5 stars
First Sentence: What led you to take your particular approach to a history of Muad’Dib?
Thoughts: It’s been twelve years since Paul Atreides defeated the Corrino emperor. Now he’s Emperor of the known universe. His Jihad has swept across and subjugated all the occupied planets. His rule is secure. Except it isn’t.
Conspiracies have been forming against Muad’Dib. One of these contains some of his most dangerous enemies: Bene Gesserit Reverent Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, the Guild Navigator Edric, a Tleilaxu Face Dancer named Scytale, and Paul’s own legal wife Princess Irulan. All of them have good reasons for turning against him. The Reverend Mother’s reasons date back to Dune, Edric isn’t happy with Paul’s monopoly and rationing of spice, Irulan is mad because Paul loves Chani more than her and won’t give her a child, and Scytale just wants to watch the world burn.
The conspirators present Paul with a gift: a ghola named Hayt. A ghola is a clone created from the cells of a dead person. The particular person Hayt was cloned from is Paul’s old friend and teacher Duncan Idaho. He looks, sounds, and moves like Duncan, but he doesn’t have any of Duncan’s memories. Paul knows that accepting this gift is dangerous, but he does it anyway.
Why? Because he knows the end is near. His visions have been getting steadily darker. He foresees that giving in to his and Chani’s desires for a child will spell doom for both of them, but if he doesn’t things will get much worse. Irulan had been secretly slipping a contraceptive into Chani’s food, but when Chani switches to a spice-heavy diet she can’t keep it up. The spice counteracts the contraceptive and Chani does get pregnant, but the damage has already been done.
Meanwhile Alia is coming into her own. She was pre-born with all the memories of her female ancestors going back to time immemorial, but she’s still sixteen years old with all the problems that brings. One of those problems is Hayt. She, like Paul, knows he’s dangerous, but he’s also very good looking. It doesn’t help that he’s attracted to Alia as well. Also, her prescience has been showing her the same doom Paul foresees and she doesn’t like it. Especially since she knows she can’t do anything at all about it.
And then Paul goes to a secret meeting with a Fremen Fedaykin injured in the Jihad. His doom begins that night. He can’t fight the future, but even his prescience can’t show him everything.
The hopefulness at the end of Dune is gone in this book. The Jihad brought peace across the empire, but it was a peace bought in oceans of blood. Paul knew this from the beginning, but he was caught up in the winds of his own prescience and couldn’t break free. Now he can but it will be a freedom dearly bought with the blood of people Paul loves.
The Eclectic Reviewer 