Dune by Frank Herbert has been a pretty long experience to read, a full 700 pages. There were actually 896, but most of it is lore and vocabulary of the book.

To show how convoluted it is: the author made a reader’s guide to keep up with the terms from A-Z. I can’t tell you how many times that guide has saved my reading experience! 

This book had great storytelling, characters, and basically everything! As background, the son of a duke, Paul Atreides is the 16 year old main character. He and his family had to move from their water planet Caladan to the desert planet Arrakis.

What is special about Arrakis is their control over the natural spice that is used to power ships and more. Although it was very long, most of the substance of the book was rushed to 200-300 pages. It’s like the author was storybuilding and realized that they actually have to finish the book.  There was a movie based on the book made in 2022.         

Spoiler Alert: In the movie, it ends with Paul and his Bene Gesserit mom escaping into the wasteland of the Dunes of Arrakis after the fall of House Atreides. They meet the Fremen, the native people of Arrakis.

After that, what I think will be in the next movie in March will have a two year flashforward of Paul marrying a Fremen named Chani and have a child who sadly passes away. In addition, his mom has Paul’s sister since she was pregnant.

Paul’s sister has a higher intelligence because of some wacky Bene Gesserit shennanigans. After all that, they will raid the Harkonnens who caused the fall of House Atreides, and take back the planet. Through Paul’s new power, he planned out becoming the Emperor over all the Houses. 

Now that you know the lore of the book, Dune isn’t that terrible of a book! Sure it was hard to read, but it was made in the 1960s. I could’ve known everything I needed to know in my book by reading half of what I did, but the build up was sort of worth it and out of this world!