I really did love the first title in the series, and plan to continue through the rest. There are 2 parts to any review of an audio book, the story a..Show More »nd the narration, so let's break this into two.

1. The story. It was slow to get into, especially for a short book. It starts as a series of meetings, and slowly start pulling the story together. By about 3/4 of the way through you start to get back to what you excepted from Dune. It does a nice job telling the story of Paul, and over all was an enjoyable story. 3.5 stars.

2. The narration. I found it more than acceptable, and much better than many books. I was a little hesitant after reading some reviews, but it was no where near as bad as I had feared. It wasn't fantastic like the first book which truely is stellar. So I can understand how this would be a led down compared to that book. Over all it worked well and was an enjoyable listen, and it did not get in the way of the book, and may have even helped. When compared to other books 4/5 stars.



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So the producers seem to have completely given up on the entire dramatization thing that they were doing in the first book of this series, Dune (see m..Show More »y review there). Simon Vance does a good job of narrating this story, but towards the end of the book it becomes very clear that he wasn't available to do some re-dos and missed text. So they end up getting some random guy to finish the project. Its actually the case that sometimes one word in a sentence is dubbed in by this other narrator. Bothersome.
The story in and of itself is good, not as good as Dune, but certainly worth listening to or reading. My only critique is that Herbert sometimes goes on far too long about relatively minor issues or expanding upon points that were made well enough earlier in the text.

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God Emperor of Dune compares well with the original Dune, better than the previous two sequels (Dune Messiah and Children of Dune). It doesn't quite ..Show More »measure up to the standard of the first book, but few books, anywhere, do.

Warning: God Emperor of Dune is the third sequel to Dune. Ignore this book until you are familiar with Dune and the first 2 sequels.

It is 3500 years since Leto II Atreides donned his living sandtrout armor. Leto is now a living deity as well as galactic emperor...prescient, super-intelligent, supremely strong, vengeful...and more sandworm than man. Arrakis is now lush and green; the sandworms (except for Leto) are all but extinct. There is no more spice, excepting centuries-old stockpiles.

This is Leto's Golden Path...the future for humanity that he foresaw and planned 3500 years ago.

Like most of Herbert's Dune books, this book has an operatic feel...it moves slowly and most of the book is taken up with dialogue. The story really is the people, their motives and their schemes. This book revolves almost entirely around the title character (more so than the prior books), but, then, the God Emperor is the dominant story of this time and place.

The narration is very well done; Simon Vance narrates most of the book, with Katherine Kellgren reading the occasional female-dominated chapter and Scott Brick delivering the epigraphs at the start of each chapter. Three excellent readers who did a great job.

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And a great reader. This was my least favorite of the Dune books when i read them and I listened to an audio version I got from the library a few year..Show More »s ago. But this reader drew me in to this story like never before and I caught more of it than i ever did before. I look forward to hear Chapterhouse.

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As a dedicated "Herberts'/Anderson" fan I found this audiobook, to say the least, fascinating and informative. I'm so very gald that "Spiceworld" nev..Show More »er made it to publication in novel form, we would never have had "Dune" nor would have Frank Herbert become, at least not at that time, a household name or a very revered SF author. "The Road to Dune" is a great listen and I am pleased to have added it to my collection. I really enjoyed the "Dune" short stories, the possibilities are endless for the imagination, one can visualize any number of volumes based on any give character. Imagine "Erasmus Tales", if you would :)

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