Dune Messiah

4.50/5.00“Now I am free”.

What a beautiful conclusion to the story of Paul Atreides. This is the ending we deserved for Paul. At 80% of this book, I feared that I was pulling away with disinterest, but then I was hit with one of the most emotional endings that I have read. The imagery, the metohpor of Paul's life, and ultimate tradegy is re-writing all my feelings about Dune. I don't even want to read more. This is perfect.

I did struggle to read this book much more that the first. Why not have a glossary like the first book? The prose is meandering and gets very metphorical and a bit hard to follow. The first book was certainly more easy to read. If Frank Herbert had taken it a little bit easier, made the book a little bit easier to follow, Dune Messiah would have been a greater success. Prose departed from its lyrical approach to the metaphorical puzzle, which I am not a big fan of.

“What is before ?”

Emotional Impact -> The book starts out great, the later mid part gets a bit hard to follow. The ending is spectacular and worthy of a Dune book. The ending is even better than Dune. "A planet for a tomb"!! Beautiful. Characters -> Paul stole my heart. His journey, his terrible purpose, his tragic life, his helplessness, his loss of free will. What a terrible life! Plot -> Incredible plot. I didn't see any of it coming. Praise be to Frank Herbert. LOL when his son Leto II calls Paul father! wow. The plot left a lot of loose strands that somehow made the book more interesting. I did not like the Alia-Duncan romance.. where did that come from ? so random. Prose -> This is where I struggled. My non-spoiler thoughts cover it already. Worldbuilding -> This story is not focused on worldbuilding. It is plot and character focused. It makes use of the existing Dune worldbuilding and it almost feels like the ending of the first book.