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Title: Done with Dune
Review: Like many others, I picked up DUNE based on its broadly accepted status as a SF classic. I don't read much SF, so I try to get to the Big Books (War of the Worlds, Ender's Game, Fahrenheit 451, "The Year's Best" anthologies, etc). This was not a good book. The dialogue is stilted, the characters are caricatures, and everyone's always "hissing", "glaring", or "swallowing with a dry throat". The plot is interesting enough, but not nearly as complex or Byzantine as I had expected: warring factions, religious fervor, double-crossing, nefarious rulers, ulterior motives - standard stuff, really. If anything, the plot seems complicated because we're told so little about what the Guild, the Great Houses, and CHOAM really are. Anyway, as a non-SF connoisseur I realize that I don't get to vote on which books are the classics. But from where I stand, DUNE is a poorly-written, lackluster, repetitive tale. It's not the best SF I've ever read; it's not even the best book I've read this month.
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