This is God Emperor of Dune, a book that might be profound, but is definitely a turgid mass. Where the prior books in the series delighted in a striptease of revelation, The Will to Battle has a single message, and that is "HAVE YOU READ HOBBES!"

In the wake of the assassination and resurrection of J.E.D.D. MASON, the world is heading towards war. Bridger is gone (how? I really don't remember Seven Surrenders very well), and replaced with Achilles. You know, that Achilles, wine-dark seas, bronze spears, walls of Troy; the Achilles. A war is coming, but the long peace leading to the 25th century means that no one knows how to fight it.

There's rich pathos. How do we distinguish between communities, mobs, armies? What does a person experience as they move from between memberships in these states, and how is their precious individual subjectivity changed. War demands a mechanization of murder, that the apparatus of politics and economy be directed towards lethal force. And when a supreme commander can so obviously decide the fate of millions, war forces us to ask if our leaders are truly making history, or if they are merely in the front ranks of the mob.

There's an interesting book in the premise, the chance for more revelation of character as we move from peace to war. But instead, the alliances and characterization are conventional, static rather than radical. The main plot is concerned with a sideshow of a trial and an Olympic Games, a pause before the actual fighting. And then when it does happen, the Utopian Hive reveals what any student of war in the 21st century knows, rapid kinetic action is very very powerful.

The divine nature of J.E.D.D. MASON, fully acknowledged by the book (he's a God, visiting from another universe), is another wasted opportunity, a rehash of theodicy rather than an exploration of what it means to face the Ultimate. What a shame. I'm probably going to give the whole series a reread when the last book drops, but this book is a stinker with few redeeming qualities. Even Palmer's renaissance erudition has changed from charming quirk to cloying affectation.

***

On a re-read, I like this book a little better, though I still don't like it much. There's a lot going on in this book, to wit the declining political situation as the world of the Hives slides towards open warfare, various intrigues between parties to shape that war, our narrator Mycroft's mental implosion, as he pleads with himself, other characters, Hobbes, and you the reader, and finally the Outside Context Problem of J.E.D.D MASON walking around in his divine flesh, pronouncing his desire to remake the world without limits and damn anything in his path.

What gets squeezed out is any warm characterization, and much of the sense of mystery. We know who all these people are, how the major components of the setting work. The new elements are at the fringes, the precise workings of the various legal machineries present, a new editorial voice in the Ninth Anonymous who takes over from Mycroft at various moments. But much of this book feels like vamping before we actually get to the fireworks factory, and what I hope will be a satisfying conclusion in book 4.