Dune is probably the most important book I've ever read, but Dune Messiah never did much for me. Compared to the epic grandeur and human liberation of the first book, we have a depressing march through the tyranny of cynical politics and Paul's prescient visions. Instead of enlightening lessons, we're treated to long passages of Herbert's increasingly weird yet simultaneously banal thoughts on power, politics, economics, and religion. Worst, the characters are dimished, stagey, trotted out to speak their piece and then returned to the dressing room to wait their turn.

A decade after the events of Dune, Paul's Jihad has shaken the foundations of human civilization and cooled into a religious dictatorship, centered around the prescient emperor. A conspiracy of Paul's enemies, along with some traitorous Fremen, plot to destroy him and steal a sandworm to create a second Arrakis. Paul, meanwhile, is trapped by visions that he cannot foresee how to avoid, and the prescience blocking powers of a guild navigator brought into protect the conspirators. The plot of the book is mostly... there. Instead of the intricate wheels within wheels beloved by the Baron Harkonnen, Paul's enemies give him an obviously poisoned gift in the form of the resurrected ghola Duncan Idaho, he walks into an obvious trap based on false information, and pays a terrible price.

I'm not sure what's worse. Finding out that your messiah has feet of clay, or watching him march grimly towards destruction because the author has ordained it.

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Updates as of 2019. I still don't much like Messiah for all the reasons mentioned above. Herbert has some very clear ideas about power; he despises legal and constitutional power, is fearful about the unity of politics and religion, and is curious about the stamp that a single human may leave on history. Dune is frequently about the differences between the Atreides and Harkonnen exercises of power. To paraphrase Paul, Harkonnen power is about fear, while Atreides loyalty is bought with love.

So twelve years after the Battle of Arakeen, with the Fremen Jihad having carved a bloody path across the universe, we're asking if there is a difference. I think Herbert wants to make a point about how power is a parasite in an ecology/economy, but rather than be subtle, it's hamhanded and confusing.