Search

Search only in certain items:

    Arcs

    Arcs

    10.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

    Podcast

    A D&D 5th edition adventure recorded and released as a podcast. Which description, while being...

    If... by Bill Ryder-Jones

    If... by Bill Ryder-Jones

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    Album

    Ryder-Jones' debut solo album If... was written as a musical adaptation of Italo Calvino's 1979...

My exposure to Dune - despite knowing the basics i.e. Science fiction, Sandworms, Arrakis - really only comes from the 2021 (Dune) and 2024 (Dune: part 2) movies.

Which I'm well aware, due to the nature of the medium, leaves a lot out.

As such, it's interesting reading this (after having read the previous 2 entries in the same graphic novel series) to see how much is familiar, and how much is changed.

Oh, the basics are there right enough (in the movies), but there are several differences to the story: Paul Atriedes sister (only teased in Part 2), here, being the most prominent example.

Not having read the 'original' original, I can't say how much was changed for the move from print to graphic novel medium, but I do believe that the authors/artists/stencillers here did try to stick as close as possible to that story.

I can understand why it was slimmed down for the move to the big screen.
  
40x40

ClareR (5879 KP) Apr 8, 2025

I’m interested to see your reviews on the first three of these graphic novels (are there more?), because my husband is angling for them for his birthday in August! We’re huge Dune fans. Read the books, watched the films. I wouldn’t say your ratings have put me off, but I might have to get him something else as well, just in case they fall a bit flat!

40x40

David McK (3562 KP) Apr 13, 2025

https://smashbomb.com/s/dune-the-graphic-novel-part-1 and https://smashbomb.com/s/frank-herberts-dune-the-graphic-novel-book-2-muaddib

Hmm...how to start? The first graphic novel featuring Mercy Thompson is a mixed bag; the story as a whole is perfectly fine, it may not be great but it's serviceable. The illustrations are very good and attractive, however Mercy herself is not. Well, okay, the girl(s) is actually drawn well, but she's not Mercy. My first thought was, "When did Mercy go from being Native American/white to Hispanic?" Even though there are different artists and styles of Mercy used in this book, like many graphic novels employ, none of them come close to matching her description. Save the cover illustration which is done by the same artist who does the full-length novel covers, Dan Dos Santos. Since she is the main character, I really think that is vital and hope the artists work on that for the next book. As for the dialogue, it's rather mediocre, sometimes choppy, and a few times didn't follow a logical sequence. I'd be reading along, then a sentence or statement would pop up that made me think I missed something somehow, so I'd proceed to go back, then find out I didn't miss anything after-all, and it just didn't make sense with everything around it. My last complaint has to do with how the book reads and the panel progression. The way the panels and speech balloons were set led to much confusion, I'd read one panel, move on to the next just to find out I should have read that one first. I have read graphic novels before and never had as many problems with them as I did with this one. I felt that more panels would have helped tell the story and there wouldn't be so much confusion as to what had actually happened. Still, the book isn't totally bad, it's a good starting place, but hopefully everyone involved will learn from this first graphic novel so the next will be better executed. I'd say that if you're not into graphic novels, that you should give it a pass unless you absolutely must read everything Mercy Thompson related.
  
    Birds of Northern Europe

    Birds of Northern Europe

    Reference and Education

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    A high-quality digital field guide, with bird names in 15 languages, covering 352 species of birds...