The original Dune novel is one of the best sci-fi novels ever written. My universe exists of the following tri-pod (in no particular order): Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars and Dune. What else is there? The world created in Dune is extaordinary. I read this book as a kid, impressed by it. Last year someone told me of all the books that were written in the Dune universe and me read everything, following the correct timeline. Needless to sat, Dune itself was the great highlight. A high quality novel, it's high standard never equalled. I read in the trilogy this time around, so I have got to say something about the other two books as well. Dune Messiah felt like a intermezzo, a kind of low point in the series. Children Of Dune made the storyline more interesting again and made it easy looking forward to the rest of the books. ( )

It was a good book but after all I had heard abot Dune I really expected more . The beginning was really boring but then it got better ( )

I read this to remind myself why I loved this universe after reading the disaterous Legends of Dune trilogy. I'd never read Messiah and Children (only seen the Sci Fi Channel mini-series) so it was fantastic to finally get round to reading them and understanding more about what was going on in Leto's mind and the Bene Gesserit.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest (of Frank's work). ( )

I read Dune about 25 years ago, and the other two books at various points after that, but I've never read the three together in one go. I still find the Bene Gesserit and their long-range breeding programme fascinating. At first this time round I had my doubts about the long-term feuds between the Great Houses and the general byzantine political background to the story, but after a while they grew on me. Another thing that I have a hard time with is the teleological view of evolution, that the jihad is an evolutionary force launched to improve the species.

Nevertheless, Dune itself still holds up well. Dune Messiah doesn't. The whole basis of Hayt as the ghola/revenant of Duncan Idaho produced by the Tleilaxu is so unshadowed by anything in the first book that I couldn't accept it. Also I just couldn't find anything very interesting this time round in the problems of the Atreides.

The third novel in the series, Children of Dune, was much better with the adventures of Paul's children and the further information about the Fremen cohering much better with what went before. I still feel ambivalent about all the mystical claptrap, though. ( )