Dune Messiah
Ratings842
Average rating3.8
It's been a few years since I last read the series, but I don't remember liking this one as much as the first. But after reading it again, I really like it. Mostly due to the subversion of the heroes journey we got in the first book. That warning about charismatic leaders shines brightly here.
Contains spoilers
This is a book I was not sure how I felt about until I finished it. It's confusing, and the story gets messy, but Paul's entire arc hooked me. I think the biggest thing holding this book back for me, at least on the first read, is how complicated the Duncan Idaho plotline is. I really didn't understand much of it until the end, where things finally clicked. Maybe that was the intent? Also, the whole romance between him and Alia felt so forced, and just kind of came out of nowhere. Paul's visions and intent were also very unclear, but I liked it as it really put me into the shoes of the other characters.
Overall, a fantastic conclusion to the story of Muad'Dib. Definitely a book I'm going to reread.
I'll probably get to Children of Dune in a little while.
Genuinely really interesting. Vastly different from DUNE, but I enjoyed the way the book unfolded quite a bit. I definitely felt there was some potential left behind, but the way the characters move and change was really satisfying
This is book is as cool as the first one, but in the different way. I feel like in this book, i saw a more human side of paul even though he is getting more godly than the first book. i saw his problems, his nightmares, his anxiety, and his care for the world that he living.
This one seems to more set the stage for the 3rd book than to be a great 2nd book in a trilogy. As much as I loved the first one, this one left me thinking it was half a book – and not the better half.
didn't like it as much as Dune 1, but definitely more somber and I'll definitely be thinking about it for a long time.
El cambio que tiene este sobre el primero es enorme, pero me agrada la idea de la problemática a la que Paul esta siendo empujado, está viendo lo que se dijo en Dune y sabía el poco control del mismo... Me encantó.
Enjoyable but very much felt like it was written only to build up momentum for the third book. (Which I haven't read yet)
SUMMARY: With millions of copies sold worldwide, Frank Herbert's magnificent Dune books stand among the major achievements of the human imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis – a world as fully real and rich as our own – Dune Messiah continues the story of the man Muad'Dib, heir to a power unimaginable, bringing to completion the centuries-old scheme to create a superbeing...
Even when I struggle to read such complex series as Dune and it always gets me into a reading slump whenever I decided to open the book, I just enjoy the lore sometimes so damn difficult that my little pea brain cannot comprehend it.
Anyway, the 2nd book was slightly different from the first one not just by the length nor complexity of the story. Second book is much more focused on the politics of Dune rather than grandiosity of Paul Atreides. In my opinion Messiah is way better than Dune, It adds greater depth and understanding to the first book. If you read the first book, then Dune Messiah is just a must because you will learn that Paul was just a mere human after all.
If I was a Messianic oracle and Emperor of the Known Universe I would simply find the timeline where I get to just hang out and vibe.
Very much both helped and held back by it’s short length. If more time was spent exploring the new characters and fleshing out the conspiracy it would 5 stars, but then again it’s refreshing to-the-point for this series.
2☆
Imma be real, I liked Dune more than Dune Messiah.
Messiah starts 12 years after the end of Dune, and I feel like all the truly interesting stuff happened within that 12 year gap and we only get glimpses at that. Do I wanna know how Paul managed to bring hundreds of worlds under his control and kill billions and basically become The Worst Guy EverTM? Yes. Did the book tell me? No, not really. You can't tell me that all it took was prescience and a couple of tough desert guys.
Messiah is a lot more heavy on the political intrigue, but there were also long stretches where nothing really seemed to happen and move forward.
On top of that, while women weren't portrayed all that great in Dune, it's somehow worse in Dune Messiah, aka 14 year old Alia is horny for a much older man and Chani gets to die in childbirth for no real reason (truly the Padme blueprint). Irulan basically stops existing halfway through the book, after only being bitchy and whiney about wanting to get pregnant.
There were still some cool moments that I'm very excited to see on screen though. I just hope that Denis manages to turn the rest of this book into an interesting movie, too.
Because Dune Messiah ain't really it for me.
this definitely has middle child syndrome and is bogged down by the prose more than the first
Reading this one was like taking a sip of the Water of Life. It wasn't a bad trip and it wasn't necessarily a good one either, but it certainly opened my mind to the cosmos.
I enjoyed Dune but when I finished it, I didn't have a sense of fulfillment after reaching the end. I wanted more so I continued with the saga in hopes of reaching a satisfying conclusion/payoff. I was vibing with Herbert's prose, so I said why not? After all I enjoyed my time with the 800 something pages, why not go back-to-back with the 350 page sequel? And I must say this time I feel much more satisfied with the ending.
However, I don't think both the books work together and complement each other in a completely seamless way. This book has quite a different structure owing to the fact that Herbert wrote it to clear up the heroic aura of Paul which was incorrectly assumed by a lot of readers back in the 60's when the first book was published. Now this is fine, but I wish he had done this in way that incorporated some of the elements that composed the structure of the first book. We should have got to see more viewpoints and explored the psyche of the other characters which were introduced in such an intriguing manner right at the start. I don't think this approach would have worked against the book in fact it would have elevated Paul's story and made the impact of that ending even stronger.
I do feel happy overall with the decision to jump into this book right after the first one, it was much better written in terms of the spoken dialogue between the characters. The inner dialogue of the characters (which is where Frank Herbert excels) is once again incredibly sophisticated, philosophical, poetic and beautiful. The world building was held back quite a lot which is to be expected in a sequel, but it was needed here.
I don't feel the need to continue the series now as I feel fulfilled and don't really care to know that deeply about what's going to happen next so I might hop off the Dune train here, on which I have been aboard for more than a couple months.
3.5 rounded up, victim of a reading slump. but it was good; a lot more variety in character than the first, which I like.
Probably a little closer to a 3.75/5. While very different from DUNE, I found this enjoyable in a different way. This is much shorter, and more interior and cerebral. The cast of characters is a little different with some notable changes and absences, I found myself yearning for characters we don't see. What would X have thought? Why is Y absent? New cultures/species/organizations/what have you are present and these are interesting, though feel a bit shallower than those in the first book. I will say again that I think Denis made a wise decision to leave out all the CHOAM stuff in his adaptations - it was so boring in the first book that even Frank seems to have abandoned it.
Rare for me, I think this may benefit from another 50 pages. A few key things happen and then the final chapter wraps everything up quite quickly, with much happening in exposition describing off-page events. What a loss! It feels a robbery to lose closing moments in this way.
Spoilers follow
Probably because I've breathed the secondhand smoke of the Duneheads, I never exactly fell for Paul as a great hero, and so read the first book not exactly charmed by his maturation. Instead, I thought a lot about him as a somewhat willing victim(?) of his own machinations and prophecy.
MESSIAH carries this on, and makes it quite clear that Paul is not a hero. Not many heroes compare k/d ratios with Genghis Khan and Hitler. Still, for whatever it is worth, we believe that Paul believes he does things for some reason - something he still sees as a terrible purpose. For all his future sight and vision, he seems to have no insight. He willingly steps into his oracular visions and never questions this willingness in forming self-fulfilling cataclysms.
Perhaps the biggest losses in the closing are how Paul and the Reverend Mother are handled in the closing. I am kind of floored by this. What a strange thing to not depict...