Jarring – DaneCobain.com

Philip K. Dick – Time Out of Joint | Review

Title: Time Out of Joint

Author: Philip K. Dick

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 192

Rating: 3.5/5

This book presents itself as one thing but is something very different. What we actually have is something a little bit like The Truman Show in which the protagonist slowly starts to realise that there’s something shady going on behind the scenes and his reality is being manipulated.

For me, I found that it the reading experience was a little jarring, because it kept feeling as though reality was fine and then suddenly it was nuts and then it was back to all just fine again. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, but if that’s the case then it’s arguably the book’s fault anyway.

I just think that some of Dick’s other work was more engaging, and this just sort of felt as though he was rehashing old territory. Part of that might be because Dick has influenced a ton of people, and it’s not really his fault if this felt familiar because it’s been copied a bunch of times. It was still pretty good and worth reading, though.

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Frank Herbert – Dune Messiah | Review

Title: Dune Messiah

Author: Frank Herbert

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 224

Rating: 3.5/5

I buddy read this book with a few BookTube friends as part of Duneuary take two. In the first Duneuary, we read the first Dune book during January 2018, and so for the second one we decided to read this, the second book in the series.

Honestly, it’s a little jarring to go to a book this short after how epic in scope the first book was, and this feels just like a single section of that book. I also agree with the criticism that some of my friends had, which mainly centred around how this feels a bit like it’s so busy setting up the next book in the series that it forgets to be a full book in its own right.

That said, I do think this adds a lot to the Dune mythos, and there were a few developments here and there that took me by surprise. I also liked the intrigue of the diplomacy and the way that every decision had to be carefully weighed out because of how big the stakes were. I just thought it was a shame that Herbert brought a character back from the dead when there wasn’t really any need to. It devalues death.