Dune Messiah
Ratings891
Average rating3.8
Actual rating: 3.5
From the magnificent bit of storytelling and universe creation that Frank Herbert took us through in Dune, to 300 pages worth of political intrigue and scheming I count myself as a bit disappointed. While I completely respect and understand Herbert's thought process behind the plot, it somehow reeked of being an afterthought, a bridge between Dune and Children of Dune if you will.
Here lies a toppled god.
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.
Contains spoilers
A very interesting addendum to Dune and completion of Paul’s story. While it had a narrower scope in both story and theme, it explored them both quite in depth. Paul’s character becomes even more complex and tragic, forcing questions of morality, fate, and the purpose of religion and government. The novel continues to expand the world of Dune and sets the stage for the next cast of characters.
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.
Not quite the awe and wonder that the first book was, but a basically necessary reckoning with what occurs in the book. It's a little messy, but the prose is still beautiful and the characters compelling. He introduces a few too many new aspects to this world that don't make sense not to have been mentioned in the first book, but still, the essential exploration of human nature and complex political statecraft is just as strong here. Herbert is still a master.
Frank Herbert does so many writing things I usually don't like and yet consistently makes me care SO MUCH about the characters and enjoy the reading experience.
Maybe it was a mistake for me to read this without a break right after Dune, but there was a jarring tonal shift from the first book to this sequel. As always, the interaction and dialogue between characters are full of intrigue and fascination, but the book is broken up by a lot of meandering which kills the pace somewhat. Still a great cautionary tale of messiahs, religion and power, but I need a break from the series.
About as good as dune, maybe not quite as good. Way too long, despite being short. But, a much better ending than Dune had.
An exceptionally unique book. Herbert gave himself the interesting challenge of telling a story where multiple characters are damn-near omniscient. In order to operate around that (especially in the last 1/3 of the book), things get pretty ... nebulous. Wording and dialogue grows intentionally vague as characters are actively having revelations about what's to come, sometimes revealed to the reader, often obscured.
Worth a read in my opinion if you enjoyed Dune, but I do think I'll take a proper break from the series for a bit before returning for book #3.
TL;DR
Average in my opinion. It would be pretty hard to surpass Dune so this one is taking a step back and doesn't have that much action. Many people like to say buzzwords like "political intrigue" but what they really want to say it's that this one is boring. Political intrigue would be if we get to see the other houses plotting againts each other, creating traps or assasinations to weaken the rest and such. No, the story of this book resolves around four randoms (to avoid spoilers) trying to take down Paul. So if you come in with the hype of the first book you will be sorely dissapointed. The problem is that to keep reading the series you need to get though this one, the good thing is that it's not that long but it is boring.
My Scoring System
I have five things I look for in a book, if the book checks all five it's a 5/5 stars book, if it checks none it's a 1/5 stars and everything else is a combination:
X - Main Story: Boring with little happening, stop saying this book is more focused on political intrigue when it's just four people trying to kill Paul. None of the other houses are involved in any political intrigue.
X - Side Stories (if it applies): There's no main story here, Paul's doing his thing while four people are trying to murder him. I cannot believe we didn't get to see this jihad that was so hyped in the previous book, no we get to a point where everything is conquered. Wow amazing...
✓ - Characters: My favorite character Jessica is gone, chilling in Caledan so that's nice. At least we get Alia who I really love but we get one of the worst ones too, I'm just gna call him the Ghola, you will see when you read this book but I really hate him.
✓ - Setting/Ambiance: At least we're still on Arrakis, I really love the desert planet, nothing to say here.
✓ - Ending: If you want Paul's story could end here and it's a nice ending. I just kept reading because I saw that in the next book Jessica is back but if you want to stop here you can.
Extensive Review
Not much to add, Jessica my favorite character is out of the picture, same with Gourney, instead we focus on Alia, Paul's sister. I liked her, she is a good character and very capable. To avoid spoilers here is the start of a thing that will persist even to the fourth book which is where I stopped reading this series. A character returns and I do not like it at all.
Also remember that famous jihad that Paul was so afraid and trying to stop at all costs? Yeah well it happend and we never get to see it. Only hear that they've conquered everything. Instead we get to see how Paul and Chani are trying to conceive. Great, that's exactly what I wanted to read...
This book is pretty dissapointing comparing it to Dune, on it's own is average at best.
Many say that anyone who likes Dune must read Dune Messiah, because it completes the story. I respectfully disagree. I enjoyed this book quite a lot, but after finishing it, I think I would have been completely satisfied leaving the original Dune story as it was.
The writing has a magic quality in that Herbert creates very complex and strange types of characters. Some are living computers, some have prescient senses, some have the consciousness of other people, there's body manipulation, gene manipulation and all manner of other weirdness, but it all makes intuitive sense somehow. This is evident in Dune, and he doubles down on that in Messiah.
But I did find some of that combersome on the plot. The Ghola Hayt is a perfect example of that: a type of robot mind programmed to think like a Mentat and given knowledge of a Philosopher, but the genes of Duncan Idaho and secret coding to override his brain. The character was a walking personality disorder, and though I liked his development, it felt like a bit much.
To me the plot itself was quite thin. When all was said and done, I felt that not much happened. Of course, I'd argue that similar can be said about the second half of Dune. The focus is more on the exploration of characters' minds and the world and people they interact with. And I thoroughly enjoyed that. I think I'm just too jaded on Great Man narratives to fall in love with Dune the way so many do. Maybe if I were younger.
One thing I did feel was much more evident in Messiah was the allusions to the birth of Islam and the role of Mohammed in Middle Eastern history. I'm sure many academic essays have been written on the topic, but that was very fun to think about while progressing through the story. Probably that was my favourite part of this book: meditating on what it means to form and run a government founded on a newly created religion; the leader both Prophet and Head of State. I think that stuff was brilliantly told.
In the end, I'd say Dune is a ground breaking coming of age story, emulated and retold countless times, while Messiah basically gears up the world for a large epic series. There are new characters, new systems of mental and technological wizardry, and an ending that feels less like a conclusion, and more like a preface for a much bigger story. If you liked Dune for what it was, you can stop there, but if you want to go all-in with Moadib and find out what comes of this universe, dive right in and enjoy!
I was so close to quitting this book after reading half of it but then it finally it started getting good. The first book was all world building and action and this one is almost all political exploits with of course several deaths, some I like some I hate. One thing I don't like about his writing is his death scenes are extremely anti-climactic. It's climactic in the sense that “oh shit he/she really died?” But it's anti-climactic in the sense that it's so abrupt and there is very little time to mourn. It's just BOOM dead...okay moving on. Still an entertaining read and am interested to see where the story takes me.
There was a man so wise,
He jumped into
A sandy place
And burnt out both his eyes!
And when he knew his eyes were gone,
He offered no complaint.
He summoned up a vision
And made himself a saint.
Dune Messiah is a natural extension of the first Dune and yet suffers from a slightly weaker structure and pacing. The machinations of characters like Edric, Scytale, and Helen are silly and funnier than anything in Dune which often provides very entertaining humor and levity to the sometimes overwrought scenes.
Frank somehow managed to surpass Dune with what could be considered the conclusion to Paul's story. This sequel honestly did wonders for the original Dune, in my opinion. It feels like the piece missing from the original, and I'm glad I read it. Moreover, on the quality side of things, this kept me invested throughout the entire story. It feels way more intense and political than the first novel and I absolutely love it. It's so emotionally gripping at times and the ending absolutely stung me to my core. I love how they did Paul and the rest of the cast, including where they ended up by the end of the story. You simply cannot read Dune without reading Dune: Messiah. This is what makes Dune as a series a masterpiece to me now.
Frank somehow managed to surpass Dune with what could be considered the conclusion to Paul's story. This sequel honestly did wonders for the original Dune, in my opinion. It feels like the piece missing from the original, and I'm glad I read it. Moreover, on the quality side of things, this kept me invested throughout the entire story. It feels way more intense and political than the first novel and I absolutely love it. It's so emotionally gripping at times and the ending absolutely stung me to my core. I love how they did Paul and the rest of the cast, including where they ended up by the end of the story. You simply cannot read Dune without reading Dune: Messiah. This is what makes Dune as a series a masterpiece to me now.
I found this to be an insanely great follow up to Dune. After the success of our hero in the last book, turning that concept on its head and imposing another point of view was exactly the right direction to take the story. It has been almost a year since reading at the time of this review, so I am struggling to recall all that I enjoyed about the sequel.
[Spoilers below]
One aspect of this novel in particular that I enjoyed was the introduction of the Face Dancers. The concept of such a human is so interesting and I love how Herbert explored it. Additionally, I enjoy his creative nature when it comes to naming/describing particular aspects of this universe (e.g. Face Dancers being used as a name for humans who can change their physical attributes).
The best way to understand why the second book differs from the first one is to quote it:
“Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual”. The first book is an adventurous story about heroes and revolution. And the second book is about what happens to heroes after revolution.
Alia still the best even though is not hard to be the best caracther in this book hahaha
It was little dull compared to the first novel; not a lot of action but felt like more of a backstory for what's to come next. Or at least I hope so!
It was generally a good book, but honestly, I don't think I would've found this book as interesting if I wasn't already invested in Paul Muad'Dib and the rest of the Dune universe.