Entrails obliteration review series#

In reviewing the book for a 2020’s audience it’s necessary to return to that well again and again, to share dreams of humanity in chains, destroyed or kept in comfort by an entity with powers that exceed our own. Though likely unintended by Herbert - whose fear of mechanical thought took on a different flavor - it is impossible to fully ignore the echoes of AI risk throughout the novel. It’s the story of an entity that seizes control and pursues paths and goals that seem right to it, but that are not necessarily in concert with the will of humanity as a whole. The book is thus a 400-page contemplation on the nature of power as exerted by a mind created by humans which has nonetheless surpassed them. Leto’s prescience, his nigh invulnerability, and his unrivaled levels of experience both personal and inherited allow him to use this control to its utmost while never being much in danger of losing it any assassination attempt would have to be of a magnitude sufficient to threaten Shai-Hulud, and Leto (for the most part) stays a safe distance from large bodies of water. What spice remains in the universe exists only in stockpiles he created over the course of his rule.įrom those stockpiles he ekes out poisoned riches a dose of spice essence to create a Bene Gesserit reverend mother here and a supply just great enough to enable the spacing guild to allow such travel as Leto approves there only serve to reinforce the universe’s reliance on Leto’s largess. He has driven the sandworm to extinction he is all that remains of the species. Leto’s grasp of the resource that grants this near-universal control is unshakably strong compared to his father’s. The book likens this to Hydraulic Despotism, where control of an all-important resource (generally water) allows for control of everything downstream of and reliant on that resource. Hydraulic DespotismĪs was the case in the nearly two-Christianities-ago day of Leto’s father, control of the spice resources of the planet Arakis amounts to de facto control of the universe it’s the unobtainium does-everything-you-need resource the dune universe runs off. It is a book that ponders humanity as brought to heel at the side of a benevolent and less-than-human mind with greater-than-human capabilities. It’s a book that meditates on the loneliness of true superiority, of the ennui of true invulnerability. This is the least readable of the Dune books, but also the most meaningful. As a picture of a fully-imagined empire at a particular point in time and a description of an unusual method of rulership, it’s something more. This is a book about the nature of leadership as practiced over periods of time that defy normal concepts of mortality. If this description has made you expect an action-filled novel, dispel those hopes. The nature of his ownership of them is in many ways similar to his sovereignty over the wolves that guard the forbidden forest around his citadel they too are to some extent beings of his creation and design. The members of the retreating troupe also belong to Leto, although they may not acknowledge or even suspect it. It is towards this river and the safety attained through its crossing that the group is fleeing.

The wolves are his not only by right of ownership but also apparently by right of design and creation near-immortality leaves one with much time to tinker, and he has developed the wolves to a level of sophistication sufficient that they understand the boundaries of their hunting grounds to stop at the Idaho river. This symbiosis gave Leto super-human physical powers to match the clairvoyance already enjoyed by his family and allowed him to seize control of the galactic empire.Ĭenturies of time have seen him evolve into a hybrid of a human man and a full-grown sandworm, and the resultant power and pseudo-immortality have allowed him to extend his father’s dominance of the known universe from a period of decades to an era spanning the better part of four millennia.

Entrails obliteration review series#

At the end of the third book, Leto fused his body with Arakeen sandtrout, the larval form of the Sandworms on which the plot of the series mostly hangs. The wolves belong to Leto Atreides II, the grandson of Duke Leto Atreides and son of Paul Muad’ib Atreides, the Kwisatz Haderach and protagonist of Dune I: The One You’ve Probably Read. Here, 3500 years after the chronological setting of the first novel, is immediate proof that humanity has survived in the form of a small group of people fleeing through a forest, wolves nipping at their heels. As God Emperor of Dune begins, our attention is immediately drawn to people.