Maybe some spoilers ahead, I have tried to be vague.
Ahh the let-down. I re-read this after 30+ years, all that time I considered this to be a gem, the best Scifi novel ever, and a mind-bender. But in between then and now, I became a Christian. That ruins a lot of stuff. Now, reading through the story, I can easily enjoy the concepts put forth - artificial consciousness that thinks it is god, that god-figure re-running countless histories, each history having its own religious traditions and so on. But the ultimate victory in this story, its grand achievement, was simply a mystical one-ness among people that just has a shallowness and emptiness that does not satisfy. Man is god, god is man, all are one. It is a fantasy so remove from reality that it is boring to me. My worldview doesn't account for such ideas, they do not satisfy, and I can't even suspend belief in order to enjoy this mystical oneness because it is such a let down concept.
On the plus side, the story was quickly paced, there was enough of the ship society and the Pandoran colonists to provide some intrigue, and the planet itself was entertaining with novel concepts such as sentient kelp and nerve runners. But the authors could have fleshed out the world a little better. Lots of terms thrown out that the reader is expected to pick up on like servos, apparently they are automatic transportation carts in the ship. I do appreciate when an author assumes his audience is smart enough to put two and two together and not always need to be told.
I enjoyed reading the book, especially the first half which was clearly the part that grabbed my attention as a teen. The ending left me feeling like the big finale petered out.

Almost as good as Dune. I love the Avata. I claimed the name...

Interesting premise, but it totally lacks in execution on all fronts. The world as promising of a setting as it is is underdeveloped, the themes are generic, it acts like it's hard SF but it feels pointless....

Not what I expected; in some ways, better, in other ways, worse. Given when it was written, it still had some old school attitudes toward the female characters, but to its credit, there were some strong female characters. Fans of Herbert will recognize some themes from Dune and other books.

Drugs were involved in the writing of this book. It’s interesting but bizarre. And some bits get skipped. Hopefully it comes together later in the series.

A Solid B+ for world-building, which makes one wonder if Herbert and Ransom's "Pandora" had some influence on James Cameron's planet of the same name.

Dialogue and characters, at least in comparison to "Dune" were a snoozefest. And this was one of those novels with multiple threads that begin to come together about 90% of the way through the book where you just pick up the novel with a sigh for the last 50 pages or so.

I love the writing so much. It just seems effortless. And the thought experiments around gods were enjoyable. It did feel a lot like Dune though, the intrigue, the politics, the messiah. And my dark brain wants to know more about what happened in the scream room.

Aspergarria ez, baina... Gogorra egin zait bukatzea. Beste biak irakurtzeko tartea hartuko dut, noizbait. Ez zarete zuek, ni naiz

I really liked setting, and it was easy to get attached to the characters. I've read more books by Frank Herbert, so I recognised the themes in the story. I thought the first half was a bit slow, but once I had that over with, I got through the rest fairly quickly.

Truly worthy of a series that inspired Kentaro Miura. It is grotesque and gory, delving into the uncomfortable depths of the human condition.

Delves into religion, discrimination. Timeless because of the setting, would not have known it was written in the 70s.

My only complaint is that the pacing is a little slow, but that could be because it was written by two people.

Probably my favorite trilogy of Herbert's. Would really love to see this as a movie. Will read the other two in a few weeks.

I tried this, after forcing myself through the second Dune novel (after decades of reading the original Dune, revisiting the series triggered by the movies), but again I realized that Frank Herbert is just not my thing.