Book thoughts: Dune Messiah
Published 29 December 2025
Dune: Messiah is a 300-page book that contains about 50 pages of interesting plot development accompanied by 250 pages of wordy analogising and abstract musing.
It was a struggle to get through, much like its predecessor, despite being only half as long. It took me just about a year to finish, though that was punctuated with long stretches of not touching it whatsoever. I have a bad habit of getting stuck on a book like this, refusing to move onto another until I've finished my current one, but having no motivation to continue reading it.
The painful thing is that the interesting parts of this book are indeed quite compelling; I do find myself intrigued by the intergalactic politics and generational tales that the Dune setting contains. Enough so that I could almost see myself having a crack at the third book, Children of Dune.
In any case, for now I will move on to one of the other sci-fi books on my shelf which may fare better: my options include Solaris, Leviathan Wakes, and Hyperion, all highly-spoken of entries that I hope feature much less endless philosophising than Frank Herbert's novels thus far.