423 pages, Berkley Books, ISBN-13: 978-0425072721
Well, now, get this: whereas the first three Dune books – y’know, Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune – were a trilogy, set within several years of one another, God Emperor of Dune takes place 3500 years after the previous books and focuses squarely on Leto II as he follows his Golden Path, in which peace is kept through the universe and human beings are kept on a short leash. Oh, and he’s transformed into a sandworm with a human head. Yeah. Um…yeah. If Paul was the Julius Caesar of the future, then his son Leto is Augustus, who has established his own version of a Pax Romana – a universal Pax Letona? – creating a galactic government that has remained in power over three millennia through the absolute control of the Spice and the restricting of human movement. And, let’s not forget, that Leto can see into the future, so there’s no sneaking up on him, you can bet. The price of this peace is obvious: civilization has stagnated and many of the same institutions are still around, despite a distance in time that the typical person would find staggering.
This is an incredibly vivid book with superb characterizations, as you really feel that you know Leto II by the end, feeling the pain of his supreme loneliness, the boredom which provokes his wry, sometimes vicious sense of humor and the essential nobility which causes him to sacrifice his humanity to save the human race. With that said, the writing is at times cryptic and we are left pondering what Leto II means in his rantings. Does he create a galactic paradise to make humans understand the pitfalls of complacency? Is he saying that chaos is necessary for our survival? Is it possible that his Golden Path is an exercise to prepare humanity for what is to come, how to prepare for it and, more importantly, how to overcome the threat and evolve? What is the threat? We are cast allusions that very soon, spice will no longer be needed for interstellar space travel, thus breaking the Spacing Guild’s monopoly. It all points to the end of his empire of which he has always been aware. What has become of humanity after so many years of the Spice’s influence? How has humanity evolved? The crux of his Golden Path is not he himself, but what arises from his death and years of tyrannical control. All of this is deep stuff, and I, for one, couldn’t help but feel that I had learned something by the end – although just what it was I had no idea.
This is an incredibly vivid book with superb characterizations, as you really feel that you know Leto II by the end, feeling the pain of his supreme loneliness, the boredom which provokes his wry, sometimes vicious sense of humor and the essential nobility which causes him to sacrifice his humanity to save the human race. With that said, the writing is at times cryptic and we are left pondering what Leto II means in his rantings. Does he create a galactic paradise to make humans understand the pitfalls of complacency? Is he saying that chaos is necessary for our survival? Is it possible that his Golden Path is an exercise to prepare humanity for what is to come, how to prepare for it and, more importantly, how to overcome the threat and evolve? What is the threat? We are cast allusions that very soon, spice will no longer be needed for interstellar space travel, thus breaking the Spacing Guild’s monopoly. It all points to the end of his empire of which he has always been aware. What has become of humanity after so many years of the Spice’s influence? How has humanity evolved? The crux of his Golden Path is not he himself, but what arises from his death and years of tyrannical control. All of this is deep stuff, and I, for one, couldn’t help but feel that I had learned something by the end – although just what it was I had no idea.
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