“Dune Messiah” by Frank Herbert

I liked this book, although it feels very different from the first one.

The first Dune had a lot going on: survival, politics, war, giant worms, religious revolution, all that fun stuff. This one feels more like one enormous buildup to something that never quite materializes by the end.

If I understood correctly, a lot of this is basically setup for the next book, which is fine. I still enjoyed learning what happened to Arrakis after Paul took power, how the empire changed, and meeting all the new factions trying to manipulate everything from the shadows. The worldbuilding is still probably my favourite part of these books.

But I have one complaint.

Nukes.

Again.

In the first book there is a time jump and then suddenly, hey, we have nukes. Here I got to the part where the nuke goes off and genuinely had to reread it at least twice because I thought I had skipped a page or missed some important setup.

Nope.

Nuke goes off. People get blinded. Carry on.

I don't know why nuclear weapons in Dune apparently operate according to horror movie rules where they just suddenly appear behind you.

Anyway, still a good book. Much slower and more political than the first, and it feels like the middle piece of a larger story rather than something fully satisfying on its own.

Will definitely keep reading the saga. I'm curious where all of this is actually going.