Dune Messiah

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...