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Review by Jaimie Moore on January 17th, 2011
Yeah!
This book I found to be better than Dune Messiah. Herbert has gone back to the idea of showing how social events, political events, religous events etc are all just parodies of each other and has made this even clearer by mimicing the struggles for power between different factions within the Atreides family with that of the universal empire as a whole.
You will need a bit of patience to get through the beginning as it unfolds somewhat clumsily. You flit between characters and don't fully understand their new interactions. it is set a few years beyond book 2 and nothing is initially explained to fill in the gap. You do get this information but will need to wait for it.
All in all it stands well next to Dune and although not longer groundbreaking, it is definately more than just an album track in the series. I guess you can blame it for being formulaic - disparate characters gradually getting furhter apart, central climax at the end of part one and then gradually following all of the characters new individual paths before ending with a Dickensian coincidence. but the finale is so good that we can forgive the lazy way we get there.