planets in the name of the Imperium. They are transferred from the water planet Caladan to the desert planet Arrakis, which, though nigh uninhabitable, is still a gem to the Imperium because it is the only source of melange-spice, a coveted resource that is harvested and exported for a ton of money all throughout the Imperium. However, Arrakis was previously governed by House Harkonnen, sworn enemies to the Atreides, and it's unlikely that they'd give up an actual goldmine that easily.

There is really good, nuanced, layered, and complex storytelling here. There's a ton of philosophy to be unearthed, a lot of plots within plots (that's sometimes too veiled for me to even understand), and you can really just go on deciphering this book forever. I appreciate that kind of depth in any book. When you first start the book, it immediately plunges you into the world without any “tutorial” scene, which I actually appreciate. I enjoy that level of immersion in a new world, and Herbert did a great job in writing it such that the reader is just immersed enough without being too overwhelmed. Though there was a list of terminology at the back of the book, I didn't want to refer to it at all and just let the story explain the terms to me, and I thought it did this marvelously. I was super engaged by the book in the first third, but it started dragging for me after that, ramping up again in the last maybe 20%, and only dialing it up to 11 in the last two chapters, whew.

For characters, I was generally quite bored with Paul who seems to be a pretty obvious hero/saviour type, although I'll grant that nothing in this book is really that black and white, and thus Paul doesn't quite tick off all the checkboxes for that sort of trope. But being bored with Paul was a little alarming considering this entire book pretty much revolves around him. I thought almost every other character is more interesting, but I was particularly interested in Lady Jessica, and some other female characters (Alia, Chani, and even Princess Irulan). I don't know if it's any surprise or coincidence that they're mostly major female characters.

That brings me to a huge theme that I paid a lot of attention to going in: the representation of women. I have heard a lot about that (and not exactly positive things) from some others who have attempted this book before, and had gone in really hesitant. Reading this book hasn't quite changed my mind on that, although once again I'll grant that things aren't black and white there either. There were some bits that discomfited me when reading, like when Harah was trying to offer herself up as wife to Paul after he had killed her husband, and protesting that she was "still young", or at the end when they were kinda just treating Irulan as a pawn instead of a human being, or really anytime when any woman in this book, no matter how powerful she might be, is always relegated to being either mother, lover, or wife, and never having any kind of power that doesn't have to do with those functions in relation to men.

But at the same time, the book isn't straight up female objectification and misogyny either. I liked that the female characters were often very powerful (more so than their male counterparts), and sometimes even more relatably portrayed, like Lady Jessica vs Paul. They were also more enigmatic and interesting and often didn't fit into archetypes, like Alia being a complete wild card for everyone vs Paul who is the obvious hero/saviour. I was even intrigued by Chani and Irulan more so than Paul/Feyd.

So i guess the tl;dr is that this book isn't easy reading, but it's quite likely an engaging one. It'll certainly demand multiple reads if you really want to fully understand the whole thing, but even just an initial superficial read of it is still going to be overall enjoyable and action-packed, even despite the slower sections. The female representation on this book isn't quite so straightforward, and so I'm kinda sitting on the fence on whether I enjoyed that bit or not. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm keen to visit the rest of the series, although I'll have to give myself a bit of a break first.