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mburnamfink 's review for:
God Emperor of Dune
by Frank Herbert
God Emperor is a sharp bend in the Dune series. The intricate plots, politics, and prescient visions of the first three books are replaced with Leto II Atreides, emperor of human space, over 3000 years old, ruler, tyrant, and above all, The Worm That Is God.
Through absolute monopoly on the precious spice, as well as control of religion and an all-female army of fanatic warrior-priestess, Leto has remade humanity in his image. He is the ultimate predator, and humans are reduced to space-faring peasants before his power. Yet this all has a plan, Leto II's Golden Path, a hard course to ensure the survival of the species. And to get there, Leto II, in this most pivotal moment, must confront and be confronted by four people.
The first is Momeo, his majordomo, trusted adviser, and long-time survivor. The second is Momeo's daughter Siona, a product of breeding program as extensive as the one that created her distant ancestor Paul-Muad'Dib. The third is a Duncan Idaho, latest in the line of gholas produced by the Tleilaxu, and the last is Hwi Noree, the Ixian ambassador who has been trained and educated as a snare for a god, a last reminder of his lost humanity.
This is a weird, lumpy book, as a very alien Leto II tests his human companions with puzzles and paradoxes about the nature of reality, perception, humanity, government, justice, and more. With the right mindset, he is appropriately terrifying, a god made flesh. He might also be a long-winded author self-insert. And there are some bits of genuine 'old scifi author pervness'. Idaho gives a woman an organism by climbing a wall. Siona must drink spice-water teased from Leto's body.
But on the balance, this book presents a very interesting argument about the nature of human evolution, and about what it might mean to survive as a community on a cosmological scale. And interestingly for me, it's presented as a straight history, chapters proceeded by Leto's secret journals, book-ended with histographic essays on their discover thousands of years later. Dune was guided by Irulan's many histories and quotations. Messiah and Children caught up in apocrypha. In a series that has always been about the blurry boundaries between reality, history, and myth, God Emperor is a return to proper form.
Through absolute monopoly on the precious spice, as well as control of religion and an all-female army of fanatic warrior-priestess, Leto has remade humanity in his image. He is the ultimate predator, and humans are reduced to space-faring peasants before his power. Yet this all has a plan, Leto II's Golden Path, a hard course to ensure the survival of the species. And to get there, Leto II, in this most pivotal moment, must confront and be confronted by four people.
The first is Momeo, his majordomo, trusted adviser, and long-time survivor. The second is Momeo's daughter Siona, a product of breeding program as extensive as the one that created her distant ancestor Paul-Muad'Dib. The third is a Duncan Idaho, latest in the line of gholas produced by the Tleilaxu, and the last is Hwi Noree, the Ixian ambassador who has been trained and educated as a snare for a god, a last reminder of his lost humanity.
This is a weird, lumpy book, as a very alien Leto II tests his human companions with puzzles and paradoxes about the nature of reality, perception, humanity, government, justice, and more. With the right mindset, he is appropriately terrifying, a god made flesh. He might also be a long-winded author self-insert. And there are some bits of genuine 'old scifi author pervness'. Idaho gives a woman an organism by climbing a wall. Siona must drink spice-water teased from Leto's body.
But on the balance, this book presents a very interesting argument about the nature of human evolution, and about what it might mean to survive as a community on a cosmological scale. And interestingly for me, it's presented as a straight history, chapters proceeded by Leto's secret journals, book-ended with histographic essays on their discover thousands of years later. Dune was guided by Irulan's many histories and quotations. Messiah and Children caught up in apocrypha. In a series that has always been about the blurry boundaries between reality, history, and myth, God Emperor is a return to proper form.