I’ve reread Dune several times, reread Dune Messiah a couple years ago and then Children of Dune this year, enjoying Herbert’s writing more and more. In the past ten years, I’ve grown more comfortable with my love of all things Dune, and maybe matured some in my appreciation of fantasy literature. I reviewed this in 2011, giving it a two star, and taking a break from the Dune series and even from Frank Herbert for over three years. There’s an old saying about how you can never step twice into the same river, because both you and the river have changed. This is the greatest reversal of opinion about a book I’ve ever had.

I’m going to change everything and establish a revolution that will affect tens of billions of people and then when that’s done, I’m going to be a prophet of what went wrong and institute a theological framework for the continuation of our rule. Paul M’uab Dib: Son, I’m going to break all the rules and then provide a new order to the galaxy. Emperor is a masterpiece of philosophy, and the best book in the series, but I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped somewhere in the middle and stuffed it to the back of your shelf for ten years before you gave it another chance. I can’t explain without giving plot away. to become the ultimate Tyrant, and Predator of humankind. In Emperor, we discover that the boy’s plan to save humanity from tyranny is. Instead, he published his most difficult and daring book yet. Herbert could have left us there, many thought he would when he finished his Dune Trilogy. We closed on the boy becoming yet another saviour and had only a vague, hopeful idea of what he intended to do next. In those two volumes, everything assumed and trusted became so much sand, and a son had to destroy his Messiah father’s legacy to save the universe from religious genocide and tyranny. Now it's one of my top-ten comfort reads, and I see so much in Leto I want for myself.ĭune was the perfect hero book, and then Herbert turned the trope of “boy becomes Messiah and saves the noble people” on its head with Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. Hated every person in it, did not understand why anyone acted the way they did. I hated this book the first time I read it.

God emperor of dune barnes and noble