Dune Messiah

Yuck. What a badly written book.

I read this hot off the Villeneuve Dune movie. I'd read the first Dune novel 20 years ago and didn't much love it, but respected its position in the scifi canon. Also had been warned off the other novels. But I didn't realize quite how rough even this second book is, often considered one of the better ones.

It's not all awful, I did manage to finish it and enjoyed it mostly. It helps that it's mercifully short. It's just so badly written. Overwrought prose. Characters that make no sense. Batshit insane ideas that somehow end up being mundane and unsurprising. Silly embellishments like ghouls and dwarfs that don't add anything but some borrowed exoticism. And it's all so claustrophobic: so little happens in so few places. I can't imagine how this gets made into a movie, something apparently now in the planning.

There is some brilliance in here. Herbert's deeply imagined vision of collapsing empire is interesting. The tragedy of Maud'dib's jihad is a popular theme for Dune fans, too, although I don't honestly know why given how poorly Herbert writes about it. But I will give the author credit for suggesting larger concepts that fans can then spin into stories into their own heads.

Not much danger of me reading any of the other books now.