A review by dakizu
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Interesting and though-provoking companion to the first novel. Writing this review after having finished the next novel in the series (Children of Dune), I am surprised by how well this novel acts as both: An epilogue to the original Dune; and a bridge from the original into Children. The scope is lowered considerably from the first novel and the scheming and plotting becomes much more focused. One issue that I found unique to this entry in the series is the prose: The first half of the novel contains many awkward phrasings and strange sentence structures; I found myself having to reread some sentences multiple times to understand them. This issue, thankfully, seems to go away past a certain point just before the middle of the novel. It seems to me that this novel had a less intensive editing pass than the proceeding and succeeding entries, but, much like the other entries, the depth of meaning behind the words makes up for the sometimes clunky delivery. Unlike the first novel, I found the ending of this one to be fantastic.
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