God Emperor of Dune

After battling through Children of Dune, I was uncertain whether I wanted to continue with the series. I found myself frustrated by its length and by the meandering cloak-and-dagger intrigue, which often felt as though it was going nowhere. However, the final section completely changed my perspective. I was unexpectedly engrossed by it, and I had to find out what happened next.

Children ends with our protagonist Leto fusing with the sandtrout, the larval form of the sandworm familiar from earlier books. They form a living armour around his body, granting him physical strength and speed, rendering him nearly invulnerable, and allowing him to seize control of Arrakis. Now, 3,500 years later, his transformation has taken its final shape: he has become a grotesque human–sandworm hybrid. I had heard that things become strange in God Emperor of Dune, but I was still unprepared for just how bizarre some of its ideas would be.

Oddly salient again are Leto II’s thoughts on Artificial Intelligence. Leto II is presented as the antithesis of AI, he is a biological supercomputer in the sense that he is able to access the memories of his ancestors and see the future. He believes that humanity’s reliance on machines inevitably leads them to develop a type of “machine attitude”: a rigid, hyperoptimised existence which stifles creativity and human growth. He argues that this always leads to a ruling elite enslaving them, so he rules as a tyrant, returning the Empire to a medieval form of society. Travel between planets is near impossible, and the trading of spice, the precious drug which grants a longer lifespan and prescience, on which the Empire’s economy is based, is being hoarded on Arrakis by Leto II.

I don’t always like Frank Herbert’s writing, I find it to be quite stilted and clinical at times. When he has something he wants to say, I think his characters can interact in quite unnatural ways and sometimes the point is laboured a bit too much. His characters tend to stop sounding like people and more like vehicles for philosophical debate. However, I am impressed by the way that his prose seems to change in each Dune book. God Emperor puts a much larger emphasis on dialogue than his previous work, which I felt was a welcome change after the previous instalment, which was a book focussed more on political intrigue. Again, like Children, it’s quite a slow book, but the scope is more ambitious: there are multiple scenes Leto II is sermonising, setting out his thoughts on the follies of humanity and what change he will bring about to secure humanity’s future: what he refers to as the Golden Path.

Whatever Herbert’s flaws as a writer, it is fascinating to see how the landscape of the world of Dune he built changes in each installment of the series. Surprisingly, this book is strangely humourous, and seeing the different characters react to Leto’s new form is genuinely entertaining. Leto’s transformation is presented in a sort of body horror way which took me completely by surprise. I think another distinguishing feature of Herbet’s writing style is the way that he stitches in funny or inappropriate moments.

I think you have to admire the ambition of it. It feels like this was the novel that he really wanted to write all along, and Children of Dune was just laying the groundwork for this one.