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The vibes are the same as Pride & Prejudice but the characters and dynamics are SO different

Imagine you're playing Catan, but every team has multiple players, and you know for a fact one of your "teammates" is a mole working for another team.

That's Act 1 of Dune. A game of Mafia inside a very political game of Catan. A deliciously well setup plot.

The reread (plus First Truthsayers on YT) is really changing my mind on this book.

Dune is weird because it's not really 1st or 3rd person. You don't really "see" the story through one character. You are omnisciently hearing all characters thoughts at the same time, even as they speak to one another.

So Leto will do something and you'll hear Liet think "that's so dumb," and then in the same breath you'll hear Leto think "why did Liet react like that?" It's very weird.

I don't like it...I think???

“Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence.”

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book II (#3)

“In which Shewing also our Lord saith: Behold and see! For by the same Might, Wisdom, and Goodness that I have done all this, by the saem Might, Wisdom, and Goodness I shall make well all that is not well; and thou shalt see it.”

- Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter I

Prey, allowing itself to get caught in a trap with the express purpose of killing the trapper is SUCH A GOOD SETUP FOR A BOOK.

In the movie you don't really get the fact that that is what Leto is doing. 🤯🤯🤯

"But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine." - Book 2, #1

"Ah! poor Carthage! lamentable city! No longer hast thou for thy protection the strong men of former days who went beyond the oceans to build temples in their shores."

Interesting:
We already know that voluntary sacrificial love is the ultimate saving power.

But in the killing of a unicorn, the "most innocent, beautiful, pure thing," to preserve your own life, you become cursed to live a pained sub-human existence.

Voluntary sacrificial love is the ultimate healer and saver of the human. Voluntary selfish hate is personified as the opposite in Voldemort killing the unicorn.

"Some people say he died, codswallop in my opinion. I doubt there was enough human left in him to die."

A strangely prescient guess from Hagrid.

It would be a TRAVESTY if the new series doesn't include the first chapter, where you follow Mr. Dursley through his workday, as he notices all the odd things going on as fallout from V's death.

It's PERFECT. One of the best first chapters ever written. It invites infinite curiosity.

3 battles, 3 wins by total envelopment, 100,000 dead Romans, 1/3 of the Senate dead, 3 dead consuls, 10% of the eligible fighting population dead.

At Cannae, 50,000 dead Romans in ~5 square miles. That's 10,000 dead men per square mile.

Hannibal man. Insane.

Hannibal's INSANE man...such a dawg. He just always has the initiative. And anyone that has played a competitive game or sport knows how impossible that is. It's CRAZY work.

I think I'm at the morning of Cannae, and the tension is INSANE. It's about to go down.

Hearing these Punic war stories from the boots-on-the-ground perspectives is so wild.

Hanno, Hannibal, other Hannibal, Hamilcar, Hasdrabal... Carthage was lacking some creativity when it came to guy names.

First Punic War was a generational throw by Carthage. They were just, like, objectively better, and then kinda just stopped trying hard and lost.

Hannibal, Son of Hamilcar
Hannibal the Rhodian
Hanno
Hamilcar
Hanno
Hasdrabal

Carthage was lacking some real creativity when it came to male names...

Alina Starkov going to Sunday church was NOT an expected side quest in this book but I approve.

Listen...cousin Archibald needs a stern talking to from Emma, or he's always going to act like a prat (as they say across the pond) to her