FOB (Feedback on Book) : Dune Messiah
A couple of months ago I had read the Children of Dune, the third installment of the initial dune trilogy. I finished reading the Dune Messiah a couple of days ago. I must be destined to read the trilogy in reverse, cause this is the second part. Now the only part that I have still to read from the original trilogy is Dune. I am sure I will have found and finished it in a couple of months.
If Children of Dune for me was a revelation in social intrigue and politics, Dune Messiah was a window into the soul of a person who becomes a Messiah in his lifetime. It’s a grand thought. A living god. Like a pharaoh, but even more revered. In Dun Messiah Paul Maud’dib has achieved in his lifetime which only the followers of Jesus and Mohammed could do for them.
Dune Messiah is very unlike the Children of Dune. The characters in the Children of Dune were even more introspective than Dune Messiah. The conflicts they had were dominantly inner in nature. That’s what made it such an intriguing book. Dune Messiah is not an ordinary book, yet the character of Leto II in Children of Dune to me is very much above that of Paul Maud’dib in Dune Messiah.
The story of Paul Maud’dib in Dune Messiah so much like something out of the Mughal sultanate. An absolute emperor, bound by the conspiracy of his own courtiers. Maud’dib’s gift of prescience made the story extraordinary because everything for him was a clear pre-destined path. Yet, Frank Herbert did not let Maud’dib’s fatalistic rejection to the ravages of time take over the book. He pulled off the astonishing feat of writing a story in which the ending was explained at the beginning, and yet managed to surprise the readers.
The original Dune trilogy has been rated as one of the top storylines in science fiction. I find that it’s a great story, but I don’t rate this as the best of science fiction. In the two Dune books that I have read yet, the pre-dominant theme has been human relationships, politics, and religion. Science is only a back-drop to this astonishing tale.
For someone like me who gets his kicks out of ‘hard sf’, the kind written by Larry Niven in his Known space series, by Heinlein, or Asimov, this book was grand, but it wasn’t breathtaking.
On a second note, I was reading William Shatner’s (Yes, the same guy who played James T. Kirk), Teklord. Dune wiped the floor with it. I felt surprised the editor had let Shatner get away with that writing.
