After 3 long painful months I've finally finished it and I have no shame in admitting I've barely understood what the frick has happened in it if at all. Go ahead, call me a brainlet.
 Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
 |
Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
did you not read the first two books? Dune 3 isn't that hard to understand. 4, 5, and 6 is where things start to get trippy
Opened thread to post basically this exact post. I can't see how anyone could have trouble with CoD unless they went in blind without reading Dune and Dune Messiah. It was pretty straightforward to me when I read them in order.
I did. The characters' allegiances and motivations are very confusing. The golden path is some vague bullshit. The ending lost me completely. Did it mean Leto was possessed the whole time? What's his endgame?
>4, 5, and 6 is where things start to get tripp
Oh god, and I thought i was done with the most difficult parts.
His endgame is avoiding/making sure humanity survives some kind of apocalyptic scenario called Krazilec. Herbert died before he could specify what that was though.
What other questions do you have about the plot? I'll try to answer if I can
What was Jessica grand design for Farad? Is this plot point left to be resolved in future books or did I just not get int?
What the frick do Benne-Gesserit even want now? Save Atreides genes to try and breed another Kvizac Hederach but get it right this time?
Who did Leto become at the end? He called some name that came out of nowhere and it's implied he is some kind of tyrant now? Was he abomination the whole time?
Why does he mention continuing Benne-Gesserit's program when he is THE end-product of it?
What's happened to Paul? What was he terrified of? Why is he pre-born all of a sudden and it's implied he had the same problems as twins and Alia?
IIRC Jessica partly wanted to get back at Alia (whom she suspected was possessed by the Baron) but also wanted to get back in the good graces of the BG sisterhood by marrying off Faradn to Ghanima to save what they could of the Kwisatz Haderach genes so they could try again in a few generations. The Sisterhood wanted a prescient that they could control rather than a wildcard like Paul or Leto.
As for Leto, it's not clear whether he's actually possessed by one of his ancestors or not. Herbert seems to flipflop on this issue quite a bit in the next book. Leto and Ghanima were both pre-born and thus have both been "abominations" since the moment they were brought into awareness before they were born.
Paul was not preborn. Paul's deal is that after Chani died, he just gave up on everything. He sees that his actions have lead to the spiritual death of the Fremen, many of whom have grown decadent and degenerated like the sardaukar before them. He also thinks the kwizarate is bureaucratic bullshit. That's why he goes around as a preacher preaching against it.
Paul also saw a coming apocalyptic event he called Krazilec and saw a path that humanity would need to follow in order to ensure the survival of the species. However, after Chani died, Paul lost the will to go on and just gave up on everything.
>What was Jessica grand design for Farad?
To free him from the influence of his mother, who had lined him up as a future emperor. In the end he becomes the "Harq al-Arda" who writes most of the chapter prefaces. The Atreides domesticated him as their private historian.
>What the frick do Benne-Gesserit even want now?
Obviously their plans were derailed by Paul. But they still see themselves as manipulators of human evolution, even if they're reduced to supporting actors.
>Who did Leto become at the end? Was he abomination the whole time?
He mentions early on (to Stilgar I think) that he is a "collective" of his ancestors. He has found a way to manage their presence in his head without being possessed by any particular one. While the Bene Gesserit would still regard this as "Abomination," he retains a free will of his own.
>What's happened to Paul? What was he terrified of?
His own prescience. While he possessed it, it effectively locked him into a course of action. When you can foresee the consequences of everything you do, it is logic that guides your choices rather than free will. Leto sees a way out of that trap, but that is dealt with in the later novels.
Think of the Bene Gesserit like the females of an alpha male gorilla's harem, but the alpha male is missing and has been replaced with these less than perfect fill-ins. Their goal is, through the manipulation of genetic lines, to create the perfect alpha male that can frick them silly and see all futures and instinctively know how to guide them in the right direction. In essence, they want a perfect man.
You just didn't get it. When someone becomes Bene Gesserit, they are Bene Gesserit forever. The deep training changes you. He's not mentioned in future books, his role is to breed with Ghanima to further Leto's plans, that is all. A Corrino and an Atreides.
This is harder to answer and is brought up in Heretics and Chapterhouse, although not really much in God Emperor since that is entirely about Leto. However it might help to think of them like humanity's shepherd, guiding them down the correct path. Producing a Kwisatz Haderach through their breeding program was meant to accomplish this, because they believed him to be "One who is many places at once" literally, combining the aspects of all known memory related uses of the spice. He can see into the past through his genetic memories like the Bene Gessert, but unlike them is not limited to the maternal side. He can see into the future like Guild Navigators but is not limited to only the near future. He can compute instantly what will happen in the present or what will be the most logical or best course to take like a Mentat but as Paul states in the first book, he turned out to be something more than a Mentat.
All of this is because of his unique genes which they have tried to achieve for thousands of years. Things didn't exactly go as planned for the Bene Gessert since Paul threw off their shackles and ruled himself. And you'll see what happens in the last three books.
Leto is seeing into the future because he is also a Kwisatz Haderach, just one that the Bene Gesserit didn't intend to create. Abomination is the word they use for those whose ego memories have taken over. More detail is given later about how Leto manages to avoid this. Ghanima hypnotized herself into believing Leto was dead and the trauma that caused allowed her to stay sane as well. This is less explained but not as important since it's Ghanima.
You'll see why he has to continue the Bene Gesserit's breeding program in the later books.
Paul was afraid of prescience, and stunned by it. As early as the first book, he was seeing visions of the jihad he would lead with the Fremen if he was allowed to go to Arrakis and become one of them. At the end of the book when he is duelling Feyd Rautha, he realizes that even if he allows himself to die in the duel, that will not stop the jihad from happening. Too much is set in motion and cannot be undone. Presumably he tries to avert it but is unsuccessful and some 60 billion people die as the Fremen death commandos range across the known universe. Wouldn't that terrify you? Also, the spice agony is how the Bene Gesserit awaken other memory. Those that don't survive it either die or become abomination and are killed. I forget exactly when this happens to Paul, but for Leto it was in Jacurutu, right before he accepts the sandtrout as his skin. Paul has the same problems as Leto because Paul is Leto. You will see in God Emperor, but the collective memories of all Leto's ancestors naturally includes Paul. Paul as an individual simply couldn't face The Golden Path that both he and Leto foresaw as the correct path for humanity to avert catastrophe. Now, I believe that Leto basically accomplishes this by the time God Emperor begins, and you'll see how, but Leto also mentions another event, using two distinct terms, I believe those refer to something else, but that is up to interpretation because unfortunately Frank died before he could write the final Dune book. Oh well.
I hope this explains things a bit better and you read the rest of the books. It's genuinely the greatest series of books I've ever read.
Also it is interesting to note that Paul shied away from The Golden Path and Leto did not, despite Leto being generally considered Abomination by the Bene Gesserit. Not because he was truly possessed or mad (or was he...?), but because he represented something they did not intend and could not control. Regardless, I believe that the forming of disparate personalities into a rock solid whole throughout the event of CoD allowed Leto to succeed where Paul failed. Paul, being an individual, had no frame of reference when it came to experiencing and controlling his ancestral memories. Leto, being pre born via the spice Chani was consuming while pregnant, had already experienced lifetimes upon lifetimes more than Paul ever did. Leto was balanced upon a razor's edge, ready to fall into madness should he fail to assert dominance over his ancestral memories, but the rewards were worth it since he was able to use them to forge ahead toward The Golden Path where Paul was not.
/sperging
Herbert wrote himself into a corner, he setup all this stuff about the distant future with no consideration for how the series would progress towards that distance future and was too autistic to just jump forward in time and call it good. So Leto Jr happens. The later books are only difficult in the sense that they try your patience unless you are that sort of plotgay who is perfectly content with being along for the ride.
I disagree. The fate of the entire human race is not so simple to conclude as you seem to think.
I never implied they were simple, what I did imply was that Herbert attempted to simplify too much by explaining everything.
"just jump forward" as in not attempt to explain everything with something as ridiculous as Leto becoming the worm and an entire novel that is mostly the worm explaining everything to useful idiots.
That's the thing, they were idiots because they were not him, so he was trying to turn them from idiots into those who could see the golden path. It worked for me as the reader, an idiot. I thought it was excellent, not ridiculous.
Also sandworms themselves were never even explained, much less the spice. And things like the Hotlzmann effect? There's a few lines in Heretics or Chapterhouse about how literally nobody understands how it works, just that the equation is solid and so the effect is reproducible. Teg's superhuman abilities aren't explained either. Or the Honored Matres, or how Axlotl Tanks work, or Prana Bindu...
The golden path could have been explained in a paragraph (someone probably did so itt) if was not for Leto playing his little games and drawing it out into a tiresome slow reveal drawn out over hundreds of pages. Most of those dialogues serve no real purpose. Should have just kept with using the chapter prefaces and clues spread about the novel to fill in those gaps but he did not have enough of a story to fill up God Emperor, so we get pages and pages of the worst sort of exposition.
I disagree. Explain how you and I could correctly follow a Golden Path in our world. It's not that simple. Sure an overall impression of "the course we must take to avoid disaster" is adequate for an introduction, but it is nothing compared to what must actually be done. Even thousands of years after his death, the Bene Gesserit are still unknowingly following it. Which leads Odrade to question what their Noble Purpose is.
I did not say he should have reduced it to a simple summery, I said he should have continued on with the method he established, spreading the information between the chapter prefaces and the text so he could avoid the large blocks of exposition which mostly repeat stuff we already know, each dialogue providing only a small amount of new information considering their length.
>too autistic to jump forward in time.
He has a 3500 year time skip followed by another thousand-ish year time skip. are you stupid?
I feel the same. Dune was easy, though I think the pacing towards the end was a bit rushed. Messiah was nice. Halfway through COD I felt a bit lost.
Children of dune was the easiest book dude
Do not try to understand it when you read it. Get into a trance like mind and just absorb it.
It's literal autist fap fiction
If you don't understand that, I don't know what to tell you
i didn't think children of dune was very hard to follow, but i did think it was the most boring one to get through. i read all the others in a couple days but this one took me a whole month and half because i could just not muster up the energy to drag myself through it. i did like the jessica and farradn chapters, and once leto went off on his own that was pretty good too. but the whole first bit was just painful
Dune is a fantastic novel, but Dune Messiah put me to sleep and I can't bring myself to go any further. Frank Herbert somehow made the downfall of turbo space Hitler boring and that's kind of impressive.
I felt much the same my first time reading through Messiah. I figured on the reread I would read Dune, skip Messiah, and continue on to Children of Dune. But around the end of CoD and beginning of God Emperor, I knew that I had to reread all four because they're all inseparable. You can't just take one of them out and leave the rest unmarred. Maybe Dune itself, but that's only because you don't know what's going to happen.