Lynch himself has basically disowned this feature, and Brick and Vance can see where he’s coming from. “They took it out of his hands and they cut it, and they did the worst thing possible, which is that voiceover stuff,” Vance said. The glossary has been so useful that Brian told Brick that he was “a pillar of the Dune universe,” a compliment if there ever was one.ĭune has been around since the ’60s, but the only big screen version to actually make it to theaters was David Lynch’s 1984 version, with Kyle MacLachlan as Dune. “ had recordings that his father had made…We used those as a guide.” They’re up to about 1,900 now. “We started with the 500 words in the original volume,” Brick explained. He told us about how he got in touch with Frank Herbert’s son Brian early in the process, and how they “just hit it off.” Over time, he even created the Dune phonetic glossary, an index of all the made-up words in the series and how to pronounce them correctly. Vance and Brick worked together on several of Frank Herbert’s original six Dune books, but for the prequels and sequels, Brick has flown pretty much solo, becoming the go-to guy whenever Macmillan Audio wants to record another installment of the saga.Īnd Brick sounds just fine with that, considering that Dune is one of his favorite series of all time. But PLEASE DO NOT use this as your introduction to the dune universe, just read the book for yourself.Scott Brick is “a pillar of the Dune universe” If you really want to relive the book without sitting down with a paperback, it works. Definitely not worth $26 or whatever it is. On a positive note, they set background music for some parts which is actually really well done and the Princess Irulan excerpts are very, very good. It was so distracting at points (Count Fenring) that I just had to skip ahead. And let me tell you, he is BAD at doing voices. Halfway through a chapter, the voice acting will just stop and it will go back to the primary narrator reading all the dialogue. Unfortunately they only do this for part of the dialogue for some reason. They brought in voice actors for the dialogue and they read it like a stage play and it actually works really well and the voice actors are great.

The most distracting thing though is the way the narration changes throughout. Many pronunciations deviate from the norm, and some change throughout the book.

Unfortunately, this is one of the most poorly executed audiobooks I’ve encountered. This is one of my favorite books, so I bought it to relive the story passively while I drive and do housework.

Dune audio book