I don't know how I feel about this book. I don't know if I would rate it 3.5 or 4.
In my opinion, the main premise of the book is between reality and virtual/unreality.
The main point being the thin line between android and humans. What makes human “real” and androids not. If Mercenism is in the end, reality or a lie.
The question goes even further than that, throughout the book, as a reader, you find yourself reading through events where you keep wondering if what is happening is real or not (e.g: Dickard's meeting with Phil Resch)
However, I find the execution lacking in many ways. The book is trying to tell too much and doesn't take the time to do so. As a result, events are rushed and major elements are left underdeveloped.
Some characters make no sense to me, for instance, I don't understand Isiodore's character. He is clearly the personification of empathy but he has no adding value to the story.
And the ending is, in my opinion, a mess.
I can't argue that Dune is a major foundation for Sci-fi and that a big part of my critic is based on things that didn't used to be done at the time. In the overall I liked the book but I will talk about what was lacking.
The book is interesting and the universe is full potential! Potential that sometimes I found unexplored. The spice for instance, or the sandworms. We know they are the most important parts of the story but were rarely used for the development of the story. For example, Paul riding a sandworm had no impact on the main story whatsoever.. Which leads me to my next point ;
Paul Atreids. Paul is the definition of the Chosen One trope on steroids making him way too over powered and therefore making the audience easily detached from the character. The event I mentioned earlier, riding the sandworm, even if it was Paul's ultimate test to be seen as a Fremen, was done with no struggle whatsoever.
I loved Paul at the start of the book but the more the story developed the more I found myself hating Paul. I was wishing he'd get killed at the end by Feyd-Rautha which would've given the story a kind of interesting/unpredictable ending.
But in the end I'd say that my major disappointment with this book is how predictable everything is. The more the book progresses the less you'd feel tension for the characters as you realize that events never deviate from the predictable path.
Many events were also pointless or had no impact on the story, for instance, again the sandstorm riding, Gurney believing Jessica was the traitor..
Rating : 2.5
I wanted to like this book I really did. And in fact, I actually did for the first half of it. The premise of the book and the dystopian setting were highly promising but then the execution was poorly done and the closure was extremely bland.
The characters promised to have some kind of depth when introduced but ended up not having any. I ended up feeling extremely unattached to all them and couldn't feel any kind of empathy towards them.
Mustapha Mond promised to be an extremely interesting character. The confrontation between him and John at the end of the book reminded me of the confrontation between Winston and O'brien in part 3 of 1984. But in Brave New World, the confrontation s nothing but a showoff of the wit of the character with smart phrases that end up adding nothing interesting to the story. We don't discover anything new about Mustapha or the Society, nor does it add any value to John's character development.
Lenina's character to me is the blandest, her existance in the book is nothing but a cheap trigger for John's breakdown, which leads us to the weakest point of the whole book; the closure.
The closure of the book, in my opinion, is nothing more but a shock value. It only prooves to me a lack of ideas of where to go with the story.
In the end, I could only see similarities to 1984 but, unlike 1984, the book is poorly executed and lacks depth and a proper closure.
Still, the billionaire fundamentally had nothing against the people who lived here, in the paupers??? tenement he had designed. Their poverty, their lack of education and class, it wasn???t their fault. It was simply the by-product of a system. And Tobias had no respect for those who benefited from a system but could not stomach looking at the waste produced by it. This world was designed to generate winners and losers, and it showed a lack of character to wish yourselves a winner without accepting what it does to those who lose.
Another masterfully written piece by Jonathan Sims. Every single story was thrilling and authentic.
And parallel to the obvious “Haunted House” take, the book undertones a brilliant critic of today's social stratification, ethical issues and the price that needs to be paid by the poor and working lower class to generate grotesque wealth for the upper level, few top of the world individuals.
spoiler
I found the 2 pages Epilogue where in the end everyone has a happy ending quite weak and uncessary but it doesn't strip away the book from its glory
I cannot wait for Jonathan Sims' next book !
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