Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert

RATING: THREE STARS

It's been twelve years since Paul 'Muad'Dib' Atreides ascended to the Imperial throne. In that time he has conquered the known universe and used his Fremen soldiers to unleash a devastating jihad upon the worlds of man. It's estimated that sixty-one billion people have been slaughtered in his campaign and his name is revered everywhere, forming the keystone of his Imperial theocracy.

But Paul's enemies are still rife and there are those that fear his unimaginable powers of prescience. Plans have been formed in the shadows and they lead to events that even Paul cannot foresee. The Bene Gesserit, Spacing Guild and the Tleilaxu are all against him and will stop at nothing to overthrow the Atreides family and once again control melange production for themselves . . .

The Good
Dune Messiah has an interesting, very complex plot that is predominately centred around political intrigue. It's a fast paced story and I found it was a real page turner, being full of plot twists and shocking events that I couldn't predict at all!

It's also interesting to see how Paul's powers have grown since he drank the pure spice towards the end of Dune. Frank Herbert has left no doubt whatsoever that Paul is the Kwisatz Haderach (superhuman) that the Bene Gesserit have been selectively been breeding humans for for hundreds of generations. His powers of foresight are truly terrifying and I really felt for the characters that were trying to overthrow Paul (even though I was on his side), since they were facing such an insurmountable task!

Herbert's universe has also been well thought out, with him clearly having thought very hard about how one person could govern an entire universe. I found this gave the book a sense a plausibility that I enjoyed, along with his scientific explanations of Paul's prescient powers that kept his abilities in the realm of science fiction (rather than fantasy).

The Bad
The main issue I had with Dune Messiah was with its lack of description. Herbert has a very utilitarian style of writing and his prose has been stripped down to the bare necessities. In fact, he has almost no description whatsoever in the book and has included very little dialogue. This means that his prose contains little more than events! Although this is readable and helps to maintain the pace of the story, it leave his world too bare. Herbert has created a very diverse, detailed world and it would have been nice to have had some it described. There's such a thing as leaving too much to a readers' imagination and I think stories are usually much better when an author acts almost like a 'guide', slowly building a picture of their world over the course of the book.

My Thoughts
Even though I enjoyed reading Dune Messiah, I was slightly disappointed with it as the lack of description left it a bit incomplete for me. I had to rely on my own imagination almost entirely to form a picture of Paul Atreides and the Herbert's world and had no concept of what Herbert himself thought his characters and world looked like! I will be reading Children of Dune, the next book in the Dune Chronicles, but I doubt Herbert's style of writing would have changed much and I fear that it will have exactly the same problems!