You know you’ve had an unpleasant experience with a book when you dread even typing up a book review for the thing. When you don’t even get the visceral ‘this book is trash and I need to scream to the heavens (and the internet) my displeasure’, but are thoroughly stuck in the ‘do I really have to pull thing thing out again?’ duldrums.

For those of you not familiar with Dune, it’s a bit of a space epic- centering around Paul Atreides, the son of an aristocratic family that is tasked with the management of the dessert planet Arrakis (otherwise known as Dune), which is the only source of a drug which extends life and provides mental abilities. The story is full of political intrigue and conflict, as various factions seek to control the planet and its resources.

Now, I will say, to start out, that the world building here can be fantastic. There is no way to disagree with this being a foundational piece of modern science fiction literature, because it feels so different than its contemporaries- ahead of its time. The culture of this world, its people and history, is fascinating. The author did an interesting job picking out pieces from actual cultures to build off of.

Unfortunately, the book is presented in such a way that making sense of the world building is a headache. Normally I don’t mind being dropped into a world a being left to figure out some of the mechanics myself, in this case however I spent a good portion of the early part of the book in varying levels of ‘what is going on here, again?’ When you have to look up the cultural concordance in the back of the book at least twice a page for the first fifty or so pages there’s something wrong.

Additionally. The dialogue really leaves something to be desired. At times its good, and feels pretty well normal, and then there’s portions that are so unrealistic, where you can’t help but think ‘nobody speaks like that’. It’s overly stilted and formal, as if they’re actors in a play. This feels especially so when encountering what I can only compare to thought-bubble. Oh, how I hated the thought-bubbles, which often feel intrusive and, in the worst cases, completely take away some of the intrigue the author was (I am assuming) going for. Revealing some character details and thoughts, fine, but when it gets to the point of spoiling what would essentially be a plot twist otherwise… not good.

So, long story short, yeah, I can appreciate the affect that Dune had on modern science fiction. I really do think you can call it a science fiction classic, and I really think it would be up some people’s alley. Does that mean I liked it, or ever want to read it or anything in the series, again? Nope. I’ll be quite happy to never have to interact with the story ever again.