Dune boxset

Rating:
Summary: A Prophet awakens, a cosmic Jihad begins....
Review: One of the most intricate and challenging series of my experience. I can read it again 30 years later and see meanings and references that I never saw before. These are books that can be read at many levels.

This is the story of the far, far future. It is a universe where man has conquered space and colonised an Empire of many worlds. Yet, it is an Empire ruled in the ancient corrupt pattern- brutality, greed, fear, and Byzantine game playing. An Emperor rules, playing great family against great family. Secret societies play their own intricate games in the shadows. It is all the more terrifying because men have long since rid themselves of thinking machines (the Butlerian Jihad) and instead unlocked human mental potential to become far more than mere machines could ever be. Yet these gifts are still used in a vast dark, medieval web. Inspite of the intrigues, the wars, the assassinations, it is a narrow and stagnant society.

Enter Paul Atreides, scion of House Atreides. We see Paul grow from boy, to man, to more than man. In Paul we see the result of ninety generations of selective breeding to produce the ultimate in human development- the Kwisatz Haderach, a being capable of stepping outside of space-time itself to see all aspects of past and future in the eternal NOW. Yet Paul has not awakened to his potential. It takes his being plunged into the heart of the hell-planet Dune to awaken him. Here among the wild and honorable Fremen of the planet-wide desert he is tranformed into the warrior prophet long awaited- Muad'Dib. Even the Emperor and his elite killers learn to tremble in fear, for the prophet has the strength of righteousness and heaven smiles upon him. It is time for cleansing Jihad to wash over the stars themselves....

This complete boxed set of paperbacks contains Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse Dune. The series actually reaches it's climax in God Emperor of Dune. The remaining volumes, while good, are largely epilog.