Reviews for this book have called it "heady" and "deep." I cannot concur more. Few books have mastered this combination of deep material with a hurtling plot, and this is one of them.Of the Dune Chronicles so far (this is book 4), God Emperor of Dune is my clear favorite. This profoundly philosophical installment in "the bestselling sci-fi series of all time" explores the now-verdant world of Arrakis thirty-five hundred years after the events in Children of Dune. Leto, the nine-year old son of P...

Please, make it stop.

Thirty five hundred years has passed since the end of the previous book. Leto II (I will just call him Leto for the sake of brevity) has been the God Emperor of the known Universe practically all this time. He is not shy about using pure despotic methods of governing when he feels like it. Unfortunately with all his infinite wisdom he forgot the most important one: a smart despot knows when to leave; the stupid one remains in power until his subjects remove his head – against his wishes obviousl...

It's not until the end of this book that you begin to understand Herbert's grand plan for his series. DUNE is really about shaking man out of an evolutionary cul-de-sac, showing a frustrated civil(?) society that despite its technological and social superiority is stagnating. The inventions of the Bene Gesseritt, the Guild, the Mentats, all of these are bulwarks against the decline of man that are failing. And the only one to understand this is Leto II, God Emperor of the Known Universe. In his

God Emperor of Dune is one of those books you can measure inner growth and change by.As a child, I hated it. I got bogged down in what I felt was a lack of story and plot. I hated the characters which I felt were very, very one dimensional and boring. I hated the protagonist, Leto II, who I thought was stuffy and pretentious.Then, as an adult, I rediscovered it and it is now my favorite book of the Dune series (the original Dune is right behind it) and indeed one of my favorite books in the worl...

God Emperor of Dune is the red-headed stepchild of the series. Frank Herbert delves into the mind of a near omniscient god-creature. Many people feel disturbed or bored by this book, calling it the most "dull" of the series. From a philosophical point of view, this is probably the most advanced book in the series. Definitions of humanity and morality are contrasted in very personal ways in this book. Those familiar with Lovecraftian Cthulu mythos could well use this as a textbook to start thinki...

I hated this book the first time I read it. Hated every person in it, did not understand why anyone acted the way they did. Now it's one of my top-ten comfort reads, and I see so much in Leto I want for myself. Dune was the perfect hero book, and then Herbert turned the trope of “boy becomes Messiah and saves the noble people” on its head with Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. In those two volumes, everything assumed and trusted became so much sand, and a son had to destroy his Messiah father’s...

[SPOILER ALERT: if you never read Children of Dune STOP NOW!]Leto II is now the God Emperor after merging with the sandtrout and becoming a monstrous worm-man powered by melange. He rules the known universe with an iron fist - not unlike his Aunt Alya did actually - but this is of course because he is SAVING the human race from itself. He has an army of woman, the Fish Speakers, that carry out his bidding spreading terror and, still, peace across his vast domain. He has reigned for 3000+ years a...

Okay, this was my second read of God Emperor of Dune. Honestly, it was quite an useful read because now I understand more precisely what was Leto's goal and the exact purpose of his Golden Path. To make a long story short the Golden Path is nothing more than the survival of the human race. At the end of the old empire (period described in the previous books) the human race has become doomed beyond hope with a corrupt and decadent feudal ruling system, stagnant and with an major addiction to subs...

Buddy read with Athena!“I am a collection of the obsolete, a relic of the damned, of the lost and strayed. I am the waylaid pieces of history which sank out of sight in all of our pasts. Such an accumulation of riffraff has never before been imagined.”More than three thousand years have passed since the events described in the Great Dune Trilogy, and everything has changed. Arrakis is now a planet of running water and green growth, and the days of stillsuits and crysknives are gone. The Sandworm...

Useful background book to read if you've ever thought you might like to rule the Universe. It's a really terrible job.

I don't accept this monstrosity made of ramblings of an old fart as a Dune book. About 1870 pages of boring drivel that smothers you in it's contemptuous arrogance.GEoD should have been a 50 pages of intro to the next installment of this series. And that would be about 40 pages too long in my opinion but still 1830 pages less of a torture.

*** 2021 reread - Paul M’uab Dib: Son, I’m going to break all the rules and then provide a new order to the galaxy. I’m going to change everything and establish a revolution that will affect tens of billions of people and then when that’s done, I’m going to be a prophet of what went wrong and institute a theological framework for the continuation of our rule.Leto II: Hold my beer.This is the greatest reversal of opinion about a book I’ve ever had.There’s an old saying about how you can never ste...

God Emperor of DuneBook 4 of the Dune ChroniclesBy Frank HerbertA Dune Retrospective by Eric AllenWhat do you say about the book that was so completely terrible that it so turned you off of the series that you refused to read the four books that came after it for over a decade? This book is bad in a way that few things achieve. Oh, yes, there are worse things than this book in human history, and I do not mean to cheapen the horror of those atrocities, but when it comes to complete and utter fail...

The view of the desert soothed him.Quite a heady experience, and not one to be entered lightly.Don’t even consider reading this if you haven’t read the novels preceding it. However, if you are invested in the Dune Universe and you have read the original Dune Trilogy (Dune / Dune Messiah / Children of Dune) this can be a very rewarding, albeit challenging, read.Presented as part future historical text, part memoir and part mythos, God Emperor of Dune is somewhat unlike any of the Dune novels that...

For any of the times that I may have complained about the characters or how I may not have loved them as much as the previous volumes, I have three or four OMG moments for everything else about this book.The sheer scope of future history is one bit. But I'm all about the reveals about the Golden Path and what it meant for the social, political, scientific, even genderizing the future for humanity. Or perhaps the fact that Leto II Atreides, the son of Paul, with his prolonged life, transforming i...

God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4), Frank HerbertGod Emperor of Dune is a science fiction novel by Frank Herbert published in 1981, the fourth in his Dune series of six novels. Leto II Atreides, the God Emperor, has ruled the universe as a tyrant for 3,500 years after becoming a hybrid of human and giant sandworm in Children of Dune. The death of all other sand-worms, and his control of the remaining supply of the all-important drug melange, has allowed him to keep civilization under his complete com...

It always astonished him how a desert provoked thoughts of religion.Frank Herbert gives the impression of being an iconoclastic, if somewhat dour, thinker and general navel-gazer. But there is a mischievous side to his intellect as well, as evinced by the running joke in ‘God Emperor of Dune’ about Leto II’s scandalous sexual proclivities, a rumour spread by the dastardly Tleilaxu. Does the man-worm have any form of genitalia? At one point, Leto II wonders if he should sport a strap-on just to s...

6.0 stars. On my list of All Time Favorite novels. The Dune series is one of the most literate and beautifully written science fiction series ever and this novel certainly continues that tradition of excellence. In fact, this may be may favorite installment of the entire series. I find I may be in the minority with that sentiment based on other reviews I have read, but I found the contemplative and cerebral nature of the story and the many expository monologues and dialogues among the characters...

Having finished writing the third book of the trilogy, Children of Dune (first published in Analog, January-April 1976), Frank Herbert did not intend to revisit that imaginary universe. He had said all he wished to say about Paul Atreides and his legacy, and about the spice, and sandworms, and the Bene Gesserit, and the like. He would move on to other matters.And so he did. The Dosadi Experiment followed hard on the heels of Children of Dune, first published in the summer of 1977. This was succe...