Due to a combination of luck, limited new book selection, and having trusted sources for new book recommendations, it has been a long time since I read a book and was left with the impression that it was, as a whole, a swing and a miss. I mean, I wasn’t a huge fan of Harrow The Ninth, but I still enjoyed the book enough that I wouldn’t even call it a foul ball. It just wasn’t the home run I was expecting after reading the first book in the series. Pretty much everything else I’ve read over the last few years was a good choice, even if it gave me complex feelings, and I’m struggling to remember the last time I just did not like a book I’d picked up to read other than the notable exception of when I tried to force myself to read the Game of Thrones Series and literally threw one of the books away from me when I got to the Red Wedding bit because I was sick and tired of the constant “every decent person gets killed because ninety-nine percent of the world’s population are total bastards who will kill you given a chance and even the most pitiful motive.” I’m not a picky reader, by any means, nor do I restrict myself to only what I know I like, but I tend to wait for something to be recommended or look for certain signs in reviews before choosing to invest my time and that means I rarely spend my time on a book that I genuinely dislike.

I’ll add the ever-important caveat here–that this is just my opinion and I’m not saying this book is bad or some kind of failure, just that it isn’t really working for me–but I’m really not enjoying Dune by Frank Herbert. My initial impression, about halfway through the book, is that the story Herbert has to tell is pretty interesting and definitely worth my time, but the way it’s told leaves a lot to be desired and some of the choices Herbert made about how to write the book have left me frequently setting it aside to exclaim in my notes or to take a moment to process what I just read. I’m only reading it for a book club that I’m doing with a friend–the idea being here that we can encourage each other to read this book (and other books that we both want to have read but are struggling to push ourselves to read) by agreeing to meet up and talk about it afterwards–and I’m struggling to stay focused on it as the story digs deeper and deeper into a lot of the horrible tropes and opinions Herbert seems excited to share in his novel. I’m going to save my full thoughts on the matter until after I’ve finished so I can discuss it in its entirety, but I would not be reading any further if not for this book club I’m in. I’ve just hit too many points where I feel disgusted with what Herbert is writing. Not the subject matter, necessarily, just the words he chooses. The lack of subtlety. The way the main characters only shine because everyone else is made to look pathetic or idiotic. The ever-present racism that feels present in the narration, not just the characters. The eugenics. The whole “are you human or animal” thing, which is also tied to the narratorial and in-character racism, the eugenics, and the making people look like pathetic idiots. And so much more!

I wrote most of a paragraph about my expectations and what I was looking for from this book tempered by the knowledge that Herbert was writing in the 60s, but I couldn’t drive that to an interesting point because I genuinely didn’t expect much going into this reading experience. I knew about the desert, I knew about “spice,” I knew about sandworms, and that’s about it. I had very low expectations going into this book since I bounced off it in the first chapter in both my previous attempts to read it, but I can’t believe how much I’m let down by the incredibly lack of writing skill or subtext in the novel. We never see anything, but are told things and must assume that the narrator’s judgment means that these judgments apply to the characters as well. It’s revolting, and not just as a reader. I know a lot of tropes were much more common and much more widely accepted back in the 60s (though that’s no excuse for them!), but I am surprised that no one ever had a sit-down with Herbert about how maybe he should trust his readers to understand what he’s trying to do rather than needing to endlessly and circuitously beat them over the head with it. It’s exhausting.

I can’t wait to go read something else after this. Or to return to the Animorphs which are still more subtle than Dune, despite being intended for children aged eight and up. Or to return to The Clone Wars which manages to actually levy some decent criticism at specific things rather than just wildly and generally criticizing things in a way that might actually be incredibly bad, depending on how the latter half of the book goes. Or even get back to Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, despite still feeling kind of burned out on the franchise since at least that game doesn’t rub your nose in every little thing. Pretty much anything will be better than Dune, which always lulls me into dropping my guard by stringing together fifty or a hundred pages of interesting (if entirely lacking subtlety) worldbuilding and character development before slapping me in the eyes with a gross description of a horrible man whose internal awfulness is supposedly reflected in his external form in a way that winds up being incredibly fatphobic and at least kind of ableist. I really wish I could just hate the whole book and choose to be done with it, but the story behind all this bad writing and these terrible tropes is incredibly interesting. I wish I could just pull those parts out and enjoy them, free of the rest of the bullshit.