Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Dune Messiah

Dune Messiah (Dune Chronicles, Book 2)

Frank Herbert

Date: 01 November, 1994   —   $7.19   —   Book

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Rating:

Fiction, Science Fiction

Paul Atreides is not a particularly happy man. He has ignited a jihad across the planets of the Imperium; people look at him as if he were a god; his sister Alia, who is haunted by the fact that she might at any minute be overwhelmed by the lives she carries within her, runs strange religious rites that trade on the Atreides name; and his official wife is not the wife of his heart. He is burdened and trapped by his sense of the future and goes the only way that he can - because, it is hinted, there is a far worse alternative to war, death, and godhood.

The Tleilaxu bring to Paul a ghola, a clone who was grown from the cells of the dead swordsman Duncan Idaho. The ghola, Hayt, shows signs of retaining cellular memory of "his" past, a dilemma for those who knew and loved Duncan - because the gifts of the Tleilax are dangerous, and who knows what they really are.

This is one of the short novels of Dune, and in fact was combined with Children of Dune by the Sci-Fi Channel when they filmed the sequel to Dune. It does, in fact, go very well with that novel, but by itself it is a bit weak.

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