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    Dune Messiah: Book Two in the Dune Chronicles
    Dune Messiah: Book Two in the Dune Chronicles
    Dune Messiah: Book Two in the Dune Chronicles
    Audiobook8 hours

    Dune Messiah: Book Two in the Dune Chronicles

    Written by Frank Herbert

    Narrated by Scott Brick, Euan Morton, Simon Vance and Katherine Kellgren

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The bestselling science fiction series of all time continues! Frank Herbert's second installment explores new developments on the desert planet Arrakis, with its intricate social order and its strange threatening environment. Dune Messiah picks up the story of the man known as Maud'dib, heir to a power unimaginable, bringing to fruition an ambition of unparalleled scale: the centuries-old scheme to create a superbeing who reigns not in the heavens but among men. But the question is: Do all paths of glory lead to the grave?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateSep 4, 2007
    ISBN9781427202376
    Dune Messiah: Book Two in the Dune Chronicles
    Author

    Frank Herbert

    Frank Herbert (1920-1986) created the most beloved novel in the annals of science fiction, Dune.  He was a man of many facets, of countless passageways that ran through an intricate mind.  His magnum opus is a reflection of this, a classic work that stands as one of the most complex, multi-layered novels ever written in any genre.  Today the novel is more popular than ever, with new readers continually discovering it and telling their friends to pick up a copy.  It has been translated into dozens of languages and has sold almost 20 million copies. As a child growing up in Washington State, Frank Herbert was curious about everything. He carried around a Boy Scout pack with books in it, and he was always reading.  He loved Rover Boys adventures, as well as the stories of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and the science fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs.  On his eighth birthday, Frank stood on top of the breakfast table at his family home and announced, "I wanna be a author."  His maternal grandfather, John McCarthy, said of the boy, "It's frightening. A kid that small shouldn't be so smart." Young Frank was not unlike Alia in Dune, a person having adult comprehension in a child's body.  In grade school he was the acknowledged authority on everything.  If his classmates wanted to know the answer to something, such as about sexual functions or how to make a carbide cannon, they would invariably say, "Let's ask Herbert. He'll know." His curiosity and independent spirit got him into trouble more than once when he was growing up, and caused him difficulties as an adult as well.  He did not graduate from college because he refused to take the required courses for a major; he only wanted to study what interested him.  For years he had a hard time making a living, bouncing from job to job and from town to town. He was so independent that he refused to write for a particular market; he wrote what he felt like writing.  It took him six years of research and writing to complete Dune, and after all that struggle and sacrifice, 23 publishers rejected it in book form before it was finally accepted. He received an advance of only $7,500. His loving wife of 37 years, Beverly, was the breadwinner much of the time, as an underpaid advertising writer for department stores.  Having been divorced from his first wife, Flora Parkinson, Frank Herbert met Beverly Stuart at a University of Washington creative writing class in 1946.  At the time, they were the only students in the class who had sold their work for publication.  Frank had sold two pulp adventure stories to magazines, one to Esquire and the other to Doc Savage.  Beverly had sold a story to Modern Romance magazine.  These genres reflected the interests of the two young lovers; he the adventurer, the strong, machismo man, and she the romantic, exceedingly feminine and soft-spoken. Their marriage would produce two sons, Brian, born in 1947, and Bruce, born in 1951. Frank also had a daughter, Penny, born in 1942 from his first marriage.  For more than two decades Frank and Beverly would struggle to make ends meet, and there were many hard times.  In order to pay the bills and to allow her husband the freedom he needed in order to create, Beverly gave up her own creative writing career in order to support his.  They were in fact a writing team, as he discussed every aspect of his stories with her, and she edited his work.  Theirs was a remarkable, though tragic, love story-which Brian would poignantly describe one day in Dreamer of Dune (Tor Books; April 2003).  After Beverly passed away, Frank married Theresa Shackelford. In all, Frank Herbert wrote nearly 30 popular books and collections of short stories, including six novels set in the Dune universe: Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune.  All were international bestsellers, as were a number of his other science fiction novels, which include The White Plague and The Dosadi Experiment.  His major novels included The Dragon in the Sea, Soul Catcher (his only non-science fiction novel), Destination: Void, The Santaroga Barrier, The Green Brain, Hellstorm's Hive, Whipping Star, The Eyes of Heisenberg, The Godmakers, Direct Descent, and The Heaven Makers. He also collaborated with Bill Ransom to write The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor.  Frank Herbert's last published novel, Man of Two Worlds, was a collaboration with his son, Brian.

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    Reviews for Dune Messiah

    3.5/5

    3,778 ratings85 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Politics on a biblical and galactic scale. Paul Atreides has become more than anyone could have ever imagined and far more than many wish. The birth of his children not only triggers dire consequences but opens the eyes of many that are closed. Paul will eventually find the lost pieces of himself out on the sands but it will come with a cost.
    • 3/5
      i didnt like this one as much as the first, but not necessarily because of the tone shift (less action, our protagonist is more morally questionable) but more because him dealing with his visions got pretty tiresome and i think using duncan as a big deal didn't work because we didn't know him that well. gurney probably would have worked better. duncan being with alia also doesn't really work. i like the ending though, and the general world-building (the bene tleilax are pretty cool)
    • 5/5
      Sounds like Leto in the 1st movie is narrating the part of Paul Atriedes ?
    • 5/5
      The audio book is well made and produced! The voice acting is easy to understand even with unfamiliar words and with English not being my first language and always makes it clear who is speaking. There are no distracting background noises and it's overall very good to listen to!

      The story stands well on it's own and is easy to follow along with even without having read the first book. It's engaging and throws up interesting questions and the ending is satisfying, nice and tidy. I think it would maybe be a little boring if you actually read it but listening to it I found it interesting and engaging. I also just personally enjoy the kind of tragedy this builds, where everything isn't actually set in stone but Paul chooses it this way and that's why it's all set in stone. If that makes sense. I liked it!
    • 2/5
      you need to be in a very specific mood to read this book and thouroughly enjiy it and I don't think I was in that mood
    • 4/5
      Loved the book! Mysterious, thrilling, suspenseful. But the narration was a little odd. All performers were good, but why 3 of them? There seemed to be no relation between who did what chapter. Kind of off putting really.
    • 4/5
      Overall, this was a good book. The reader’s voices are great, very entertaining. The story is quite dense, so if you find yourself daydreaming, you’ll miss something important.

      As others mentioned, a lot of this story revolves around characters planning, scheming and talking. Not a lot of action, but good discussions and mental imagery.
    • 4/5
      Good. Nice ending to sequel. Be careful what you wish for
    • 5/5
      Excellent piece of art. Solves a lot of mysteries and creates new ones. The world building aspect is excellent in this series, thus reading the first book "Dune" is a must.
    • 3/5
      Why are all the reviews here a synopsis of the whole book? Why bother to read the book if the whole story and plot are laid out in the reviews? Come on people all I want to know is if it was an enjoyable read. Let the author tell the story.
    • 3/5
      Herbert's sequels to _DUNE_ are not as consistently all-consuming, but they do move the story along. If you only want to read _DUNE_ and _Dune Messiah_, you will have read the two most important books of the series.
    • 4/5
      As I have made up my mind to not come to this book with any expectations I think I have succeeded and that added to my enjoyment. The start of the book was quite difficult until I have grasped the changes that time jump caused. However, from that moment on it was a smooth sail. I also really enjoyed Alias perspective.
      Yes, there were occurances that nowdays we call tropes and yes someone comes back from the dead. Having in mind the impact of the series and still trying to see it as any other book I've decided on 3.75/5
    • 3/5
      Another Dune read-along with the husband. I felt like I missed more while reading this book than the previous on - it's very intrigue-based/everything has double meanings/plots within plots kind of thing so I felt like I was missing a bit of that since I'm not a big political intrigue girl. Still, I have watched the Children of Dune miniseries before so I knew what was going on.

      I imagine I'll do the next book sometime but will stop there. The overall storyline is kinda depressing.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      I sure wish I could listen to this book! Unfortunately, it’s marked unavailable after I’ve listened to zero books in the past month. Thanks Scribd. You suck.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Soooo, hmmm. Let's first start with the things that were not good, so we can end with the things that are.

      First and foremost, the Bene Tleilax play a MAJOR role in this story. What's strange about it, though, is the Tleilaxu were mentioned maybe twice in the previous book. So for something that was a passing mention in the first book (you may have never picked up on it), it takes center stage in its sequel. This comes off to me as bad planning. Almost as if Frank didn't have his whole universe mapped out from the beginning. Instead, he writes a book, it becomes a commercial success, and then he decides to expand on it. That's fine, and it can be done correctly, but it wasn't done correctly here. Instead, I would have much rather had the Bene Gesserit take a larger role in this book than the first. It would have been a better transition, and with 12 years distance between the two books, would have played well with Alia.

      Second, this book is a political nightmare. There is so much political plotting and intrigue, that it's hard to understand when characters are insulting each other, because of the subtlety. I know people who eat up political intrigue books (which is partly why A Song of Ice and Fire is so successful). I'm not one of them. They bore me intensely. In fact, this book is so heavily politically laden, that there are no wars, battles, or really any physical conflict at all. This is unfortuate, because in the book, it's mentioned that Paul Atreides killed upwards of 61 BILLION people across the known univers. SIXTY. ONE. BILLION. So many battles, fights, conflicts, completely wasted, and never explored. Well, maybe they're explored in another book, I don't know. But it's a MASSIVE disappointment to go from a book full of conflict, to a book severely lacking in it.

      Third, a few characters are just ... sort of ... forgotten. Major characters, that are critical to the plot, just get left behind about 3/4 of the way through the book. Specifically, the Princess Irulan, Edric, and Gaius Helen Mohiam. Scytale is _almost_ forgotten, but he comes back, and is a principle character in the final couple of chapters. Those 4 characters really needed more page time. This book is only 1/2 the length of the first, so it certainly would not have hurt to write additional story surrounding them, rather than just dropping them like a rock.

      Finally, the ending of the book was a massive disappointment. I won't spoil anything here, but while Frank made the right decision regarding its conclusion, the execution was extremely flawed. Trying not to spoil anything here, but the execution of the final chapters of the book revealed how inconsistent a writer can be with character personalities, and it's deeply troubling.

      Now the good stuff.

      Even though the book focused primarily on the Bene Tleilax, I actually found them as a species fascinating. The Tleilaxu are shape changers. While nothing new in science fiction, I found Frank's innovation with them remarkably well done. Knowing that there are shape changers in the story, and they are critical in the plot to overthrow the Atreides Empire, you spend a lot of mental energy second-guessing everyone in the book. And while I usually have a good eye for finding which character is the fake, Frank did a good job keeping me guessing, when he didn't spell it out directly. This is the type of writing for great stories.

      Another incredibly well done, but not original, plot device were the gholas. Gholas are a sort of manufactured clone of the original dead body, but using the original dead body cells, tissue, organs, etc. Sort of like Frankenstein's monster. However, rather than the natural eye, they have metal eyes. They can still see normally. Duncan Idaho, although dead in the first book, comes back as the ghola Hayt, and even though some disagree with me, I thought it was well executed, and a great plot device that reveals itself in the second-to-last chapter.

      Finally, I really liked Edric the Guild Navigator. Even though the Guild Navigators were introduced in the first book, we have a larger interaction with them in this book, why they are isolated in tanks, and how they use the spice to navigate ships through space. This is probably the most original aspect of Frank's books, where a fish-like alien species is confined to a tank, requires incredible amounts of spice, and is a core navigator of the Spacing Guild. But, as mentioned earlier, he sort of gets forgotten about, and that's really a massive disappointment. I would have liked to have some sort of conclusion with his character.

      Overall, despite the book being heavily political, I found it a fun read. Not great, and I'm not sure that I would recommend it for others to read, but it had enough interesting things like Hayt, Edric, and the Tleilaxu, that it kept my interest. And really, that's all that matters.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I have often lamented the fact that re-reading books I enjoyed in the past can sometimes lead to deep disappointments, due to changed tastes and to the evolution of writing styles, so I’m glad to acknowledge that my re-read of Dune Messiah did not incur in that kind of problem and, on the contrary, made me enjoy the novel even more than on my first encounter. The younger me who read Messiah for the first time was disappointed by the lack of epic-ness that was so much a part of the first book, nor did she enjoy seeing Paul Atreides become somewhat diminished; now I was finally able to appreciate what Frank Herbert was doing with his character and the world he had created.The story starts twelve years after the final events in Dune: Paul Atreides has extended his power over the empire, mainly through a galaxy-wide war of conquest waged by his Fremen armies and fueled by the religious fervor that invested him with near godhood; it’s the jihad he foresaw and tried to avoid, to no avail - we learn that it ‘killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others’, a series of staggering numbers that, instead of consolidating his rule, has created mistrust and discontent, so that now some of his enemies (and some of his former allies as well) are plotting to dethrone him, putting an end to his rule. Prescience already warned Paul of what’s brewing in the shadows, and here we see him trying to navigate the possible futures, knowing that every one of them will entail devastating losses and even worse consequences.What Dune Messiah amounts to, in the end, is the story of a man gifted with amazing powers and yet powerless to prevent the catastrophes he envisioned: despite the prodigious skills he acquired through both nature and motherly teachings, he remains a human being, with all the frailties and contradictions this entails, and seeing them, seeing his struggles and the pain they carry with them, helped me connect with his character on a level I had not reached in the first book. Which brings me to a consideration that struck me, this time over, as I thought about Paul’s dilemma and the road he would/could not choose here, leaving it open (as I already know it will happen) for his son to take: in my review of Dune I mentioned how I consider it a landmark in SF just as Tolkien’s LOTR is for fantasy, to the point that I saw a sort of parallel between Paul and Frodo. Paul knows - has seen - a way out of those devastating futures, the terrible purpose that will turn into the Golden Path for young Leto, but is unable, or unwilling, or both, to accept it and ultimately gives up, choosing to wander alone in the desert, maybe to die; Frodo reaches the end of his perilous journey only to fail - and he was destined to fail since he was only the Ring Bearer, not the Ring Destroyer, thanks to Tolkien’s always precisely chosen wording - carrying forever the burden of that failure and equally choosing exile, no matter how pleasant, to remove himself from it. I’m aware the comparison might be quite a stretch, but it’s one I can’t seem to get out of my mind, and I would love to hear what my fellow bloggers think about it….Back to the novel itself, I found that despite the reduced page count, if compared with its predecessor, it expands the reader’s knowledge about the universe where the story takes place: the main narrative focus is still set on Arrakis, granted, but the presence, amid the conspirators aiming to remove Paul from power, of a Guild navigator and of a Tleilaxu Face Dancer shows us a glimpse of the various powers inhabiting the galaxy. The navigator is described as something only vaguely resembling the human being it must originally have been, the exposure to the spice gas that renders it capable of forging paths through space having transformed the creature in a weirdly horrific way, but the truly fascinating character is that of Scytale, the Face Dancer. A bio-engineered shape shifter, Scytale is the product of Tleilaxu gene manipulation, and an intriguing creature as well, particularly in the peculiar affinity for the people it must impersonate - and therefore kill - that translates into a sort of sympathy (the Face Dancer’s own words) for the victim, almost a regret for the necessity of the act. It’s a choice that turns Scytale into much more than a simple enemy, a simple killer, and gifts its personality with depth and intriguing shades.The Tleilaxu are also involved in another part of the plan against Paul Atreides because they bring one of their creations to his court in an attempt to distract and destabilize him: their skills in bio-manipulation can literally bring the dead back to life - through a process that might be cloning, even though it’s never explained - in the form of gholas, perfect copies of the dead although deprived of their memories. The ghola which is brought to Paul’s court is no one but his former instructor and friend Duncan Idaho, who gave his life to allow Paul and his mother to escape from the Harkonnens. Duncan is a character who does not enjoy great narrative space in Dune, and yet he leaves a deep impression, to the point that his reappearance hits the readers just as much as the intended target in the story. There is a poignant quality to Duncan’s journey, the drama of a person who knows there is a past waiting for him to be unlocked, and also that such unlocking will require a high price to be obtained, and it’s almost as touching as that of Paul, of his dilemma and of the bittersweet meeting with his old-time friend.As a sequel, Dune Messiah works far better on a re-read, particularly when one is aware of what will come after: it is indeed a bridge between the two distinct halves of the Atreides’ family history, but most importantly it sets aside the more “adventurous” themes of its predecessor for an in-depth examination of the nature of power and how it can betray its wielders, no matter how many skills they can call into play. The author’s choice of mixing what might have been a somewhat dry commentary with some powerful emotions is what turns this novel into a touching journey and one that is enhanced - not lessened - by hindsight.
    • 4/5
      Politics on a biblical and galactic scale. Paul Atreides has become more than anyone could have ever imagined and far more than many wish. The birth of his children not only triggers dire consequences but opens the eyes of many that are closed. Paul will eventually find the lost pieces of himself out on the sands but it will come with a cost.
    • 3/5
      I’m done. This series is dated.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Not easy telling a story about premonition/seeing the future. Actually not much interesting happening in this book, except maybe in the last third of it. Not sure it would make a good movie really either.
    • 3/5
      The thing that's hard for me is reconciling the awful politics (imperialism, borderline eugenics, messiah figures vs masses) with the amount of empathy I feel for the individuals losing their loved ones etc, I was literally sobbing at the end of the book. I know ignoring bad politics is kind of a prerequisite to enjoying a lot of scifi/fantasy, but the politics in this one seem so much a part of it that they're hard to shrug off like that? I don't know. I have more thinking to do on this. The thing that makes it even harder is I don't think Herbert LIKES the politics he proposes in these books, but rather sees them as inevitable and bad and better than any alternative, but he's still wrong.
    • 5/5
      For some reason I put off reading this series for years and years, though I knew about it. Finally, about 10 years ago I picked this one up at a used book store along with a bunch of the others in the series. Very fun!
    • 4/5
      Despite claiming to be a Dune fan all these decades, (I'd probably say it is the book series that has most influenced me morally and culturally) I've never really understood Dune Messiah (honestly the only two books that made perfect sense to me are the first and God Emperor, / my favourite)

      But this time around, possible take 3, I refused to read past a chapter without having a theory of what was going on, and the book makes more sense now, and sets up what I always suspected, that books 2-4 at least exist to year down what book 1 set up, that often-hinted-at prophecy vision in Dune 1 that Paul Atreidies' heroic superhuman victory was in fact setting into effect things that were likely worse than the Byzantine Galactica despot empire he was born into.

      I am going to write a spoiler review because I think the way this book never explicitly points out the nature and visions of Paul's prescience (and likely Alia's too) is a major flaw of this book, the shifts between when Paul is acting on those visions and when Paul loses those visions is incredibly subtle.

      First I will set up the basic spoiler plot summary
      1. Scytale (a tleilaxu face dancer), Edric (a guild navigator), Helene Gaius Moheim (the former imperial truthsayer and Lady Jessica's mentor) and Princess Irulan are in a conspiracy to dethrone Paul and regain their own control over the spice. Edric is involved because Navigators are invisible to Paul's Prescience. Irulan, jealous of not bearing Paul's heir to salvage the Atreides bloodline, has been secretly feeding Chani contraceptives to deny Paul a child with his true love.)
      2. Paul is unhappy with being an emperor, for the Fremen have lost their ways and gotten used to civilization and become water-fat. He also cannot find a future as to which he does not set off a terrible jihad through his followers.
      3. Alia has grown up to be beautiful and a very capable leader in her own right, but entering adulthood has its own problems for the lady who was always a reverand mother.
      4. Edric sets up the conspiracy by presenting Paul with a ghola (a tleilaxu-made clone) of Duncan Idaho, called Hayt. Hayt is a different person than Duncan and knows it, but memories bleed through, and this fascinates him and troubles him. He knows he has been sent to Paul as some part of trick, but he also swears loyalty as a mentat and a zensunni advisor. Apparently Scytale's plans must always offer an out.
      5. (I am skipping over a lot of the setup for actions to focus on the parts that confused me. Scytale sets up his plan by killing and adopting the identity of a daughter of a old Fedaykin. Alia and Hayt investigate the death of a mystery woman (this daughter) and form a troubled attraction to each other. I am honestly still confused as to why this daughter was picked, other than to show that some Fremen of Paul's early days have been left behind in all this imperial pomp)
      6. Paul has a vision. The book explicitly shows it as a moon descending into water, but he realizes somehow the conspiracy, that Chani will die giving birth, but that this is the only way to avoid the great jihad. It is not clear to me if he had suspected before either of these.
      7. Paul is visited by Scytale disguised as that old fedaykin's daughter). He knows he is a tleilaxu face dancer now. Paul patronizes him but effectively also keeps him under close guard. While the plan was for him and Chani to go visit a house and get sprung by a trap, Paul goes alone.
      8. Paul visits the house. The father and mother seem loyal to Paul, but are suffering. They moved here to watch another house where Fremen conspire against Paul. They offer him a dwarf who has prescient powers but also the names of conspirators. (Scytale earlier mentioned that the tleilaxu made a kwizach haderach themselves but it was a disappointment; was it this dwarf?)
      9. As Paul orders men to move against the house of conspirators, a stone burner (atomics) are set off, blinding then, including Paul, who knew this had to be as part of his vision to escape the jihad. Paul now moves as if he can see, but that is by relying on the visions of prophecy. We learn here I think how the prescience works, he sees actual sight with impeccable detail of his future visions, but he is locked into a single one now and cannot deviate (probably because the other ones all result in Jihad so are to be a avoided)
      10. Chani takes the water of life to counteract the contraceptives (she has figured it out herself). It will make the birth difficult. Paul interacts with her knowing she will die.
      11. Hayt interrogates the dwarf, but the dwarf sets up some kind of preprogrammed sequence in him that will trigger him to kill Paul when Paul reveals that Chani is gone. Hayt does not remember this but suspects it based on things he notices, and warns Paul. Paul seems to not mind.
      12. Paul takes a bunch of people to a sietch so Chani can give birth. She does. And dies. Paul expects to see a daughter. He triggers Hayt, but Hayt/Idaho's loyalty to Paul overcomes the command but also melds Idaho and Hayt together. The Ghola is Idaho now. Paul has achieved his vision path and is now truly blind.
      13. Paul goes to see Chani and discovers both a daughter but also a son he never saw in visions. Scytale is there, and is revealed. Scytale threatens the children but also demands Paul make a ghola of Chani while giving up his CHOAM (economic) power. Paul realizes his son is sending him vision from his vantage point, which Paul uses to throw a knife and kill Scytale. The son has been born prescient, obviously through the water of life taken by Chani.
      14. The dwarf reveals that the tleilaxu had this second plan to awaken gholas to full memories (better for them.) He still offers Paul a new Ghola of Chani, but Paul has the dwarf killed because the temptation is too strong even though doing so will still allow a future where jihad is unleashed and his family suffers.
      15. Paul sets up Alia as a regent for the children, and goes off into the desert to (presumably) die in the traditional Fremen way. It had been hinted all along this book that many traditional Fremen are disturbed by a blind Fremen being allowed to live with the tribe (those who become infirm traditionally must offer themselves to the desert) and there were undertones through the book of people feeling Paul had corrupted the traditional Fremen way of life through imperial opulence (required to hold galactic power) so this shows him being Fremen till the end which returns him to good graces.
      Irulan, who is grief stricken that her plans resulted in the death of Paul (and I guess she was in love with him, given she spent all her royal consort time writing books about him, or maybe didn't intend for Chani to die given she and Chani seemed like mutually trusted advisors of Paul) offers to raise the children.
      FIN

      Some unresolved things ... It is mentioned that Emperor Shaddam still lives, exiled to Salusa Secundus with a small guard. It is a small point of tension between Irulan and Paul. Does he become a factor again? I am not sure, I do not remember.

      Alia overdoses on spice as well, and it is implied that she struggles with herself as someone who ways always born prescient. She sees a future vision of her own child but where will that lead? Also her prescient powers do not match those of Paul (she does not see the things he sees until after, and with great difficulty) possibly because she was not a mentat. Maybe this highlights the point that she has the wisdom of her forebearers in the past, but not the mentat calculations to project those into the future.


      The theme of this book, seems to be that whereas the first book was about the triumph of the Fremen way, here we see that victory had sullied it, as well as Paul demonstrating that prescience is as much of a prison as it is a power. This book in many ways is about Paul being flawed as a guide / shaper of humanity, while (knowing that Children of Dune comes next) setting up the next --arguably succesful in a brutal way-- iteration of kwizatch haderach.

      My major complaint with this book and perhaps Frank Herbert's writing style in general is that his main concepts are never really telegraphed, requiring a deep and often repeated reading to unlock the great concepts in his books already spilling over with more concepts than most other science fiction would cumulatively release in a year of publication.

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    • 5/5
      Read in advance of the now postponed movie release. The darkness foreshadowed in Dune blows in as our protagonist loses the ability to influence events.The rise of Alia, the end of Muad'Dib and loss of poor Channi.

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    • 2/5
      A galactic emperor who killed billions of people is sad about having mind powers.2/4 (Indifferent).All the pretentious, self-importance of Dune, without the complexity of story to earn it, or the action/adventure to balance it.
    • 4/5
      An episodic book that doesn’t feel fully fleshed out, with a constrained storyline aiming at its conclusion.I started to read this in the 1970’s after reading Dune, which I consider one of the great world building SF novels, with a strong and varied storyline for the most part, but never finished it. On reading now, I suspect that the tortuous first chapter and, if I got that far, the cod-philosophy just didn’t entertain a teenager!Worth reading to continue in the Dune universe, but not a great novel.
    • 4/5
      The sequel had a lot to live up to considering the masterpiece of book named Dune. Dragging a bit at times, but Herbert delivers at the end. If dune monologues are not your usual cup of tea, then just don't bother with this one. The book provides plenty of food for thought throughout its course amid its the dialogs and monologues. Less action packed with only two major turning events.
    • 3/5
      I was surprised at how much this story differed from the original Dune. The whole experience was changed and unfortunately it was near impossible to match what I received from Dune. Overall I found the story okay but quite philosophical and kind of surreal. I will also admit that it likely needs a reread for proper appreciation.
    • 3/5
      Didn't love it.
    • 3/5
      The Dune series reread continues, although perhaps not as quickly as I’d hoped. It’s all down to me, of course; there’s nothing stopping me reading the books one after the other. Except I have a habit choosing something different to my last read for my next one. Probably not a great strategy when reading a series – but given this year I also decided to have a go at rereading the Wheel of Time series, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t survive reading those books in quick succession… Anyway, Dune Messiah. Popular wisdom would have it that Dune Messiah is the best of the original Dune trilogy – or, as some would day it, the best of the Dune sequels. Which tells you how wrong popular wisdom is. Dune Messiah is not a sequel – Herbert conceived of the trilogy as a whole, although perhaps not in detail. It’s also not the best of the three. Neither, to be honest, is the first book, Dune. Which means it must be the third one… but I’ve yet to reread it. Dune Messiah is set some years after the end of Dune. Paul Atreides is now emperor and has become increasingly disenchanted with the institution he has created. Meanwhile, there is a plot to kill him, led by some Fremen who fought with him and are unhappy with the changes to Arrakis. There are also a series of sub-plots. Princess Irulan, Paul’s wife, is angling for an heir, and has joined a conspiracy with a Guild navigator, a Tleilaxu Face-Dancer and a Bene Gesserit. It’s clear they all have different objectives, and it’s a marriage of convenience, so to speak (marriages of convenience pop up a lot in the Dune books). Meanwhile, Chani is pregnant and Paul knows she will die in childbirth. Which she does. She has twins, which Paul had not foreseen. And it turns out the Tleilaxu are more interested in finding a trigger for the ghola Hayt, a clone of Duncan Idaho, to recover Idaho’s memories. While rooting out the plot to kill him, Paul was permanently blinded by a “stoneburner”, a type of nuclear weapon. It’s Fremen tradition to abandon blind people in the desert, and eventually that’s what Paul does: walks out into the desert. Some years later, a blind Fremen called the Preacher appears in Arrakeen, the capital city of Arrakis, and rants against the regency that has taken over from Paul. Is Dune Messiah better than Dune? Yes. The prose is much better-written. But then it improves as the series progresses, so that’s no surprise. But where Dune had the fifteen-year-old Paul Atriedes as its focus, a character readers, especially male teen ones, can glom onto, Dune Messiah has no one. Which means it reads as a more distanced narrative. Paul is presented as a tragic figure – in fact, no one in the book is all that sympathetic, except perhaps, perversely, Princess Irulan. (Since first reading the book in my teens, I’ve always been fascinated the most by Skytale, the Tleilaxu Face-Dancer.) Dune was definitely a book of two halves: ‘Dune World’ and ‘The Prophet of Dune’. But Dune Messiah also feels like a book of parts, perhaps because its sub-plots don’t gel especially well. To some extent, that’s down to Herbert’s decision to have a cabal of four plotters all pursuing different aims, and a plot to kill Paul on top of that. It makes for a busy narrative, and yet Dune Messiah is only 256 pages. So the plot jumps around and Herbert skimps on some of the detail. Dune Messiah reads like Herbert stringing together his favourite scenes from the story he had planned. It works – better than Dune does, to be honest – but it does feel more like a best-of than a coherent narrative. The Dune series is a science fiction institution, and is likely to be even more so in the future. After decades of trying to raise the profile of the Dune series, leading to the questionable decision to publish a series of shit novels by Kevin J Anderson, Herbert Limited Partnership have finally got their wish, with a two-movie adaptation of the Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve and a supporting TV series. Dune is going to be up there with Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. The good news is the books are just as capable of supporting the cross-platform media giant Dune will become as Tolkien and GRRM. This is not necessarily a compliment. However, the Dune series reread continues and perhaps I will surprise myself with my re-evaluation of the following books…
    • 1/5
      I wonder if Herbert actually wrote the book he wanted to write, because I have to say that he didn't write the one I wanted him to write.

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