Book Review: God Emperor of Dune

Would you still love me if I was a worm? The fourth book in Frank Herbert’s Dune Saga.

I knew the Dune saga started to get weird with Children of Dune, and I thought I was well prepared for the utter insanity of God Emperor of Dune, but I don’t think it’s possible to properly prepare yourself for it. You just have to dive right in. It’s so much weirder than you could possibly anticipate.

Blurb

More than three thousand years have passed since the first events recorded in Dune. Only one link survives with those tumultuous times: the grotesque figure of Leto Atreides, son of the prophet Paul Muad'Dib, and now the virtually immortal God Emperor of Dune.

He alone understands the future, and he knows with a terrible certainty that the evolution of his race is at an end unless he can breed new qualities into his species.

But to achieve his final victory, Leto Atreides must also bring about his own downfall...

Review

One of the things I’ve noticed as I read through this saga is that Frank Herbert’s prose changes quite a bit. A lot of people struggle with the first book because of the writing style, and I noted the oddness of it in my review which you can find here. In short, amongst other things (such as it being in the third person omniscient POV), Herbert often omits the word ‘and’ from a lot of his sentences. It’s such a little thing but it does make for a strange reading experience. This oddity is entirely absent from God Emperor of Dune, and I don’t recall it featuring in Children very much either. The prose here is a lot more ‘normal’, which is about the only thing you could say about the book that is normal! I guess Herbert thought the subject matter was bonkers enough.

So, what is so legendarily strange about this book? Well, first of all, it’s told in a mixed epistolary and narrative style, with the former effectively bookending the story, though there are a couple of journal entry chapters sprinkled throughout. As expected from the Dune Saga by this point, each chapter is headed by an excerpt from the journals of God Emperor Leto II, waxing lyrical on philosophy, governance, politics and religion, but I stress that these are in addition to the epistolary chapters. Until the end of the book, it’s never quite clear when in the timeline these epistolary chapters are taking place. So the story itself is not entirely chronological. The narrative chapters, are, however.

The next weird thing is undoubtedly the utterly absurd body-horror of God Emperor Leto himself. When we last left him in Children of Dune, he was covered in sandtrout like a sort-of battle armour which gave him superpowers. In God Emperor, over 3000 years have passed, and he’s now almost entirely metamorphosed into a giant sandworm, but for his face and arms. Humanity lives under his absolute tyrannical oppression, made necessary by his prescience, following his Golden Path.

Then there’s the constant philosophising and the strange cultures which have arisen on Arrakis in the past three millennia under his rule. Honestly, most of it went way over my head, but I also found it oddly compelling.

The plot is also very weird, in the sense that it doesn’t follow any sort of standard progression. We’re given this singular vignette into Leto’s long life, with these certain characters around him, because this is also the point at which things change. But most of what happens doesn’t really drive anything forward. It starts off with the character Siona—daughter to the God Emperor’s majordomo—trying to foment rebellion against the Worm, but then she disappears for a bit, and we’re only told about what she’s doing behind the scenes from Leto’s perspective, and then she becomes more important to the story nearer the end. I think what I’m getting at here is that the focus of the book shifts around quite a lot. There’s a lot to do with Duncan Idaho, a weird romance subplot, breeding programs, plots and schemes from the Bene Gesserit, the Tleilaxu and the Ixians, some action here and there. But it’s mostly Leto philosophising with either Duncan or his majordomo, Moneo.

It’s also unintentionally hilarious. Some of the imagery involving Leto had me in fits—like him driving around in his royal cart, running people over. It felt like Bowser sitting in the smallest possible vehicle with the highest possible handling, drifting around in Mario Kart. Leto’s manner of speech I found quite funny as well—the way he constantly repeats people’s names was completely unnecessary and it put the idea in my mind that he was losing his grip on reality somewhat. The ending also surprised me a lot, and it was humorously reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz.

God Emperor of Dune is a really hard book to rate. I was thoroughly engrossed, compelled to read it all and to try to understand what was going on. But at the same time, would I recommend it? Did I enjoy it? Was it good? I think so, maybe? Yes? It was just so damn bizarre. It’s certainly unlike anything I’ve ever read. Some books are more than a story, they’re an experience, and God Emperor of Dune is one of those. If you’re reading through the Dune Saga (and I recommend you do, especially for its timeliness), it’s an absolutely essential entry, and I feel compelled to start Heretics of Dune sooner rather than later.