➸ 5 stars

“I am House Atreides.””

FIVE FLIPPING STARS – NOTHING ELSE! LIKE – ! Frank Herbert said he was gonna make history and that’s exactly what he did with this book. I’ve actually done a small deep dive into how this book was published and it's rather interesting. But anyways – yeah this book is a 6/5 star book for me and definitely one of the top books I’ve read this year. I just love a good book about space politics. I truly could be a space politician or something along the lines of one because it's so interesting. To tell you the truth my favorite POVs were the ones with the Baron and Feyd-Rautha – especially because they were the easiest ones to understand and probably because of how fast paced the POV were in relation to the one’s by Paul. (NGL Paul is such a fitting name for Paul once you read the whole book or get through at least half of the book)

“There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.”

Alia Atreides (Paul’s sister) is definitely one of my favorite characters. I know she didn’t have a lot of scenes in this particular book but the ones she was in were hilarious!

“So here he is,” she said. She advanced to the edge of the dais. “He doesn’t appear much, does he—one frightened old fat man too weak to support his own flesh without the help of suspensors.”

– I mean she’s literally a 4 year old talking as if she was older.

“Chani, his soul, Chani his sihaya, sweet as the desert spring, Chani up from the palmaries of the deep south”

Another thing I want to point out is Paul’s love for Chani like the way this man described her was brilliant! Even before he knew her he was in love.

“That girl! She was like a touch of destiny. He felt caught up in a wave, in tune with a motion that lifted all his spirits.”

I don’t know if this is truly true but Gurney Halleck to me feels like an underrated character. I feel like he taught Paul a lot and even me in some cases. When he was finally brought back into the story I was SO FREAKING HAPPY! Honestly for me meeting Halleck was like “love at first sight” but through paper and not so much love but as a friend or father figure/mentor.

All in all throughout the book you really see a transformation of Paul's character. He goes from being a somewhat loving boy to a man-boy whose goal is aiming towards power and a taste of revenge. I totally love that for him but me personally I would've just gone to therapy but I digress.

Other quotes I wanted to include in this review:

“One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste. It’s a loss, an awakening to the fact that the world is there and here and we are in it alone. The moment carries its own truth; you can’t evade it. I heard my father when he spoke of my mother. She’s not the betrayer, Gurney.”

“While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine - history will call us wives.”

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”