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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
sad
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I feel like a chump for taking this long to get into dune over some stupid trauma.
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I could read you a line from Dune and offer you $10,000 to correctly identify the speaker and you would probably fail, because every character in Dune is just about the same person: arrogant and calculating. They all speak in codes, hiding their own intentions but somehow interpreting the hidden meanings of others - assuming they're a hero. The only people who act based on emotions end up dead and looking foolish for it. The only difference between any of them is what they want, and whether or not they hold all the cards.
Reading Dune is like if 8 grandmasters were playing one game of chess and they were told to narrate it as entertainingly as possible to someone who barely understands the rules of chess. I'm convinced that you're not supposed to root for or against anyone. I'm also convinced that you're not supposed to have any idea of what's going on. Just sit there and be fed the details in the order you were intended to receive them - there will be an explanation at the end, but probably not the one you were expecting. With Dune, I found that a very entertaining, albeit whiplash-inducing, rollercoaster of plot points. I never felt anything other than excitement or boredom. But hey, it's science fiction, not fantasy.
Dune Messiah is like Frank Herbert did acid every hour and then wrote about the visions and philosophies he experienced. I had a much harder time following the point of Messiah than I did of Dune - and I walked into Messiah knowing what a Kwisatch Haderach and a Shai-Hulud were, so that should tell you something. While I agree that the political and social landscapes felt very different, that doesn't change that it's still a linear experience of plot points A to B to C with more characters who are still the same person. I ultimately found it much less gripping, probably because the novelty of a book like Dune had naturally worn off, but also probably because the action was much more political and strategic than physical.
Dune felt like a closed loop, a story unto itself. I didn't mind Dune Messiah as a sequel, I thought the books went nicely together. And I appreciated how much shorter it was. But I honestly have no idea if I have the mental energy to read the third book.
Reading Dune is like if 8 grandmasters were playing one game of chess and they were told to narrate it as entertainingly as possible to someone who barely understands the rules of chess. I'm convinced that you're not supposed to root for or against anyone. I'm also convinced that you're not supposed to have any idea of what's going on. Just sit there and be fed the details in the order you were intended to receive them - there will be an explanation at the end, but probably not the one you were expecting. With Dune, I found that a very entertaining, albeit whiplash-inducing, rollercoaster of plot points. I never felt anything other than excitement or boredom. But hey, it's science fiction, not fantasy.
Dune Messiah is like Frank Herbert did acid every hour and then wrote about the visions and philosophies he experienced. I had a much harder time following the point of Messiah than I did of Dune - and I walked into Messiah knowing what a Kwisatch Haderach and a Shai-Hulud were, so that should tell you something. While I agree that the political and social landscapes felt very different, that doesn't change that it's still a linear experience of plot points A to B to C with more characters who are still the same person. I ultimately found it much less gripping, probably because the novelty of a book like Dune had naturally worn off, but also probably because the action was much more political and strategic than physical.
Dune felt like a closed loop, a story unto itself. I didn't mind Dune Messiah as a sequel, I thought the books went nicely together. And I appreciated how much shorter it was. But I honestly have no idea if I have the mental energy to read the third book.
I’m so glad that I returned to this sequel in my spice hangover from Dune: Part Two, since I appreciated Herbert’s deceptively ambitious follow-up to his masterpiece much more upon a re-read. What scanned as an intentionally elusive subversion of Dune’s thrilling expanses on first pass was unlocked for me this second time as the only natural answer to the questions its predecessor asks.
In both the book and the movies, Dune is a thrilling, steady crescendo, accumulating peoples and powers and prescience with seemingly infinite momentum until we’re left on a crest that seems to peer out at eternity. The trick of Messiah is that it peers through all that momentum to its unstable core, recognizing the impossible architecture of so many greedy hypotheticals and answering it with the only plausible outcome: implosion.
Rather than attempting to outdo himself by logically justifying increasingly improbable superschemes, Herbert takes Paul to his (very extreme) limits in order to prove the limits time places on even the most extreme powers. It’s an even headier ride than Dune, trading that book’s relatively classical adventures for the weirder lands most stories never reach, but it finds an odd kind of hope out in that cosmic desert. This too shall pass; even the gnarliest sandstorm will eventually dissipate, leaving the possibility for something better to spring up from its dust.
(Copying my initial review from September of 2021 below, for posterity):
In its tone and in its (relative) brevity, this feels less like a sequel to Dune and more like an epilogue. With nearly none of the action or scope of the first and at least twice the amount of insular throne room politics and existential head-trips, we’re clearly here to drill inwards, not expand farther. Don’t get me wrong: I loved those aspects of the first book, and they still work here - I just loved them more in counterbalance with the visceral, planet-spanning parts. The majority of this book’s scenes take place inside Paul’s palace (if not inside his head), and while Denis Villeneuve wrestles with containing Dune’s vast sprawl within the frame of two mega blockbusters, Dune Messiah could very well be staged as a three-act play - and a relatively inexpensive one, at that.
Still, Frank Herbert’s singularity of vision is undeniable, and even as he sands Paul’s story (and all of time’s) down to a narrow footbridge, we’re inclined to follow along. With these two novels, Herbert created a world so rich and lived-in that it’s still a pleasure to luxuriate even in this one little corner of it. And if this is him funneling Dune’s endless desert into a more manageable pile of sand for 300 pages, he leaves just enough of an open-ended pebble trail at the end to believe it might be starting to build up into a desert all anew. Either way, he’s got me on the hook to find out.
(P.S. I’m ecstatically excited to watch Denis’ attempt to wrangle Dune. I think even if Dune and the hypothetical second film were to gross 500 billion dollars each, they still wouldn’t even try to take on this one… and they’d probably be right!)
In both the book and the movies, Dune is a thrilling, steady crescendo, accumulating peoples and powers and prescience with seemingly infinite momentum until we’re left on a crest that seems to peer out at eternity. The trick of Messiah is that it peers through all that momentum to its unstable core, recognizing the impossible architecture of so many greedy hypotheticals and answering it with the only plausible outcome: implosion.
Rather than attempting to outdo himself by logically justifying increasingly improbable superschemes, Herbert takes Paul to his (very extreme) limits in order to prove the limits time places on even the most extreme powers. It’s an even headier ride than Dune, trading that book’s relatively classical adventures for the weirder lands most stories never reach, but it finds an odd kind of hope out in that cosmic desert. This too shall pass; even the gnarliest sandstorm will eventually dissipate, leaving the possibility for something better to spring up from its dust.
(Copying my initial review from September of 2021 below, for posterity):
In its tone and in its (relative) brevity, this feels less like a sequel to Dune and more like an epilogue. With nearly none of the action or scope of the first and at least twice the amount of insular throne room politics and existential head-trips, we’re clearly here to drill inwards, not expand farther. Don’t get me wrong: I loved those aspects of the first book, and they still work here - I just loved them more in counterbalance with the visceral, planet-spanning parts. The majority of this book’s scenes take place inside Paul’s palace (if not inside his head), and while Denis Villeneuve wrestles with containing Dune’s vast sprawl within the frame of two mega blockbusters, Dune Messiah could very well be staged as a three-act play - and a relatively inexpensive one, at that.
Still, Frank Herbert’s singularity of vision is undeniable, and even as he sands Paul’s story (and all of time’s) down to a narrow footbridge, we’re inclined to follow along. With these two novels, Herbert created a world so rich and lived-in that it’s still a pleasure to luxuriate even in this one little corner of it. And if this is him funneling Dune’s endless desert into a more manageable pile of sand for 300 pages, he leaves just enough of an open-ended pebble trail at the end to believe it might be starting to build up into a desert all anew. Either way, he’s got me on the hook to find out.
(P.S. I’m ecstatically excited to watch Denis’ attempt to wrangle Dune. I think even if Dune and the hypothetical second film were to gross 500 billion dollars each, they still wouldn’t even try to take on this one… and they’d probably be right!)
My favorite thing about sequels is that they take the training wheels off and go right into it
Very little action in this Dune novel but still lots of interesting plans within plans being planned. I like how Herbert basically wrote this book because people didn't get that we actually aren't supposed to like Paul.
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes