I enjoyed reading this book primarily since it was only 8 hours, as opposed to Dune one; however, Dune three is 17 hours for the audiobook, so it’s interesting to see the length vary across the series.
The Kleilaxu are very interesting, and I’m very compelled to know whether or not they actually had the plan to make haight fail to kill Paul so he could see it possible to revive Chani, or if that was actually a double bluff.
This book is strange in the sense that there are so many chances to kill Paul, but for some, like destiny or fate, they don’t do it. Also, Paul could have killed Scytale many times but didn’t do the same thing because of this oracular vision.
I didn’t quite get how his jihad became out of his control and how the fedaykin just killed everybody.
I also still am not sure about the jump 12 years into the future. Actually, I believe that it’s a great plot line, but it was definitely slightly jarring at the start to get into context when we had jumped forward 12 years.
Overall, the ending was satisfying in the sense that we saw the resolution of the Duncan Idaho question, as well as the plot to get rid of Paul. I still don’t understand how or by what means that bomb was used against Otheym. Did they know that Paul was there and they didn’t want to kill him, only blind him? With respect to him walking out into the desert and dying, maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but I didn’t really get the reason for this. Is it because he wanted to just let his son take over and become a martyr, or was it because he knew the moon would fall for him regardless or some other reason?
Maybe it was because he was losing his oracular vision, it seems.
Otherwise, the constant switching between characters by this point was okay for me, as opposed to the first book, where it was hard to understand the context shifts. Furthermore, despite a one-month gap where I did not read this book, I still am relatively comprehensive of what I read, which is good.
It will be interesting to read the Children of Dune, where, evidently, it will focus on his two children. I’m interested to know whether or not Herbert will mirror the Aaliyah-Paul dynamic with Paul’s two children.
I also never understood really why Jessica moved back to her home planet. I know it was mentioned in the book because she could not stand her two children, or rather what they had become, but I didn’t see really a concrete reason why she was living there.