May 11, 2023
After reading the first Dune series book around 6 months ago, I went on the web to check some reviews of the second book. I can't say that they were very great. Dune Messiah had an average rating of 3.89/5 on GoodReads whereas the first book in the series had a rating of 4.26/5.
After reading through some reviews I was slightly disappointed and thought the second book wasn't worth a read. I probably had other things I'd rather read at the time and just decided to read something else.
Fast forward 6 months I wanted to pick this book up. I thought it was going to be an easy read I could try to relax a bit. Besides, I had loved the first book and I thought that even if this one wasn't as good, it was still worth checking. I wasn't wrong. The book isn't as great as the first one, that is for sure. The first one was epic, long, inspiring, and all the characters were willing to give up their lives to stop the Harkonnens. In contrast, Dune Messiah happens 12 years after Paul (Muad'Dib) becomes the emperor. The book is half as long as the first one, and it's more focused on conspiracies, political turmoil, betrayals, and the hardship and contradictions between government and religion.
The book is fascinating in its own way. Paul, in the first book, ended up as a real hero. But in the second book, many of his weaknesses were revealed. He's still a hero, but in a different way. He's more humane, and can't escape his own destiny, beginning to feel trapped within himself.
I don't agree with most reviews saying he has become some sort of "anti-hero". It's more like he has drifted towards utilitarianism. He's more concerned with the best outcome for humanity than anything else. Even if it costs 60 billion lives across the universe, so be it. Maybe this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it's what most governments this day do anyway.
Another important aspect in the book is the dialogue quality. The dialogues were great. Heated, philosophical, and challenging. The characters are clever and deep within their morale and motives. There were some things that were a bit icky; Alia Atreides got very "girlish", which is a bit disappointing. Specially as female characters in the first book were really well worked out, but in the second book you have Alia, completely out of the blue, succumbing to a feeling of love by Duncan Idaho. That felt very artificial to me, but not enough to set a bad taste to the work.
All in all I can say that I'll be finishing up the series. This book seems to be acting more like a "setting up" for the next books to come, and thus needed to be what it needed to be.