EDIT: 4 stars upon reread, 3 stars before

It's hard to pinpoint how I feel about Dune. I can't ignore the fact that I have spent the last six days cozied up on the couch, reading every free minute I have - not just because there is a library-imposed deadline on finishing this book. Still, I find myself torn. I found it difficult to fully warm up to any of the characters, be it the tough as nails women (big plus point here, though they were absent for a lot of the big discussions, which provevd to be very disappointing) or the various important men in high up positions.

For the most part, I enjoyed Herbert's take on prophesies and clairvoyance and the double-sidedness of it all. What a pity that it was often employed to cut corners on the development of personal relationships, something that could have helped me connect with the characters and their fate a bit more. Deaths often felt like they happened off-screen, in a run on sentence, their full consequences panning out a few chapters later; this was surprisingly refreshing and caught me off-guard a few times. 

From the get-go I felt like A Song of Ice And Fire is a spiritual successor to Dune - as most epic storylines in Fantasy/SciFi these days probably are - and after having finished the first book of the Dune Saga, I can see that this is where my abovementioned qualms with the book lie. GRRM's character act more organic and are more capable of surprising the reader (in my humble opinion). Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading this book and will take a stab at the ones following it.