system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV:The book Dune, despite being historically important, is actually not very good.

_____

Prepare yourselves for the ultimate wall of text.

To start with, i did enjoy the book. The flaws didn't ruin it, but I was forced to tolerate them the whole way through and that was very difficult sometimes. Also note that I haven't read the seauels and don't necessarily care to, so if and issue is fixed in a sequel (not likely because most of my issues are structural) then please disregard my point.

I'll be dividing this up into two parts; largely objective flaws and plotholes, and personal issues.

Flaws

First of all I'm going to tackle the biggest problem of them all: The dialogue (both spoken and internal) is utterly atrocious. It's stiff, formal, and uninspiring. Every time a grand scene occurs the dialogue renders it neuter by way of Herbert's monotone writing style. What's worse is any time a given character talks to another. Despite almost every character having their own, well written, individual personality and motivations, every time a character opens their mouths they turn back into the exact same wizened old philosopher as everyone else in the galaxy. What's most inexplicable is the fact that there seems to be no one in the story who actually fits that description. There are exceptions of course; the mercenary/bard that trained Paul (his name evades me) and the shady guy with the emperor who kept saying, "ummm" and "ahhh" for some reason, but there are few, if any, more examples than these two and even then they're pretty weak. The worst offender by far is Paul himself. He starts his journey as a teenager and ends it as a young man. At no point in the story, no matter how omniscient he is, does it make sense for him to speak the way he does. This impenetrable verbage is at least 90% if not entirely why Dune is so hard for casual readers to get into and thus why few people have even heard of it.

Next, there is a great deal of information required for understanding the plot, the back story, and the world around them that is left out of the book itself an stuck in the little information center in the back end. Its not even a great deal of plot, just crucial stuff that could have easily been given out through a bit of exposition or info-dumping but seems to have been replaced by random ecological facts. Its like the book equivalent of the first dark souls game; they tell you just enough not to die, but leave out important details (how to upgrade weapons, what humanity is for, how to get info on the items and stats...etc) that make the opening grind incredibly difficult.

Fans advertise the book as having this grand scale when it kind of doesn't. People compare Dune to Lord of the Rings so I'll use that for a juxtaposition. LotR takes place on a much smaller scale yet feels much more epic in scope. The reason for this is world-building, something Tolkien was a god at. The characters are constantly on the move, at different times getting together and splitting up to cover as much ground as possible. As a result the reader sees EVRYTHING in middle earth,which not only makes a personal connection to the reader but shows them what the protagonists are fighting for. In Dune on the other hand the cast is largely trapped in the same few locations on the same relatively boring planet, yet we're supposed to buy into this backwards-ass planet being the lynchpin in an intragalactic conflict? The connection to the characters and realism of the world itself suffer from this boring story arc.

Next; Paul's story is just ridiculous. He's something like three different "chosen ones" all at one time. (the kwisatz haderach, Maud'dib the liberated of the fremen and Terraformer of arrakis, and Paul Atreides the new emperor and bringer of the jihad, and arguably more than that) That's just too damn many chosen ones for one damn guy. The chosen one trope is literally the oldest trick in the book (source: the fucking bible) but here it's used to a new extreme. It wouldn't be so bad if there was only one chosen one who was destined to do everything, but each title is mutually exclusive for some reason.

Personal Issues

I'll spend a little less time of this section.

The ending was terrible. After spending the whole story, desperately trying to avoid the jihad, Paul just sort of gives up and says, "Fuck it. I'm Emperor now" His freaky little sister, who had no real reason to be in the story at all, just up and kills the Baron which anticlimactically nixes the only person who could feasibly be called the antagonist. Paul selfishly and deliberately betrays the Fremen's dream of Terraforming Dune, so he can have a superior fighting force to the sardaukar. The arrival of the emperor has approximately as much impact on the reader as breakfast and has about as much dramatic effect. He pretty much only came to end the book but that doesn't change how colossally stupid it was to come to dune in the first place. And to boot the last line of the whole fucking book is Jessica (my most hated character of all fiction) telling chani how awesome it is to be a concubine. The hole turn of events takes around as much time as it does for them to get to dune in the first place. It feels rushed and poorly thought out. As a side note to this how the fuck was Paul supposed to avoid the jihad when his plan of action consisted of doing exactly what he always was going to do?

Finally, there is a kind of callus, almost blatant, disregard for life in the course of the story. I don't particularly mind This kind of thing in other books. In the A Song of Ice and Fire series, there also exists a disregard for life, but the difference here is that it has a point in Game of Thrones, that being a kind of in joke between the reader and the author about the poor state of society in the story. Then you have scenes in Dune where characters seem downright apathetic. For example, when Paul hears that his son had been killed He hardly reacts at all, going as far as to tell chain in some poor attempt at consoling her that they'll make more. (Paul is kind of an asswipe)

So that is my view in as little as I could type.

tl;dr: Dune is boring, stiff, and dated. The book is a little overrated.
gpt
Just a few points:

Paul talks the way he does because he's been trained from birth to be the feudal lord of an entire planet.

The reason he is multiple chosen-ones rather than just one is that he co-opts the old Fremen legends for his own advantage. He is *lying* for the sake of his own gain, at least at first. 

As far as the jihad goes -once he starts seeing the future, ALL the paths leads to the jihad, even if he tries to avoid it. He merely picks the one that will give him the most control/give him the most favorable outcome.