Th preserve humanity's future, he sacrificed his own by merging with a sandworm, granting him near immortality as God Emperor of Dune for the past thirty-five hundred years. Leto Atreides, the son of the world's savior, the Emperor Paul Muad'Dib, is still alive but far from human. 'Milennia have passed on Arrakis, and he once-desert planet is green with life. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. But their true weapon remains a man who has lived countless lifetimes-a man who served under the God Emperor Paul Muad'Dib. And once they've mastered breeding sandworms, the Sisterhood will control the production of the greatest commodity in the known galaxy-the spice melange. Under the leadership of Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, the Bene Gesserit have colonized a green world on the planet Chapterhouse and are turning it into a desert, mile by scorched mile. Only one faction remains a viable threat to their total conquest-the Bene Gesserit, heirs to Dune's power. The remnants of the Old Empire have been consumed by the violent matriarchal cult known as the Honored Matres. Frank Herbert's Final Novel in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles-the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time The desert planet Arrakis, called Dune, has been destroyed. God Emperor of Dune is still solidly in print - but for entertainment's sake, the cover shown here is from my 1982 New English Library copy.Mass Market Paperback. Although in some ways predictable, Herbert also manages to shock with the book's ending. There are lots of details to love, from the identification of one person as 'the Duncan' (as opposed to Duncan) to the various plots and attempts to subvert Leto's vision. But set against this, we really get a feel for the challenges faced by Leto and his need for surprise having mostly lived within the strictures of prescience. As always with Herbert you get rather more cod-philosophy and metaphysical musings than are desirable - and its hard to understand the justification for the museum Fremen.

Yet it's to Herbert's credit that with such an apparently unlovable central character and this disjoint from our old familiar characters, it doesn't take long before the reader is immersed. The action is set more than 2,000 years after the previous book. Although not quite as effective as Dune itself, Herbert here manages the near impossible of taking a no-longer-human character in the apparently monstrous part-human, part-sandworm Leto and making him both interesting and sympathetic.įor a few pages, the reader suffers a significant disconnect. Frank Herbert exceeded expectations with God Emperor of Dune, which managed to capture some of the scope and power of the original.

The fourth book in a series is a test for any author, especially at the time this was written (the 1980s), when trilogies were frequently the limit.

God emperor of dune cover