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Nice take. Dune Messiah is a strange book, and THB it put me off the entire franchise when I first read it in high school. A re-reading a few years ago only did a little to rehabilitate it. It's supposed to be brilliant, but I find it heavy handed and a subjectively tough read.

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You have nailed the saga and Herbert's trippy brain with aplomb! Did not Herbert enjoy psychedelics while writing everything?

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IMHO, The Dune series fall off a cliff after Dune 2. Messiah, Children and God Emperor are all getting steadily worse. I've stopped there so no idea if Heretics and beyond are any good.

WRT the discourse - it has to be said that, as a teenager, I totally missed the 'Paul ascension is bad'. Like, sure, I got religious fervor isn't good (and I was sorry to see Stilgar devolve from a badass mentor to Paul to a religious devotee, though that's one sentence and you don't actually 'see' much of that) but that's the tool Paul has at his disposal.

I didn't even think the Emperor was a bad guy. A bit paranoid maybe in that he felt compelled to crush the Atreides when Duke Leto would have had clearly no interest in seizing the throne illegitimately. The Harkonens are clearly less nice but, even there, the fact is that the Baron is studiously obsessed with efficiency and doesn't kill randomly. It's just that, without the personality, warmth and ability to engender love of the Atreides family, he finds cruelty to be one of the instrument of power. Machiavel would agree.

But, as an adult, I became aware of Herbert's own take on the topic. And, like, what a wuss. Billions die in a jihad. Like, sure, but what's that, as a percentage? That's what matters. Not absolute numbers. And, if it is unavoidable, because the human race has grasped it's stagnating and need to mix the bloodlines and it only 'knows' how to do that through generalised warfare and refugee exodus, why is that anything to do with Paul? If he had had centuries to plan things differently, then yes. But he arrives when everything is about to blow up anyhow...

The God Emperor actually shows that, with centuries to plan, humanity can be made to evolve without the mass murders but from memory, his reign wasn't much fun either, even if billions weren't killed... Still, a future of unlimited human potential is worth a bit of present-day sacrifices...

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He doesn't "arrive when everything is about to blow up", he *is* the reason everything blew up. The galaxy was a bad place but it was NOT on the verge of Fremen genociding the known universe.

Also, viewing loss of human life purely as a number to judge comparatively to the total number of humans is... not really an empathetic or nuanced view. Paul felt bad about causing the deaths of 11 billion because he was a teenager who directly caused the death of 11 billion (humans by the way, yknow, his own species?) Like maybe there's some remorse over murder instead of a prescient 15 year old deciding that huge loss of life was just "numbers."

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No. The books state clearly repeatedly that humanity is “conscious” (on some level) of stagnating and looking for an explosion of violence in which to renew itself. Paul is a trigger but not the cause.

The book also states that the political equilibrium of the Imperium is unstable, with its tripod structure and technological ban.

As to empathy, fair enough. But like wanting revenge on people “only guilty by circumstances of their birth/positions in the game” isn’t very mature or nuanced either.

I think Paul comes to term with the Jihad at the end of book 2. He’s not happy about it but he knows it’s happening with or without him and it’s out of his control.

He regrets it later mostly because Frank Herbert wanted to make his point. Though, in-universe, you can say that guilt eventually destroys him.

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Didn’t this because I have t read Dune Messiah but I just have to say 10/10 title

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