Dune

By: Frank Herbert

Narrated by: Scott Brick, Orlagh Cassidy, Euan Morton, Simon Vance, Ilyana Kadushin, Byron Jennings, David R. Gordon, Jason Culp, Kent Broadhurst, Oliver Wyman, Patricia Kilgarriff, Scott Sowers

Long-listed, Audible.com Best of the Year, 2007

Long-listed, Audible.com 100 Audible Essentials, 2007

Audie Award winner, 2008

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Stellan Skarsgård, and Charlotte Rampling

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Muad'dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family—and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction. Frank Herbert's death in 1986 was a tragic loss, yet the astounding legacy of his visionary fiction will live forever.

©1965 Frank Herbert; (P)2007 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC

Critic reviews

Audie Award Winner, Science Fiction, 2008
Nebula Award winner, Best Novel, 1965
Hugo Award winner, Best Novel, 1966

"Unique...I know nothing comparable to it except Lord of the Rings." (Arthur C. Clarke)

"One of the monuments of modern science fiction." (Chicago Tribune)

"Powerful, convincing, and most ingenious." (Robert A. Heinlein)

brought an old classic to life

I first read this book in 1980 in the back seat as my family did a two week camping road trip, and I loved this story. I must have read Dune over 20 times, it was that good to me. When I heard about the audio book I was a bit hesistant that they might ruin one of my favorite stories (like they did with the movie!!).
But the narration and characterization of the actors, were wonderful, giving the story a richness and fullness, a 3D immersive experience.
It made a great story that much better.

Good book!

Overall this was a great listen. However, I was somewhat annoyed how sometimes the voice of different characters were spoken by different actors, and sometimes they weren't. At one point even within one chapter they switched back and forth which mad it somewhat confusing. I did enjoy some of the sound effects though. Great listen!

Is the audio really that bad?

I liked the book and would recommend it if you like more politics and ideals driven books but the main thing I wanted to address was the audio. Alot of people seem to have issues with it and I will admit that the voices may be a little over dramatic but in general its pretty straight forward. One person narrates the quotes at the beginning of each chapter and then the main narrator, Simon Vance covers most of the rest except for things specifically in quotations which are divided by character and voiced by different narrators. Since this does not include internal thoughts that the characters aren't represented as actually saying and Vance does imbue some character related "voicing" to the thoughts as would normally be done in a single reader rendition it does somewhat seem to lead to some of the main characters having 2 sometimes distict "voices" but it does make sense and it really isn't that difficult to follow. I doubt I would have noticed it if I hadn't read the reviews of everyone complaining about it. I guess basically my point is not to let the complaints scare you away from a good book.

Great story. Bad voice work.

I am a long time fan of the Dune universe, and I enjoyed revisiting Dune. Unfortunately, the inconsistent voice work can become a distraction to the story. Voice actors don't stay with a character throughout the book, and they often change in the middle of a scene. A production that is not worthy of Dune.

Stunning Rendition

Dune is one of my favourite books and easily one of the best science fiction books ever written. At the time that Dune was written, most science fiction futures were written from recognizably American or Western European points of view with few, if any, nods to Earth's other cultures. Herbert, on the other hand, wrote about a future that recognized at least some of Earth's varied cultures (the Fremen are clearly descended from Islamic Arabs). Dune was a landmark book that remains relevant today; it is, perhaps, more important today than it was when it was written. (For another science fiction look at Islam, read George Alec Effinger. Only a short story, "Schrodinger's Kitten", is available on Audible.) Dune is often maligned, usually by people who have not read the book, but have only seen David Lynch's movie (flawed in almost every respect) or the Sci-Fi Channel's television adaptations (much better than the movie, but still flawed).

This audio production does the sweeping scope of Dune justice in nearly every way. The use of multiple voice actors and limited effects paints the action deftly and skillfully. If there were anything to complain about, it's that the different voice actors weren't used consistently to represent their characters. The primary narrator does a great job of representing all of the characters, but some consistency in the use of the voice talent would have been preferred. As is common with other audiobooks, "unabridged" here means that the main body of the text is complete and unabridged; appendices (and there are several in Dune, all of which are worth reading), are not included.

Those quibbles aside, this is a stunning rendition of an amazing book.