Dune
11 minutes • June 6, 2025 • Thoughts
I’ve now read three out of the six Dune books, and am stopping for a couple of years before continuing onto the fourth. For those that have only watched the movie, these thoughts will focus on the first book initially, then switch over to talking about the series as a whole so you can avoid spoilers. I’ll let you know when you should stop.
As another side note, I have not watched the movie, so you’re getting a pure book take here. I really wanted to watch it in theaters when it was coming out, but the plans I had with a friend to see it fell through and I decided to read everything before watching. I feel like it’s one of those films that I want to watch on a nice TV, so once I get a job (hire me pls) and get a new TV, it’s going to be one of the first things I watch.
Also, second side note, I think that all three of the Dune books I read are well written and entertaining to read on some level. I would not write a review on Dune if it wasn’t worth engaging with on some level. There are plenty of books that I’ve read that are not even worth critiquing (Fourth Wing, Ranger’s Apprentice Books post Icebound Land, etc.). Dune is for sure worth critiquing as there’s a lot of things to dig into (like spice) (sorry). So let’s get to it.
First Book
One of the things I was surprised by was the time skip in the last quarter of the book when the first part of the book had built up so much to how Paul was going to align himself with the golden path. It was clear that he would become the Kwisatz Haderach, but when I realized that there was going to be a time skip, I was disappointed that we were missing out on both the buildup to how Paul would tread the golden path and how he would mentally and physically prepare for this huge thing that the Bene Gesserit had worked up to for their entire existence.
Even though the Haderarch awakening was less than I wanted it to be, the deviation from the golden path fully into embracing the jihad was enough for me to stay interested in Paul’s story, especially as it continued into the second and third books. (don’t worry, still not there yet)
Something I struggled to grasp in the first book was what exactly “the point” of the book was (hint: this will continue). When Paul wins his duel against the Emperor’s champion Feyd-Rautha, even though Paul has betrayed his vision of the golden path to embrace the jihad, it feels impossible, even at this moment of victory over the Harkonnens, that an Atreides would ever abandon humanity by not striving to do the right thing. Even if it’s hard for Paul, I felt his prescience was guiding him to something unseen, something akin to the beginning of the story, where he has visions of a future that actually comes to pass.
Speaking of, I felt that beginning made the first 75% of the book very predictable. Everything up until the time skip I had guessed was going to happen from the beginning of the book, when Paul talks about the types of prescient dreams he has of Arrakis. It gave me this strange feeling throughout the first book, like I had the same prescience that Paul realizes, a glimpse into his mind before it is restricted after the time skip.
After the time skip, this restriction from Paul’s thoughts of the future gives an interesting tinge to the events that follow, especially after the first book (still not there). While before, you are in on what Paul sees of the future, once Paul becomes a true Fremen, we no longer are given a privileged access to the future as he sees it. Instead of this access, we’re kind of strapped along for the ride through a future that Paul is already locked into, experiencing events he has already seen.
The question then becomes, what has Paul seen? Even as he ascends Arrakis to wear the crown of his new Empire, the seat of the jihad which he will wage upon the galaxy, it’s hard to believe that the Paul we’ve read about has just given up on the golden path that he strived to walk. At the end of Book 1, I was left amazed at how Paul was able to navigate those final events without dying, but also confused at the overall message of the book.
Even though Paul “failed” to tread the golden path, something that he said was going to be almost impossible to do from the outset, what was his failure saying? Was Paul’s failure a comment about the Atreides’ bloodline? The Bene Gesserit’s failed plans? Something about the Harkonnen temperament?
I wasn’t really sure. So, to figure it out, I read two more books. (This is where you should stop reading if you haven’t read the second and third books and don’t want spoilers).
Dune Messiah (Book 2)
It turns out, if you want to keep your view of the characters from Dune, continuing the series is probably a mistake. The second book was extremely boring to read, mostly because of this restricted access from Paul. Since we start from the perspective of the assassins, we know the entire plot of the book from the beginning. The only thing we don’t know, and where all the tension in the book comes from, is how Paul is going to navigate the assassination by these powerful groups that have assembled against him. We know it will happen, and he will navigate it to survive, we just don’t know what flavor of bad outcome that Paul continually references throughout the novel will actually be or how he’ll do it.
Despite largely knowing the events that will occur throughout the novel, we are dragged around with a character that knows what will happen but won’t tell us. Paul alludes to how bad the outcomes will be from the assassination, but claims it’s the only good path forward while struggling with the all-encompassing nature of prescience. It’s frustrating because he complains about the all-encompassing nature, but we don’t really see him trying to break out of it. In other words, we’re told a lot of things by Paul, but author Frank Herbert doesn’t show how Paul is locked in, or even show him struggling against it. Instead, we’re kind of forced into a commentary on the negativity of prescience from the perspective of a man who does not appear to try to struggle against fate.
A man who compares himself to Hitler (says he’s worse) and claims to have killed over 250 billion people.
It was disappointing to see Paul, the first Kwisatz Haderach, hollowed out from within. No one from Paul’s past life, neither Fremen or family, attempts to address or even see what Paul is going through. Paul’s wife, Chani (as well as Stilgar), can not even see past her vision of Paul as the all-knowing Muad’Dib, something he complains internally about having to explain to her over and over again. Alia is even subsumed into Paul’s vision of the future, despite being Jessica, and every person in Jessica’s family to ever exist. She does not even attempt to see him through any of the lenses that exist within herself (might be other reasons for this, to be fair), and instead just opts into accepting what he has chosen to do.
This inevitability of the future that Paul sees created a type of certainty in myself that made me ironically feel exactly like Paul describes himself as feeling throughout the book. By knowing the future, Paul realizes that he cannot really experience a simpler life, something that he can no longer do as he is locked into his prescient path. Similarly, I was locked into my prescient path of the book, but found myself continuing to read for some reason. There is for sure a poetic type of irony there.
Children of Dune (Book 3)
The third book similarly continues this restricted access prescience, but this time, we’re given a character that actually plans to do something to struggle against it.
Enter Leto II and his twin sister Ghanima. Leto II is Leto, but he is also Paul, and every other Atreides and pre-Atreides to ever exist, including a giga-tyrant who takes over his mind. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
There’s admittedly much more plot that happens in the third book of Dune, which makes it much easier to read than the second book in my opinion. It’s also unclear what’s going to happen (besides Leto ascending to some form of leadership), as Leto makes it clear that he doesn’t want prescience, and that he wants to struggle against any sort of set future as much as he can.
Unfortunately, our boy Herbert decides to trash Paul and, in my opinion, Jessica in the process.
Paul, who now roams Arrakis as a barely disguised version of himself called “the Preacher,” eventually meets up with his son, who confronts him for not taking the “golden path.” It turns out, Paul saw the path the entire time, and could’ve taken it the entire time he was “trapped” in prescience. Instead, he chose not to because he did not look far enough into the future. His reasoning for not looking far enough into the future is weak and something very much unlike Paul: “I didn’t want to hurt anyone.” Okay, what about the 250 billion people you killed? How about, instead of complaining about prescience, you instead look further into the future? Or not, and curse your son to take up the path that you were too weak to embrace.
Paul shying away from the golden path is seen by other readers as embracing his humanity over shedding it to ascend humanity. I see this as bullshit. It’s human to be weak, it’s human to not want to cause harm. Paul was meant to see this path for humanity, from his Bene Gesserit upbringing, to his ascension as the leader of Arrakis after his father’s death, to awakening as the Haderach. It was his destiny to lead humanity into the next stage, something he wanted and wished to do in the first book. If he didn’t want to lead, he shouldn’t have become the Haderach. He shouldn’t have become the Emperor. If the jihad would’ve happened with or without him, he could’ve elected to choose a path for himself where he was able to live a simple life with Chani, not as Emperor.
The third book characterizes Paul as someone who regularly chooses the weakest choice as a way for Herbert to showcase that even our greatest leaders are human. While I understand the message, I don’t think the foundation of Paul’s upbringing through the Duke Leto’s household supports the plethora of dumb decisions Paul makes.
As you can see, not a huge fan of Paul after the third book, especially how it recharacterizes his actions in the first Dune.
Jessica, on the other hand, has her motivations and true intent hidden. Thus, we can only really guess at if she did what she did for the Atreides, or if she was working for the Gesserit the whole time and failed. Or maybe both?
Despite Jessica’s impressive entrance back to Arrakis to deal with her daughter that she completely fucked over, it’s eventually revealed that she has only come back at the behest of the Bene Gesserit to secure the Haderach bloodline for the Gesserit’s future plans. Okay, Jessica completely abandons, then betrays, her daughter and her grandchildren to fuck Halleck on Caladan while leaving them to experience abomination, fine. Let’s pretend that’s something an Atreides would do.
There are two major issues I have with Gurney Halleck playing a part in Leto’s forced consumption of spice, though. One, I think it violates his character as I don’t understand why he would do this to an Atreides, especially as Jessica is ordering him to do this at the behest of the Bene Gesserit, something he should easily be able to discern. The force feeding of spice is just a higher stakes gom jabbar that will kill Leto II regardless of success or failure (and essentially DOES kill him).
Two, I think it’s absolutely insane for Jessica to order Halleck to force feed Leto II spice, especially considering the nature of Paul. Leading Leto II down the path of spice is essentially just fucking over the Bene Gesserit, either by making Leto useless by being dominated by his internal ancestors’ minds or by making him the most powerful being to ever live.
Even if you believe that Jessica has accepted Leto’s programming to work at his behest while still serving the Bene Gesserit, it seems kind of wild to me that she would expect anything else from the male heir of Paul before she is programmed by him. Even before leaving Caladan, as Jessica, you should assume you’re going to be outplayed by a Haderach with the ability to access your own memories and all male heir memories, including Paul’s. How could you ever possibly expect to outsmart this person? Or utilize them in the Bene Gesserit program? They’re going to manipulate you however they wish.
Overall, not a huge fan of Jessica or Paul in this third book, and Leto II turning into a giant sandworm was spoiled for me by TWO friends who had watched the movies and then read plot summaries.
Final Thoughts
I think I’ve realized I should’ve taken breaks in between books. If you read the books, you should definitely take your time in between them. Because there is so much time in between each book in universe, the natural amount of time that occurred between releases or if you artificially impose breaks on yourself gives you a sense of distance that the characters are also experiencing in the story.
After reading three books, I still struggle to see a clear message that made me feel something. It was still worth the read from a technical level, but I wish I had gotten a little more from the book, either more message-wise or plot-wise. For me, I think the most interesting commentary was on prescience as a technology that humans are unequipped to handle, except by someone like Leto II who is essentially the singularity of all the ancestors in his bloodline.
It was also interesting to hear as I was reading that Dune inspired Star Wars, something that makes total sense in retrospect. When I learned this, I thought about whether Star Wars’ plot captured me any more than Dune did and why. At the end of the day, I think the aesthetics and execution of Star Wars were more important than the plot’s outcome/message for me, and for that reason it captured me a little better. So, for example, we know Luke is going to defeat Vader through the Sequel trilogy. But it’s not what the Jedi defeating the Sith means for us, or what the rebels rising up and defeating the empire means. It’s about the drama, it’s about the lightsaber fights, it’s about the force. I wonder if I think too much about Dune because of the medium it’s in, or if it’s science fiction. Would I have had the same reaction if I had watched the films?
Reading through Dune, I was reminded of Attack on Titan frequently. (*AOT SPOILERS*) It’s hard not to with Paul’s prescience and attitude towards it being so similar to Eren’s in the final season/chapters. However, even Eren struggles HARD against his destiny before learning how locked in he is. He searches for peace in Marley. He meets the children he will kill. He attends meetings with enemy generals that demand his people’s deaths.
Paul makes no such attempt to struggle against prescient destiny. Even Eren’s reaction when he explains it to Armin at the end of the story feels like a more human expression than anything Paul says to Chani before she dies, or even Paul’s admission to Leto in Children of Dune. I also feel Attack on Titan also has a much more engaging, fast-moving plot. While in Dune, we get a lot of Paul or Leto knowing something will happen and us being dragged with them while we wait for those events to happen. This aspect of Dune is only one part of Attack on Titan’s final season. The first 3/4 of the story is more about drawing back the curtain on the world through its characters and through a continuous chain of life-or-death choices Eren has to make. Reiner and Zeke are also much more interesting, compelling villains than characters like the pedophilic Baron (WHO SHOWS UP AGAIN IN BOOK 3 WTF. I ACTUALLY COULDN’T BELIEVE IT) or the one-dimensional Scytale/Bene Gesserit/Guild Navigators.
AoT and Dune tell different stories and have different tones for their messages, but I can’t help but see similarities. And where I do see similarities, I see a much more efficient, engaging story in the more modern one. (*END AOT SPOILERS*)
So, what is Dune trying to say? Religious tyrants bad? Ecology important? Powerful people cringe? Clearly, Herbert wants there to be ambiguity to who or what is “right.” There is no one who is really good or bad, and Herbert strives to show how even the best-intentioned people can be caught up in systems larger than themselves.
Honestly though, I think all that is horseshit. Clearly, Paul had the capability of being whatever he wanted to be, perfectly positioned to not only recognize but act on what is right as a “moral” Atreides. And yet, he chose to kill 250 billion people and become Emperor of the universe. He chose stagnant humanity through aspects like claiming power and making war, over becoming the man to ascend humanity (even if it was a difficult, worm-ridden path), and eventually even curses his son to do what he CHOSE not to do. Even if he failed like his father did, at least Paul’s actions would’ve been more true to who his family tried to make him be. Fuck Paul.
I think there is more perspective I can gain by reading book 4, and potentially even the ones not written by Herbert (5 & 6). I’m going to give the Dune series a bit of a break before I read the rest, but I’ll be sure to give you all an update on what I think. I’ll probably come back to it after the next movie comes out.
And if you think my take is super dumb and want to correct me on what I think, hit me with your best shot: contact@grahamlinley.com.