Having loved the original Dune book and the recent movie, it is a delight to see such a faithful graphic novel adaptation!

I haven't read the original novel in about twenty years so I can't speak on how accurate this is, but it is pretty close to the recent movie version, so there's that. Since it was adapted by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert I assume it's pretty faithful.

The artwork is really clean and I like the character designs, although I find the more science fiction elements a little disappointing (the Ornithopter for example) when compared to the concept art from Jodorowsky's Dune or the 2021 film.

This is part 1 of 3 but it works quite well as a stand-alone story, although obviously leaving things on a fairly major cliffhanger.

Surprisingly engaging adaptation of what is a very dense novel, and I'll eagerly wait for the following graphic novel adaptations of the Dune series.

This is hard for me to review, because I've read Dune more times than any other book, so it's difficult for me to imagine what it's like to read this not having read the book at all. Maybe only seen the movie(s) or whatever. So I'm mostly not going to do that and just review this for people who have read the novel and know it well. People who are me.

Dune is super dense, there are a lot of words and he says the same shit over and over again -- which is part of the appeal! -- but there's no room for that in here, so they're just mostly hitting the important beats of the story. And the introduction makes clear that they wanted to stick closely to the original text of the novel, no funny business. Which is admirable I guess, but makes it pretty boring for those of us who know the novel backwards and forwards. (They did make Duncan Idaho a Black dude, and there were a handful of women on the Duke's war council, so that was at least a little bit interesting.) I did like the design of the ornithopters -- I always have a hard time picturing those satisfactorily in my head, and these seemed like they would fly, and also looked like birds, so they were good. I didn't like Jessica's gowns, they were boring and not crazy enough. They looked like they were from the '80s -- not the '80s version of the future, just . . . the '80s. Yawn. Everything else was just . . . similar to the David Lynch movie, kinda? Oh and they didn't make the heighliner look massive enough. Technically if you pay attention you can tell that it's big, but it's SO BIG you guys, and they didn't really get that across. I'm always awed by how enormous that ship is described to be, but I guess the artists didn't find it as interesting.

Near the beginning, the Reverend Mother says "for your father, nothing," which is incorrect, it's supposed to be "for the father, nothing." And then a few pages later, Paul recalls it correctly, even though that's not what was said to him! So that was messy, come on guys. Also at least twice there were speech bubbles that split a word over two lines that cannot be split like that. Like "HO" on one line and the next line started with "T." Messy, messy.

Aside from that though, the book itself is gorgeous. I borrowed this from the library so it's a hardcover, and the pages are so thick, I kept thinking they were stuck together! The colors are nice and the art is fine but there's nothing very distinctive about it. I'll probably borrow the next two from the library if they get them and if I remember. (This one covers the first "book" of Dune, to where Jessica and Paul are in the stilltent.) But there's no way in hell I'd spend money on this.

Oh, that reminds me of one more nit to pick: in this version, when they're in the stilltent and Paul is starting to freak out about seeing his future and whatnot (because he's been eating spicy food for all of two weeks, don't even get me started) he's like "they're going to call me Muad'Dib, the kangaroo mouse" but that's not how it happens in the novel. In the novel he sees that they are going to call him Muad'Dib, but he doesn't know why, and then a little later when they meet up with Fremen, the Fremen are like "okay you're cool, your secret name is Usul which means the base of the pillar, but you also need a non-secret name to use with people not in our seitch, what do you want it to be?" and he goes "oh I don't know, what's the name of that clever kangaroo mouse?" and they're like "we call that little guy Muad'Dib" and it's like DUN DUN DUNNNNN TERRIBLE PURPOSE etc etc which I think is more interesting than the way they did it here. But what do Frank Herbert and I know. One of us only wrote what is proclaimed in this volume to be "the most beloved novel in science fiction."

P.S. I guess if you haven't read Dune, and you see this at your library, check it out? I think you will get the gist and the feeling of the novel? But honestly just go read Dune, it's flawed but fantastic. I think. It's honestly hard for me to tell anymore.

A fantastic adaptation of a perfect novel.

The art captures the scope and intimacy of Dune. It even doesn't give away the traitor twist, unless you've read the book before.

I love that the adaptation of the book goes in its own direction and doesn't rely on any film or TV miniseries' choices to inform the looks of characters and the world.

Really awesome.

The Short Answer
A faithful and competent retelling of the classic sci-fi novel Dune. While never quiet reaching the heights of its source material it is an excellent read in its own way. Worth reading if you want to revisit Dune without reading the entire mammoth novel, and an excellent entryway into try Dune if you've been unable to get into the dense novel.

The Long Answer
This was a great trip into Dune. I was initially hesitant as graphic novel adaptations of books can be very hit and miss. For the most part this book succeeds at being a fantastic read and a fantastic rendering of Frank Herbert's words.

The book starts off a bit weak, something that the original novel suffered from as well. Interestingly its weakness is precisely the opposite of the weakness in the original book. The original book starts off by being incredibly dense. It throws a lot of information at you way to quickly. On a reread this becomes a strength as it fleshes out much of the universe, but it makes the book very hard to get into on a first read. The graphic novel, on the other hand, trims away all the fat allowing for a much smoother entrance into the universe. However so much fat is trimmed that much of the introduction looses its depth, and would often be hard to properly understand without having read the book first.

Thankfully this problem is short lived. Much like the source material, everything falls into place and becomes engaging around the time everyone arrives on the planet of Dune itself. From that point on the book moves briskly, but manages to convey an excellent story of political intrigue. It's amazing how well it works in a visual medium seeing as almost all the truly interesting visuals happen in the upcoming volumes. Here we only get a hint of sandworms and Fremen, and virtually no action to speak of. This puts a lot of work on the art to carry the story and make the characters engaging.

Thankfully the artwork is mostly up to the task. While this isn't my favorite art style, it is technically excellent. The characters are all distinct and easy to identify and the world is exceptionally detailed. I wasn't always convinced of the emotions the characters were feeling, and occasionally the humans feel a bit stiff, but this is rarely a huge drawback. My biggest complaint was that many sequences felt to dark and muddy. A very limited palette is used in a number of places. This creates sequences of low contrast where a lot of the intricate details in the art all blend together. This makes some panels harder to decipher than they should be, and many details are easy to miss.

If I had to guess this art probably looks fantastic on a computer monitor or an iPad, but printed onto paper the loss of backlighting hurts the art a bit. This is a shame because it's such a nice book. The paper quality is excellent, the printing is crisp, and the overall presentation is top notch. I just wish I didn't constantly feel like I needed to turn up the light in order to see all the art properly.

Despite these complaints I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys Dune or is looking for an easy way to sample Dune without going into the huge dense novel of the original. Just always remember, the original is still better.

Nie polecam osobą, które nie widziały filmu. Za to polecam obejrzeć i zakochać się w tym świecie jak ja. Ilustracje są zachowane w bardzo fajnym klimacie, a do samej historii świetnie było wrócić. Szczególnie, że po filmie nie potrafię przestać o nim myśleć. Teraz tylko dorwać oryginalną historię i znikam aż nie przeczytam

Dune is cool. I like it a lot.