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yimingman 's review for:
Dune Messiah
by Frank Herbert
SLIGHT SPOILERS
This one was much more scattered than the previous book. In the second book, the story takes a new perspective, focusing much more on Paul's prophetic abilities and the difficulties that come with being emperor, but the dialogue and progression of the story is so wack. Herbert builds up all this tension with the conspirators and how they have some kind of master plan but their shit kinda just falls apart for no reason. Like, this guy really does not know how to write endings. The same thing happens in the first book - it feels like the author just got impatient and decided to skip to the happy ending as fast as he could. The female characters in this book are also extremely upsetting. Paul's wife Chani is basically just a walking womb, and she barely develops at all and then just fucking dies? Alia, Paul's sister, has so many cool powers that could have been explored, but throughout the book she's kind of just Paul's sidekick. You'd think that an author who spent three years writing a book while his wife paid the bills would show a little more appreciation for his female characters, no? I just feel like they could use so much more development. The same can be said with so many other characters. The dialogue in this book is also so shit compared to the previous one. Half the time I don't know wtf they're talking about. Not to mention the fact that Paul is just way too powerful. There really isn't much suspense in this book, because Paul is just going to be Paul.
TLDR: Decent story, interesting politics, but wack dialogue, shitty progression, bad female characters and way too powerful main character. 2/5. I hope the third book will be better.
This one was much more scattered than the previous book. In the second book, the story takes a new perspective, focusing much more on Paul's prophetic abilities and the difficulties that come with being emperor, but the dialogue and progression of the story is so wack. Herbert builds up all this tension with the conspirators and how they have some kind of master plan but their shit kinda just falls apart for no reason. Like, this guy really does not know how to write endings. The same thing happens in the first book - it feels like the author just got impatient and decided to skip to the happy ending as fast as he could. The female characters in this book are also extremely upsetting. Paul's wife Chani is basically just a walking womb, and she barely develops at all and then just fucking dies? Alia, Paul's sister, has so many cool powers that could have been explored, but throughout the book she's kind of just Paul's sidekick. You'd think that an author who spent three years writing a book while his wife paid the bills would show a little more appreciation for his female characters, no? I just feel like they could use so much more development. The same can be said with so many other characters. The dialogue in this book is also so shit compared to the previous one. Half the time I don't know wtf they're talking about. Not to mention the fact that Paul is just way too powerful. There really isn't much suspense in this book, because Paul is just going to be Paul.
TLDR: Decent story, interesting politics, but wack dialogue, shitty progression, bad female characters and way too powerful main character. 2/5. I hope the third book will be better.