6:50 You have no idea how much my face lit up upon hearing 13 Sentinels music playing in the background. Would love to see you cover it in the future; I feel like not enough people talk about that game.
I appreciate the kind remarks! It definitely means a lot to me. And I hope you enjoy the series when you get around to it! I know Dune can be a little tough to get into at first, and the books themselves can be hit and miss at times, but it's still a fantastic experience all around.
This was an awesome video again. I've read Dune few months before the new movie and it became one of my favourite novel ever. After that i really didn't like the Messiah story, but also bought the Children of Dune already, so probably will read that one as well. Overall, this was great video to know,what should i expect :)
In that case, maybe check out the new movie first? The second one is coming out in March so you won't have to wait very long. And if you like it, definitely check out the audiobook. The movie definitely felt like it was....made for fans of the book, if that makes sense. Like the books are very inner monologue heavy, and they're extremely dense to boot. The new movie does a lot to compress things in a way that feels alien to complete newcomers, but fans of the book will watch and say "oh, that's how they did that!". I'm honestly not sure how non book readers felt either, I could see people either liking the approach or hating it. On the other hand the Dune audiobook has a full cast, and I personally find Frank Herbert's prose kind of a chore to read, but great to listen to. Couldn't recommend it enough.
I only recently found your channel and like what I have watched so far. I used to read more but recently got into Audiobooks during lockdown. I've listened to the original Dune and like you the House Atredies. It might have been a better read than listen, but I wasn't a fan. It had nice concepts but Brian and Kevin J. A. don't have the class of Frank Herbert. I will say this though and people will probably say how I am misinterpreting this. What I didn't like was the repetitive nature of laying down ground rules then immediately breaking them, also the MacGuffin nature of spice. Instead of having one vital use, It is so ubiquitous and does anything you want it to do.
I feel similar on both accounts. House Atreides just felt, for lack of a better term, like a dumbed down Dune. I'm sure if you don't take it too seriously you'll like it, but if you're a fan of the original Dune, it's a pretty stark change. And I could definitely do an essay or two on Frank Herbert's flaws as well! I think his pacing is generally not very good, and I'm also not a fan of the way he handles some characters (looking at you Chani). Like any author, Frank H got some flaws, and luckily they aren't too severe imo. I definitely understand what you mean about spice as well, it kind of does everything. Luckily as the series goes on the spice is more like a vehicle for prescience/Frank's musings about philosophy and messiahs, which is in my opinion where the real meat and potatoes of Dune is about.
Everyone has a way of making me read more Dune, but goddamn, Heretics for me right now is just a bad book. Idk when or if it's supposed to get good. I know the big major plot point of the book already that basically gives book 6 its name, and I honestly don't think I care anymore. Yeah, you get the thousands of years of history, but it's NOWHERE NEAR as convincing as the worldbuilding and agency of the original book. Honestly, you're probably better off consuming Heretics of Dune from a bunch of video essays that are better at telling the story. (also, it kinda bothers me that Frank Herbert borrowed chairdogs from his Consentiency Universe (Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment)). However... I am one of those people that thinks you should read Dune Messiah. Dune is how the universe fell into the hands of a Messiah, and Dune Messiah is what happened after it fell into his hands. That part works for me, and it's a fitting enough Part 4 to the 3-part original Dune. The rest of the sequels, however, even God Emperor of Dune (which I mostly enjoyed), can go fuck themselves. Children of Dune starts out so good. But like, the more I read it, the more abstract it all becomes. Maybe I'm a bad reader, but I seem to recall the sandworm transformation being described 100% abstractly. The really really long drug trip in the sietch that is supposed to be like the bees knees for Dune fans is really just impossible to follow. This I do know. Of any sections in Dune that I have reread the most, it's that multi-chapter trip scene... and it makes no fucking sense the whole way through. Seriously, reread that and try to make sense of it. My best guess of a copout answer is that Leto just saw a future where he turned into a sandworm and figured he could just do that. He probably didn't understand anything about the processes of doing so. He just aligned himself to the golden path. I guess it's not the worst answer, but it does kinda suck a little, and that's more or less how I feel about the rest of the sequels. They kinda suck a little.
I kinda agree with most of what you said. I also think Messiah is required reading to the original Dune, and I also didn't have the best opinion of Children of Dune and Heretics/Chapterhouse. Children gets really weird until like, the very end, and Heretics in particular felt too slow, and I really couldn't give a damn about any character to boot. It also really felt unnecessary, like after God Emperor I felt like the story felt "complete", and after that was hit and miss. I honestly think you could just stop at God Emperor. Still, both Heretics and Chapterhouse are a hell of a lot better than the Brian Herbert books lol.
@@ViviVariety I've also come to the conclusion that God Emperor is where I and most other people should stop. I don't hate the sequels, but they do make A LOT of assumptions about what was established in the original Dune, and there's not a whole lot of proof that much of that world is still there. I think the best Frank Herbert does for me on this front with the sequels is do the weird whisper voice whenever we hear a new Arabic-esc word. This is far removed from our various litanies, limericks, and poetry in the original Dune. In the later books, all of which I just mentioned are mostly kept in the epigraphs at the starts of chapters. I think that the best paragraph in all of Dune probably happened in the first chapter of the first book, although there are many examples of this in the original. Please excuse the fact that I'm about to quote it. "Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness . . . focusing the consciousness . . . aortal dilation . . . avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness . . . to be conscious by choice . . . blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions . . . one does not obtain food-safety-freedom by instinct alone . . . animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct . . . the animal destroys and does not produce . . . animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual . . . the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe . . . focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid . . . bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs . . . all things/cells/beings are impermanent . . . strive for flow-permanence within . . ." -Frank Herbert, Dune (1965) You'd be strapped to find much of anything like that in the sequels, and I think this is the area above all others where it falls short. This is where the magic was. Anyway, I've gotten way too wordy. Thank you for the response kind sir.
