Reviews

Oh Jesus this was a tough read.

I'm so disappointed, because after Children I'd decided the rest of Dune wasn't for me and I wouldn't like it. But after the movie revitalizing my interest, I decided to have a crack off this. And what do you know, it's starts off with great promise! 3500 years of ruling over the universe, the Dune we know and love transformed completely, an interesting, philosophical style. Great, I thought, this is miles better than Children!

But then . . . It just went on, and on. The cool premise of the Golden Path, and an Emperor controlling the universe to achieve a better future with his prescience, was never explained (except maybe in the final few pages). He's always harping on about it, and telling people about it, but none of it makes any sense.

Below is basically what half the book is:

"Moneo!" Leto cried. "When you see the river, do the bubbles ask the current why they flow downhill?"
"No, my Lord".
"To me, you are the bubble, and I am not the river, I am the sea. The Golden path will be as a rain cloud, moving the water without the bubbles".
"I don't understand, my Lord".

The other half is you screaming at Leto to do something about Idaho and Siona and the Ixians clearly scheming against him. Why does he keep bringing Idaho's back when every single one tries to kill him? And the last one came close? Why does he accept a bride from the Ixians, one designed purely to seduce him, despite the fact it upsets both his army of women and his Duncan?

I wasn't really rooting for anyone here. Certainly not for the rebels. I mostly just wanted Leto's plan to come to fruition to see what it was? Like I do think that if he went through all this suffering for a goal it must be worthwhile, and y'know sunk cost and all, what's another few hundred years.

There was a lot of pseudoscience in here, with the differences in the sexes and the ancestral memories. Obviously you need some make believe for a sci-fi story, but what's the point of philosophising about it? Half of this musing is irrelevant to the real world because we have a different set of axioms!

The Golden Path still baffles me. It seemed, as best I could gather, like the idea was to enforce a few millenia of tranquility, so that then things will be terrible as the whole thing collapses, and then people will yearn for his good old days? It's some weird sort of population rewrite, but all the explanations are circular. But then at the end it seems like it's suddenly to breed people who can't be seen with the spice. This makes sense to me as a motivation, as it means they have free will in a sense, but why did he need an empire for his breeding program, and what's all this population rewrite crap then? Where was all the philosophy about free will?

Also, his prescience is crap? Like it's supposed to be better than Paul's (who could literally see without eyes) but he keeps getting surprised? He doesn't see his own death coming? Maaaybe you could say it's part of his plan, but it really doesn't read like that? He never says or thinks "great, the plan is coming together" or "it's a shame I have to die now but that's the Golden path". He seems to believe he has another few hundred years left in which to complete his metamorphosis. And if it is his plan, there's no discussion of how he sees that this bizarre roundabout way is the only way forward, rather than just telling them "alright, my plan is finally finished with you two. Isn't this brilliant? I can stop being a tyrant now".

I think Dune, as a series, suffers from a great tragedy that prevents any sequel from surpassing the original. Quite simply, the things that made the first so appealing -the ecology, the Fremen, the politics - are fundamentally altered, if not completely overhauled, by it's ending. Thus the sequels cannot expand on the good stuff, and instead must break new ground, for better or worse (usually worse). Granted, Paul's arc and the religion and charismatic leader and prescience stuff gets carried over to Messiah, and that's why Messiah is the second best. That stuffs interesting, and the 15 year difference or whatever in society is cool to see the tragedy of everything having been changed. But then when you try to drag the series out another 4 books, the tragedy becomes the status quo, and the original Dune is just lost.