Oh man. I'm distressed to see so many bad reviews of God Emperor of Dune (and the books after it)
GEoD is certainly a different kind of story to the first three. I think it's more of a theoretical sociology treatise than an action-packed sci fi thriller. In writing it I really think Herbert was trying to accomplish different goals than he was with its predecessors. Alot of Leto's social engineering objectives are more or less explained in Heretics of Dune. Also, with regards to Leto's aloof high-and-mightiness, well, I think its a highly 'believable' character trait for someone who has seen (or indeed who has
experienced) every epoch of human history through other-memory, and who has seen humanity's inevitable future through prescience. Leto
does know everything, and as such he is totally alone, indeed totally 'unsurprisable' (he laments countless times the utter boredom of already knowing the exact unfolding of the future), yet despite this he is not made indifferent to the needs of humanity and maintains the Atreides 'nobility'. He follows the Golden Path as the only means of preventing humanity from destorying itself... the details of which are explained in the following book.
Leto doesn't explain himself in this particular installment of the Dune saga because Herbert knows he doesnt need to. The reader is on-par with the other characters in the story in being held ignorant to Leto's designs to alter the course of human social history through his millenia-spanning forced tranquility. I very much think that Herbert knew exactly what he was going to write in 'Heretics' as he was writing 'God Emperor', as practically all of Leto's actions are explained via the thousands of years of hindsight from the age of 'Leto the Tyrant' that the characters in 'Heretics' have.
Thus I think that in contrast to the first action-packed Dune trilogy, God Emperor functions more as an incredibly elaborate and emotional historical theory textbook for the action that takes place in 'Heretics'. And as such it works tremendously well. Also, I think that Herbert had the Dune saga as a whole in mind when he wrote these books, and God Emperor is the necessarily dry installment, absolutely laden with anthropological theory, in order to lay the groundwork for the later 'finale' books.
Alot of people obviously didn't have the patience for it (and I'll admit it took me a little while to get out of 'action' mode and into 'philosophically theorizing' mode in order to fully appreciate GEoD), but that's a real shame as I think Herbert offers some great philosophical ideas regarding the predictable patterns of human social engineering in this book. And after wading through all of the hard slog of it all (it took me twice as long to read this one as any of the other Dune novels due to the fact that I'd have to read a section, then think 'hmmmm I wonder what Herbert meant by that', then read the section over again [img]smile.gif[/img] ) you are really set up for an atmospherically rich treat with Heretics of Dune...
[ 07-11-2004, 08:08 AM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]