"You wish to draw me into this fools' fight?" Scytale asked. "Very well. We're dealing with a potential messiah. You don't launch a frontal attack upon such a one. Martyrdom would defeat us."
Let me begin by saying that I love Dune. It had a lot going for it, like political intrigues, adventure, journey, betrayal, society, ecological problems, ethical questions. The writing was perfect for the material and the genre. There is a reason why Dune won the first Nebula award, next to a Hugo award. It was of such sci-fi magnitude, that it even inspired George Lucas, as he clearly references the universe of of the Dune novel in the Star Wars films. Spice is a drug; the sandmen wear stillsuits like Fremen; Tatooine is a sandy planet, much like Arrakis. In fact, many people say that if you want to watch a good movie adaptation of Dune, watch Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. And I second that recommendation, even though the film references Dune very loosely.
Subsequently, Frank Herbert was a talented writer in Science Fiction or Science Fantasy (depends on how strictly you define Science Fiction). Like when you're eating popcorn and you can't just pop in five in your mouth without popping in a dozen more, when you're reading Dune you can't just stop after a few pages - you keep going. Something keeps you going - plot fueled by ominous foreshadowing or direct prophecies made by the characters.
It is therefore disheartening for me to say that I was not very satisfied with Dune's successor, Dune Messiah. But we will get into that later.
Dune Messiah takes place twelve years after the last chapter in Dune. Alia is now a full-grown woman and a worshipped saint, and Arrakis has been partially transformed from the rustic Fremen culture to a proud, religiously zealous, modern world. Emperor Paul, or Muad'Dib, rules the galaxy with an iron fist, crushing everyone and every planet that stands in his path. He has therefore fulfilled the prophecy of the terrible purpose to a degree, although he has tried his best to sway from the path chosen for him - or did he choose the path himself, unconsciously, and is following it of his own volition? This he asks himself on more than one occasion. Things are not at all well for the Emperor, as there is trouble on every front. His concubine and true love, Chani, is incapable of bearing an heir, while his actual wife, Princess Irulan, insists on having his child, albeit with ulterior motives. Outside of the Atreides household, a group of dangerously strong opponents plot cleverly and shiftily a plan to overthrow the Emperor... and worse. Among these are the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam (whom you may remember from Dune); Scytale, a Tleilaxu Face Dancer, meaning he can morph into other people; Edric, a Guild steersman very powerful in truthsense and protection thereof, concealing the group's plots and meetings from Paul and, perhaps, from Alia as well; and Princess Irulan, who is used by the Bene Gesserit as an informant and a possible procurer of Paul's Kwisatz Haderach genes.
Scheme is hidden by scheme, until Paul and Alia begin to suspect even the most loyal of their friends, Stilgar. If things were not confusing enough, Duncan Idaho appears resurrected in the figure of Hayt, a ghola (a zombie with a trained personality would be the best description of a ghola, I think) trained by the Tleilaxu and given to Paul as a gift with a very sinister, hidden purpose. Mysterious deaths, ominous symbols, over-zealous religious fanaticism, danger hanging over Paul's family, the lose of his physical eyesight, a bizarre dwarf named Bijaz - these are only a few things that crop up to confront Paul, who finds himself increasingly isolated from his truthsense, having to make decisions in scenarios that he had never seen in his visions before. At the end, Paul has to make several heart-wrenching choices, which I won't spoil here; however, I will mention that Paul does not technically die. He chooses, over death and a funeral, to wander the deserts of Arrakis, without aid and completely blind.
Dune Messiah is, like Dune, easy to picture. Frank Herbert describes the settings, the clothing, the daily life of the characters and their surroundings in such a way that facilitates the imagination without boring the reader with unuseful details. The overall style, vocabulary and all, is quite light and flowing, as in, it reads nicely and easily.
As Dune holds a place in classic science fiction, so is Dune Messiah also set in a terrific sci-fi universe. The traditions of the Fremen, the abilities of the physically flexible Face Dancers, and the references to other worlds are very exotic and unique, indicating a vivid imagination on Herbert's part.
Compared to its prequel, Dune Messiah focuses on a morally darker and grimmer cast of characters. By the end, you will wonder who is worse - Emporer Paul or the Reverend Mother? Was Paul even worse than Rabban Harkonnen, the previous ruler of Arrakis? Through this shift of morality, Paul's character growth is accentuated: he has grown, he has changed, and he has changed the world along with him.
The perspective is from a third-person limited narrator throughout, changing its focus from one character to another, alternating between good and bad characters equally, but naturally concentrating on Alia and Paul, the key protagonists. The perspectives of the villains, however, almost turn the novel into a mystery, albeit in a good way: you know something bad is going to happen, and you witness the bad guys doing something evil, but you do not know yet wherefore.
Of all the characters, I have to say that the most memorable and the funniest of them is Scytale. He was easily my favorite character, as villainous and cunning as he is. The reader can see occasionally into his thoughts and recognize that he is much shrewder and much more dangerous than the Reverend Mother Mohiam or the Guild Steersman or any of the other villains put together. Being a Tleilaxu Face Dancer, his abilities to transform into others in record-breaking time is surprising and impressive.
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the other characters, in particular Alia.
In fact, one thing that particularly bugged me near the end of the book was Alia. And to think I actually felt sorry for her in the first novel, when she was called 'an abomination' and 'a freak' by the others. Here, she is the most annoying thing. Not just person, but thing. She is SUPPOSED to encapsulate the memories of generations of Reverend Mothers. Her truthsense and agility are supposed to be so strong, that none in history has ever surpassed her. She is an anomaly, a Reverend Mother before birth.
But she is also a human being, so I can understand why she acts like a human being sometimes - making mistakes, getting angry, falling in love. After all, Lady Jessica and Paul have both done the same and felt the same feelings, and they are also of genetically advanced stock.
What I cannot understand is when a character, who has been time after time described as a super-intelligent human being bordering a singularity in human intelligence, makes mistakes that are painfully stupid.
It is a rule among writers, or creators in general, regardless whether you are making a video game, an anime, a live-action film, a comic book or a short story, that a character who has been described as exceedingly powerful, wise, and/or strong, should act like it. The character in question does not have to be permanently serious, or permanently omnipotent, or infinitely wise, but he should never do something that makes the reader go: "Don't do that, you stupid person! Seriously!!"
This character is more often than not the Mentor archetype, but not necessarily. Either way, the character is entitled to mistakes, but they should never be graver than the mistakes a person of below-average intelligence would make.
Imagine if at the end of The Hobbit, Gandalf showed up at Misty Mountain with an Orc and exclaimed, "Look at this nice person that I found lurking not at all suspiciously nearby!" and then when Bilbo told him that the person is an Orc and Orcs are dangerous, Gandalf would go "Oh damn! Sorry about that, old chap!" and the Orc would try to kill everyone. The reader would think: "What in the third plane of hell is going on? I thought Gandalf was a wise man."
It would be a very odd and confusing occurence indeed. But this is pretty much what Alia does at the end of Dune Messiah. Despite having all the wisdom and memories of previous Reverend Mothers, she has the brains of a banana and the emotional balance of an enraged orangutan.
Luckily, Alia's irritating existence, which becomes even more annoying at the end, can be ignored on account of the well thought out demise of Muad'Dib, or Emperor Paul Atreides. He loses his eyesight and, true to the Fremen custom of sending the blind into the desert so that they won't be a burden to the tribe, Paul willingly goes alone into the treacherous desert and becomes, as legend tells it, one with the desert.
If you have read Dune, you will be happy to find that Dune Messiah is, in terms of writing style, similar to its predecessor. You also have the sporadic thought passages of Muad'Dib and other characters, a bit in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, concerning Paul's terrible purposes, the hidden motives and intentions of a person, symbolism behind moons and traditions, and prophecies.
I am not sure how much Herbert plotted in advance while he was writing Dune, because it does not look like he had Dune Messiah in mind at the time of Dune - at least, not in detail - because several things crop up rather unexpectedly in Dune Messiah without
previous mention or even casual allusion in Dune. The Tleilaxu Face Dancers, the amphibious (?) Guild steersman who lives permanently in a tank of spice, the betrayal of Princess Irulan - especially the strange Face Dancers and the truthsense-impenetrable Guild steersman - are not referenced to in the first novel. Princess Irulan working as a spy for the Bene Gesserit comes as a surprise, as I have always thought from her writings in the first book that she was a modest wife to Paul and a historian and archivist for the imperial courts. But when she is not writing down the philosophies of Muad'Dib or the biographies of prominent historical figures such as her father, she is spying on the imperial court? Well, that seems normal.
Strangest of all is the inaction of Lady Jessica, a Reverend Mother. She is thrown out of the character constellation of Dune Messiah, making a brief, but important appearance via letter towards the end, but other than that, she has disappeared. Her absence is explained, though: she is touring different planets (...or something along those lines). I have not read the third book, but I can only assume that the roles of Lady Jessica, Alia and the reborn Duncan Idaho will be more prominent in the next book, along with the new characters of Paul and Chani's children. But I may be wrong.
To put it briefly, what I liked most about Dune Messiah was the universe itself, as it is a detailed world of pure science fantasy mixed with the occasional philosophy; the return of Duncan Idaho, who is an interesting character, especially since he is here a Ghola named Hayt who is slowly transforming into Duncan, but is not the actual Duncan; the gang of villains, who may not comprise as spiteful a group as the Harkonnens did, but are still very shifty and very dangerous, rivaling Paul and Alia put together in raw power and intellect (especially Scytale); and Paul's fate, bound to wander blindly through the desert, the true demise of a prophet who at the very end refused the terrible purpose that destiny seemed resolute to plant on him (and nearly did).
What I did not like was the character of Alia, who does not have any aspects that I find likable and who has not done anything that I have particularly impressive (unless you count that one random scene where she is sword-fighting naked against a sparring robot that is set to a dangerously high level - though I am not sure if that counts as impressively brave or stupidly reckless); and Paul becoming a dictator, sterilizing millions of people and slaughtering billions more, and yet he still finds time to contemplate his 'terrible purpose' (which apparently does not entail mass-genocide, since he has committed plenty of that in the decade or so he has been emperor) and complain in his mind about how his people and the religious fanatics of Arrakis have practically forced him to become a dictator. Here is a pro-tip: nobody will ever push you to become a dictator, unless you really want to become a dictator. I have never heard of any historical figure who was forced to become a totalitarian, mass-murdering dictator.
Apropos history - I have no idea why Paul refers one point to Genghis Khan and to Hitler, since I have always assumed that Earth does not exist within the realsm of the Dune universe (the Duniverse?). Moreover, Paul's facts seem a little off, as he goes on to mention that Genghis Khan killed several millions, which seems a little exaggerated, while Hitler killed six million. ONLY six million? Hell, mosquitoes have killed more people than that. Hitler killed off dozens of millions people, either through concentration camps,
death camps, prisons, mental asylums, retirement homes, secret police or war. Six million was roughly how many people died in concentration camps alone. How many British and Russian soldiers died, how many elderly died, how many socialists, homosexuals, mentally ill, physically diseased and atheists died, is much higher than six million. I really, really hope that Herbert knew this and that Paul's comments are factually wrong on purpose. I may be harping on this a bit too much, but for me this scene was the point where I stopped caring about Paul, his family, his enemies, his hairstylist, whatever, because they all appear exceptionally dumb and evil.
My final verdict? If you enjoyed Dune and you like Science Fiction or Science Fantasy, e.g. Star Wars, you might also enjoy this. I can't say that you will definitely enjoy this, as I personally only enjoyed about half of Dune Messiah. I cannot say if the series picks up a little after Dune Messiah, but if it does, you should probably read this novel before continuing down the Dune saga, seeing as a lot happens in the universe of Dune in this part of the series, in particular pertaining to Paul and his family. I found Dune Messiah less action-packed and overall less impressive than its predecessor, however.
All in all, Dune Messiah gets a 5 out of 10 - it's certainly not a bad book, since it is well-written and the universe is quite stunning, but it is not nearly as exciting as Dune. I think therein lies the chief problem: Dune Messiah pales in comparison to Dune, but it is a pretty good book on its own.
However, I highly, highly recommend Dune, even if you usually don't like science fiction, I think you will like Dune. Although I am not reviewing Dune, I will say this much: I would give Dune an 8 out of 10. It is a sci-fi classic, and although it may not be exactly a second Lord of the Rings, Dune is still an excellent book, well-deserving of an 8.
On a sci-fi scale, as in, excluding non-sci-fi books, I would give Dune 9 out of 10, and Dune Messiah a 6 out of 10. So, when compared to only sci-fi books, Dune and even Dune Messiah score much higher, because for science fiction they are very good, especially Dune :)
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