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

Length: 21 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

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)

ensemble was good, but....

there really was no need of the endless sound effects and wind tunnel aspect to the ensemble narration. it worked but for that.

Great Book, Odd Narration

There are a million reviews out there on the merits of this awesome book, so I'll focus on this narration.

it was a little weird because the main narrator played all the voices of the characters in some places, but in other places the characters had their own unique voice actors. It was very confusing at first because with the changes I got mixed up on who was speaking. I got used to it, still not sure why it was done that way. The voice acting is good on all counts, the voices just... changed... for some reason...

Worth the purchase

It was a good reading and I enjoyed listening to it. It's true that the narrator spoke the character's lines instead of the cast members at times but things were easy to follow and he did a good job with their voices. I do wonder why the cast didn't read all their own lines but it doesn't matter. If you've enjoyed Dune in it's past incarnations you'll like this as well.

a classic book superbly performed

Dune will forever be a pillar of the SciFi genre, and this audiobook does good justice to it. it has a great cast and sound design and really brought the story to life

Please explain why the voices change.

The voice is on some of the character change. Why is that? 2 more words.

Classic SciFi

loved the story, very different and fresh despite its age. clearly plays as influence for a lot of other more familiar stories. only complaint was that the voice actors and narrator take turns doing the same characters and it can be weird to follow.

JUST AMAZING

I was skeptical at first but you have not LIVED until you’ve read this book!

Excellent story, inconsistent voices

The story was fantastic. This book is a classic for a reason. The voice acting was confusing. Sometimes, the primary narrator voices multiple characters, and sometimes other voice actors are brought in. There is no consistency between their voices, so it can be difficult to follow what is going on until you figure out which two, distinct voices belong to which single character. Disappointing delivery of a wonderful story. That being said, the quality of the voice acting was well done.

Fantasy not Sci Fi

Of course the definition of fantasy and science fiction are subjective. But for someone like myself who enjoys the technological aspects of science fiction Dune falls less into that category and more into the category of fantasy. That's not to say it's an uninteresting story. I picked it up because everyone had said that it was a classic from the '60s and I couldn't NOT read it. But it's really more about the machinations of feudal houses based on different planets than it is about how science will impact the world in the future. The book starts slowly and it takes a while to become accustomed to the complex names. Many of them sound alike so that only adds to the challenge. It was never quite clear to me, although I'm sure if I read reviews and analyses I could learn something, whether the book is really a book about Muslim faith mixed with magic and sorcery rooted in the desert and driven by Jihad. Finally, in addition to the Muslim and Arab and desert twists there is an overarching framework of psychedelic drugs. I suppose any book written in the '60s would have to be like this. But one can never tell The degree to which the characters are wandering about in a constant state of drug-induced illusion.

As for the performance, it was annoying that sometimes even in the middle of a conversation the voice of a particular character would change significantly, moving from a higher pitched lighter voice to a lower pitched heavier voice. This made it even harder to keep track of the character sometimes.

Probably worth reading for any science fiction fan. But not my favorite... by a long long shot. Asimov is much better. Bottom line I'm not sure whether I will read any sequels.

Great read

I loved everything about this book i seen the movie and had to know more loved the book way more then the movie