Dune

3,5 stars ultimately, and after debating with myself for a while I ended up giving it 3 stars.

I did not have high expectations. The only reason I wanted to read this is because I was curious, and with the movie coming out soon it gave me a deadline to finally get to it.

The world that is built here is impressive. There's a lot to learn at the start, but you'll grasp the concepts eventually. There's a history to everything, including the planet and its people. And of course, politics!

However, what usually attracts me the most to a book are its characters, and although there were a few nice moments here, I found most of them to be rather “matter of factual” instead of more on the emotional side, if that makes sense? I found most interactions to be rather cold and so I found it difficult to really get invested in the characters and their relationships. That's probably the only thing that stopped me from caring too much about what was happening sometimes.

It was nice to read an actual complete story for once, though. I mean, I know there are continuations, but they're mostly seen as optional. The ending here ties everything up nicely, and as someone who's more used to series, this was very refreshing.