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Book Two in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles—the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time
Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, better known—and feared—as the man christened Muad’Dib. As Emperor of the known universe, he possesses more power than a single man was ever meant to wield. Worshipped as a religious icon by the fanatical Fremen, Paul faces the enmity of the political houses he displaced when he assumed the throne—and a conspiracy conducted within his own sphere of influence.
And even as House Atreides begins to crumble around him from the machinations of his enemies, the true threat to Paul comes to his lover, Chani, and the unborn heir to his family’s dynasty...
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ISBN-10
0593201736
ISBN-13
978-0593201732
Print length
304 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Ace
Publication date
July 06, 2020
Dimensions
5.47 x 0.76 x 8.17 inches
Item weight
8.8 ounces
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
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I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.
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As with all things sacred, it gives with one hand and takes with the other.
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To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.
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B0011UGNDG
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2377 KB
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Praise for Dune Messiah
“Brilliant...it is all that Dune was, and maybe a little more.”—Galaxy Magazine
“The perfect companion piece to Dune...fascinating.”—Challenging Destiny
Praise for Dune
“I know nothing comparable to it except Lord of the Rings.”—Arthur C. Clarke
“A portrayal of an alien society more complete and deeply detailed than any other author in the field has managed...a story absorbing equally for its action and philosophical vistas.”—The Washington Post Book World
“One of the monuments of modern science fiction.”—Chicago Tribune
“Powerful, convincing, and most ingenious.”—Robert A. Heinlein
“Herbert’s creation of this universe, with its intricate development and analysis of ecology, religion, politics and philosophy, remains one of the supreme and seminal achievements in science fiction.”—Louisville Times
There exists no separation between gods and men; one blends softly casual into the other. —PROVERBS OF MUAD’DIB
Despite the murderous nature of the plot he hoped to devise, the thoughts of Scytale, the Tleilaxu Face Dancer, returned again and again to rueful compassion.
I shall regret causing death and misery to Muad’Dib, he told himself.
He kept this benignity carefully hidden from his fellow conspirators. Such feelings told him, though, that he found it easier to identify with the victim than with the attackers—a thing characteristic of the Tleilaxu.
Scytale stood in bemused silence somewhat apart from the others. The argument about psychic poison had been going on for some time now. It was energetic and vehement, but polite in that blindly compulsive way adepts of the Great Schools always adopted for matters close to their dogma.
“When you think you have him skewered, right then you’ll find him unwounded!”
That was the old Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit, Gaius Helen Mohiam, their hostess here on Wallach IX. She was a black-robed stick figure, a witch crone seated in a floater chair at Scytale’s left. Her aba hood had been thrown back to expose a leathery face beneath silver hair. Deeply pocketed eyes stared out of skull-mask features.
They were using a mirabhasa language, honed phalange consonants and joined vowels. It was an instrument for conveying fine emotional subtleties. Edric, the Guild Steersman, replied to the Reverend Mother now with a vocal curtsy contained in a sneer—a lovely touch of disdainful politeness.
Scytale looked at the Guild envoy. Edric swam in a container of orange gas only a few paces away. His container sat in the center of the transparent dome which the Bene Gesserit had built for this meeting. The Guildsman was an elongated figure, vaguely humanoid with finned feet and hugely fanned membranous hands—a fish in a strange sea. His tank’s vents emitted a pale orange cloud rich with the smell of the geriatric spice, melange.
“If we go on this way, we’ll die of stupidity!”
That was the fourth person present—the potential member of the conspiracy—Princess Irulan, wife (but not mate, Scytale reminded himself) of their mutual foe. She stood at a corner of Edric’s tank, a tall blond beauty, splendid in a robe of blue whale fur and matching hat. Gold buttons glittered at her ears. She carried herself with an aristocrat’s hauteur, but something in the absorbed smoothness of her features betrayed the controls of her Bene Gesserit background.
Scytale’s mind turned from nuances of language and faces to nuances of location. All around the dome lay hills mangy with melting snow which reflected mottled wet blueness from the small blue-white sun hanging at the meridian.
Why this particular place? Scytale wondered. The Bene Gesserit seldom did anything casually. Take the dome’s open plan: a more conventional and confining space might’ve inflicted the Guildsman with claustrophobic nervousness. Inhibitions in his psyche were those of birth and life off-planet in open space.
To have built this place especially for Edric, though—what a sharp finger that pointed at his weakness.
What here, Scytale wondered, was aimed at me?
“Have you nothing to say for yourself, Scytale?” the Reverend Mother demanded.
“You wish to draw me into this fools’ fight?” Scytale asked. “Very well. We’re dealing with a potential messiah. You don’t launch a frontal attack upon such a one. Martyrdom would defeat us.”
They all stared at him.
“You think that’s the only danger?” the Reverend Mother demanded, voice wheezing.
Scytale shrugged. He had chosen a bland, round-faced appearance for this meeting, jolly features and vapid full lips, the body of a bloated dumpling. It occurred to him now, as he studied his fellow conspirators, that he had made an ideal choice—out of instinct perhaps. He alone in this group could manipulate fleshly appearance across a wide spectrum of bodily shapes and features. He was the human chameleon, a Face Dancer, and the shape he wore now invited others to judge him too lightly.
“Well?” the Reverend Mother pressed.
“I was enjoying the silence,” Scytale said. “Our hostilities are better left unvoiced.”
The Reverend Mother drew back, and Scytale saw her reassessing him. They were all products of profound prana-bindu training, capable of muscle and nerve control that few humans ever achieved. But Scytale, a Face Dancer, had muscles and nerve linkages the others didn’t even possess plus a special quality of sympatico, a mimic’s insight with which he could put on the psyche of another as well as the other’s appearance.
Scytale gave her enough time to complete the reassessment, said: “Poison!” He uttered the word with the atonals which said he alone understood its secret meaning.
The Guildsman stirred and his voice rolled from the glittering speaker globe which orbited a corner of his tank above Irulan. “We’re discussing psychic poison, not a physical one.”
Scytale laughed. Mirabhasa laughter could flay an opponent and he held nothing back now.
Irulan smiled in appreciation, but the corners of the Reverend Mother’s eyes revealed a faint hint of anger.
“Stop that!” Mohiam rasped.
Scytale stopped, but he had their attention now, Edric in a silent rage, the Reverend Mother alert in her anger, Irulan amused but puzzled.
“Our friend Edric suggests,” Scytale said, “that a pair of Bene Gesserit witches trained in all their subtle ways have not learned the true uses of deception.” Mohiam turned to stare out at the cold hills of her Bene Gesserit homeworld. She was beginning to see the vital thing here, Scytale realized. That was good. Irulan, though, was another matter.
“Are you one of us or not, Scytale?” Edric asked. He stared out of tiny rodent eyes.
“My allegiance is not the issue,” Scytale said. He kept his attention on Irulan. “You are wondering, Princess, if this was why you came all those parsecs, risked so much?”
She nodded agreement.
“Was it to bandy platitudes with a humanoid fish or dispute with a fat Tleilaxu Face Dancer?” Scytale asked.
She stepped away from Edric’s tank, shaking her head in annoyance at the thick odor of melange.
Edric took this moment to pop a melange pill into his mouth. He ate the spice and breathed it and, no doubt, drank it, Scytale noted. Understandable, because the spice heightened a Steersman’s prescience, gave him the power to guide a Guild heighliner across space at translight speeds. With spice awareness he found that line of the ship’s future which avoided peril. Edric smelled another kind of peril now, but his crutch of prescience might not find it.
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Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert (1920-86) was born in Tacoma, Washington and worked as a reporter and later editor of a number of West Coast newspapers before becoming a full-time writer. His first SF story was published in 1952 but he achieved fame more than ten years later with the publication in Analog of 'Dune World' and 'The Prophet of Dune' that were amalgamated in the novel Dune in 1965.
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Customer reviews
4.4 out of 5
29,857 global ratings
Shauna A.
5
I finally got into this book! Worth it.
Reviewed in the United States on May 25, 2024
Verified Purchase
It took 40+ years to get the middle book read. The movies motivated me. I've read them out of order, starting in the 1970s with children of Dune. I love these books, but the middle one just wouldn't take.
Diana Del Sol
5
Dune Messiah: Emotional, dark, legendary
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2024
Verified Purchase
Frank Herbert wrote a book but created a legend. Since the beginning the story unfolds with the perfect tension, revealing in steps the dark nature of the human being, the spoils of the riches and the short memory of the populace. There are paradoxes through the whole story than makes you constantly review our vision of good and bad , love and hate and friendship and treason.
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Jeff Brock
5
A beautiful edition of a somber sequel.
Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2024
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These ACE editions of Dune are simply beautiful. A welcome addition to my collection.
Dash Manchette
4
While not the original, still good enough for the fans
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2024
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One supposes that it was impossible for Frank Herbert to follow DUNE up with another classic of the genre and so it seems he did not even try. This is not a criticism of him, though does point to some of the shallowness and, at times, dryness of DUNE MESSIAH, which takes place twelve years after the first book ends.
Paul Atreides, now emperor, has fulfilled his distressing vision of spreading jihad throughout the universe. Billions dead, the names Hitler and Genghis Khan name-checked as amateurs, he unsurprisingly has his detractors. That is the main plotline of DUNE MESSIAH, which starts off with a meeting of conspirators to kill this dreaded and hated ruler. While lacking the richness and deep texture of the original, it nonetheless advances its story and, perhaps more importantly, the mythology of the Dune universe sufficiently to at least satisfy the fans, albeit in that manner of leaving them still hungry after finishing up and leaving the table.
Like its predecessor, DUNE MESSIAH ends on an ambiguous note that allowed for either another novel or a termination of the series right then and there. Paul’s twins have been born and Paul himself wanders off into the desert. As we know, Herbert continued on. I certainly will not say that DUNE MESSIAH filled me with the excitement of DUNE itself, but I will say it held my interest enough to go along with him.
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Taylor Hathcock
3
A necessary transitional book but thats about it
Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2024
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“A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation.”
Alright so I'm just going to say it... this one is a far cry from the first. I don't hate it and I know why it was necessary... I totally get it. However, it was just not it. I spent so much of this one confused about what was happening and nothing felt like it made any sense or went together in any way. We have a 12 year time jump from the last book and a Paul who is very different from the one we remember. Somehow all things that Paul didn't want to unfold have and now he's literally viewed as a god by a sect of Fremen and then another set seem very anti all things Maud'Dib and wish to return to the ancient ways of life.
This book is full of a lot of scheming from some familiar characters but also some new ones. They are all determined to destroy Paul in some way or another. They want to discredit him to his people, they want to make him destroy himself, they want to kill the person he loves, or they want to end his monopoly on spice. However, it takes about 200 pages for all of this to become even remotely understandable. And each layer of the conspiracy just becomes more and more confusing and then seems to fizzle out. Paul is already at war with himself and the future that he has seen with no different outcome has virtually destroyed his will to do anything.
The ending of this one tries to make sense of the previous 300 pages and it clears up a little. I know this one was a necessary transition book for what is to come in the series but I just felt kind of disappointed with this one after how amazing the first was. Here is holding out hope that book 3 redeems us.
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