[AJW]

Well I finished Dune the other night and I feel a little disappointed.
It started well but towards the end there was a definite drop in quality it almost seemed as if Herbert was trying to finish the book within an arbitrary word limit. I felt it needed to take its time a little more and come to a more natural end rather then confronting the Guild the Emperor and the Harkonnen in the last chapter.
I was also left wondering whether this would be a hit if it was released for the first time today. It’s clearly heavily influenced by the life of Mohamed. The hero is a mystical leader who leads his people in bloody rebellion against an empire that enslaves the planet because it is reliant on a substance only found under the sands of Dune. I'm not sure how that would play with middle America or whether Muslims would be happy to see a thinly veiled analogy of Mohamed with no strong religious sense using his followers religious beliefs to make them wage war against his enemies and bring him to power.