Dune Messiah

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.

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.

“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.