[This review contains mild spoilers as it delves into the character of Paul.]
The saga continues. The Harkonnens have been defeated. The Emperor of the Known Universe dethroned. And his daughter, Princess Irulen, to be wed to Paul Muad'Dib. That's how the story in the first book ended. It's a standalone book. The ending is a happy one. But naturally, I was curious to know what would happen in Paul's rein. What about the bloody future he saw? So, I decided to continue reading.
Dune Messiah is told in the third person omniscient. It continues the story of Paul Muad'Dib focusing on the consequences of his reign that lasted twelve years after the events of the first book. Where the first book was all about the rise of a hero, the second is about his downfall. It's like a balance. Paul is an example of "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain".
In the first book, we all were rooting for him; he was but a fifteen-year-old child when he was indirectly uprooted from his homeworld Caladin by decree of the emperor Shaddam IV, his father was killed by the Harkonnens and was forced into exile along with his mother. His rallying the Fremen against the Harkonnen usurpers was just and his jihad was justifiable. I felt exhilarated throughout his journey as he gained his abilities, from being a Mentat, a Bene Gesserit adept to a full-blown navigator of prescience.
By the end of the first book, anyway, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that Paul is turning into another perfect Gary Stu: the Bene Gesserit paving the way for the Fremen's Mehdi through their Missionaria Protectiva, Paul's royal blood of both houses Atreides and Harkonnen, and all his powers. All these attributes condensed in a single character are overkill. In short, he got it easy. There's nothing unique about him because hidden hands were at work. What matters then for the readers to feel and relate to him are his choices and actions, which the second book will highlight these aspects.
Dune Messiah tells a different kind of hero, one readers of sci-fi and fantasy aren't accustomed to. In the introduction by the author's son, Brian Herbert, he says that editors rejected the book and called it the "disappointment of the year". They "loved the majestic, heroic aspects of Dune and hated the antithetical elements of the sequel. Readers wanted stories about heroes accomplishing great feats", not stories that take into account the realistic and humanistic nature of the hero.
In this sense, Paul's quest in the sequel isn't outwards. It's inwards. He's still the same (At least, he thinks so), but his ability of prescience leads him eventually to be the very thing he always feard of becoming—a figurehead, even a god, for militant religious fanatics of an interstellar religious government. Throughout the book, Herbert keeps reminding us that Paul didn't want any of it. He snatched the position of Emperor to prevent a bloody future, but when that bloody future came to be, Paul stated that it was better than a bloodier future. It's a cycle, a vicious one, Paul finds himself trapped in... because violence only leads to violence. He's just a player, a mote of dust stirred by the wind, and the wind is Jihad. He thought that he could control it, and he did, when he used it to free the Fremen, but then things got out of hand and Jihad became Paul's boogeyman.
"He didn't use the Jihad. The Jihad used him."
How? Because Jihad is an idea that existed long before him, and once ideas embed themselves in one's consciousness, they become hard to kill.
“You can’t stop a mental epidemic. It leaps from person to person across parsecs. It’s overwhelmingly contagious. It strikes at the unprotected side, in the place where we lodge the fragments of other such plagues. Who can stop such a thing? Muad’Dib hasn’t the antidote. The thing has roots in chaos. Can orders reach there?"
Since the first book, everything Paul ever did was an attempt to put an end to this holy war. Guided—or misguided—by his visions, he committed unthinkable atrocities in the name of peace.
“Statistics: at a conservative estimate, I’ve killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. I’ve wiped out the followers of forty religions which had existed since—
Paul just replaced a blood-thirsty emperor with a worse one. In the book, the guy equates himself with Ghengis Khan and Hitler, and even smirks at their not-very-impressive statistics of people killed in their wars. I was like, "Whoa! Wait a sec!" That was the tipping point when I lost interest in him.
But then again, Paul isn't that clear-cut and prone to easy interpretation. Remember that he's just a man who happened to have certain abilities, who thought he could do something good, who fucked up, who realized later that,
"there are problems in this universe for which there are no answers. Nothing. Nothing can be done."
That's the reason why he realized that he shouldn't have tampered with the flow of the future in the first place. But the realization was too late. It came at the expense of his reason to live, at the expense of his beloved Chani.
Summary:
Dune Messiah is a book that plays with the ideal hero image and presents something realistic. It's about political intrigue, power struggle, ideas of morality, and immortality.
To get the best experience of the second book, do NOT approach it while having the first book as a reference. Read it as a standalone book.
Even though the rating is lower than the first book, I still want to invest in the third book, Children of Dune.
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