Dune Messiah – Frank Herbert

I can’t even lie, this book did not do it for me. I felt like I was moving through jelly, it was such a slow and long read for absolutely no reason. While I adored the first book, Dune, Dune Messiah was almost an unnecessary add-on in my opinion. I’ve heard amazing things about books 3, 4, 5, and 6, but Dune Messiah truly let me down. 

The story

I don’t even know what the purpose of this story was. Almost twelve – fifteen years after Paul has become Emperor, we see him maintaining his position with his sister, Alia by his side. Along with this, Chani is struggling to get pregnant due to Princess Irulan scheming with the Bene Gesserit reverend mother. 

“Wild Fremen said it well: “Four things cannot be hidden — love, smoke, a pillar of fire and a man striding across the open bled.”

– Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

Probably the only part that truly interested me in this story was the return of “Duncan Idaho”, a character that I absolutely adored in Dune. While he isn’t exactly Duncan Idaho, he develops back into the character and I loved seeing him figure out who Idaho really is and what it means to be Idaho. It was such an interesting concept. 

The writing style

I can’t tell if one of the reasons that I struggled so much with Dune Messiah was the writing style. The first book gave me a few difficulties just because I felt it was hard to understand. The concepts aren’t easy to grasp so the writing style makes it more confusing. It probably doesn’t help when I’m reading it on 2x speed from Audible LOL. 

Overall thoughts

I don’t know, after the sequel movie came out I was so excited to get myself into this story and understand it properly. I loved book one with the action scenes and brief romances, but this story just had me struggling. It’s even worse when I have no motivation to read it and just feel like it’s a chore to get through it. 

I’ll definitely be continuing with the series despite this poor rating. I feel like the series has to get better to justify the amount of people obsessed with it. I want to jump on the Dune train but I’m definitely struggling to get there. I guess we’ll see where Children of Dune takes me!

Rating: 2/5⭐