I Read Books: Dune Messiah
Having seized the Imperial Throne in Dune, Paul Atriedes finds himself the centre of plots, religious fervour and prophecy. The main concern of the book is Paul’s attempts to use prescience, his visions of the future, without being trapped into a destiny that he wishes to avoid. He is the unexpected premature endpoint of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, the Kwisatch Haderach, and spice essence has opened his mind to future and past.
There are more mundane plots too; the failure of his concubine Chani to bear an heir for nine years leads many people to push him towards his wife Irulan (wife in name only, as the daughter of the former emperor) while the Bene Gesserirt push him towards his sister Alia. The Spacing Guild are concerned; they use prescience to sail the spaceways and his control of spice puts them in danger. And the technologists of Ix have a convoluted plan involving the resurrected ghola of Duncan Idaho that forks as either assassination, or the ability to create truly reborn clones when they are placed under unbearable pressure.
Unlike Dune which hits the ground running and insists we keep up, this sequel takes some time to get going. It feels as though we get bogged down in the plots and plans. Which may be deliberate! Still, despite being a much shorter book than Dune it feels as long, and less interesting. Eventually the plots all start running at once, weird characters appear and don’t – quite – do what Paul has foreseen them doing and there’s a tragic and mythic ending. If I say that this book seems more typical of Frank Herbert at his usual standard, rather than at his best, I don’t want that to be too faint a praise, but then again it’s slightly less interesting than Dune, and much worse paced.
Interestingly the Spacer Guildsmen as fish-mutants in tanks of spice gas, an iconic image from the film, are introduced in this book, not the original (two non-descript Guildsmen appear in the final confrontation of Dune, and are quickly dismissed by Paul as they will not risk the spice or confront prescience).
Read This: Dune is an exciting adventure story about overthrowing the enemies; Dune Messiah is about what you when you’re in charge and things are going wrong and thing you do makes it worse.
Don’t Read This: If a lot of people talking and thinking about bad things sounds dull.
Comments