God Emperor of Dune (Dune Chronicles 4) by Frank Herbert

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Centuries have passed on Dune, and the planet is green with life. Leto, son of Dune's savior, is still alive but far from human, and the fate of all humanity hangs on his awesome sacrifice ...

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The seemingly immortal God Emperor Leto II has ruled his Empire for more than 3,500 years, his lifespan lengthened due to his decision in Children of Dune to merge his human body with sandtrout, the haploid phase of the giant sandworms of Arrakis. His continued evolution has slowly transformed him, altering his human form into what he calls a 'pre-worm'. His body has come to resemble a small version of the ancient sandworms of Arrakis, ribbed, elongated, and covered in scaly sandtrout; his face remains, as do his hands and arms, but his legs and feet have atrophied to be of no use. He moves from place to place on a large cart of Ixian manufacture, and it is later revealed that his brain has gradually diffused into the rest of his body, becoming a series of nodes throughout his whole form. The sandtrout skin makes him virtually impervious to harm, even allowing him to survive lasgun fire.

During his long reign, Leto has enforced a state of peace throughout his multigalactic empire, both through tight control of his enormous hoard of the spice melange and the military might of his Fish Speaker army. The old Imperium is basically non-existent; the Landsraad has ceased to exist and only a few remnants of the Great Houses survive. The Bene Gesserit and Spacing Guild have endured, although both have been forced to adapt to Leto's absolute control over melange and his powerful prescience, and CHOAM has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. His reign is considered by many to be depraved and despotic, but he is confident that his actions will ensure the survival of the human race.

Leto has employed a series of gholas grown from the cells of Duncan Idaho, the faithful Swordmaster of House Atreides. Duncan functions both as the captain of Leto's guard and as a familiar face to calm Leto in his moments of distress. They remind Leto of his family, and he feels that he owes Duncan for his service and devotion to House Atreides. Over the centuries, a significant number of the gholas have attempted to assassinate Leto through various means after struggling with the conflict between their intense loyalty to House Atreides and the moral disgust triggered by the repression and stagnation Leto has forced upon the Empire. These feelings, compounded with the uneasy doubt caused by being millennia out of their time, drives some of the Duncan Idaho gholas insane.

Leto's "Golden Path," as he calls it, is a millennia-spanning attempt to produce a human who is invisible to a watcher gifted with prescience. This breeding plan, begun with the marriage of Leto's twin sister Ghanima to Farad'n Corrino, has resulted in Leto's majordomo Moneo Atreides and his daughter Siona. Moneo has served Leto faithfully for the majority of his life, having been a rebel until he was shown the Golden Path in a test by Leto. Siona is the leader of a group of rebels seeking to overthrow the God Emperor and locate his hidden hoard of melange. Unbeknownst to Siona, Nayla — her close friend and de facto bodyguard — worships Leto, and is under orders to protect and obey Siona in all things while reporting on her rebellious activities.

During a raid on his Citadel, Siona and her friends steal, among other things, a series of excerpts from Leto's private journal. Unknown to them, Leto is aware of their activities and allows them to continue. In perusing some of the items and documents stolen from the Citadel, Siona learns that Leto remains capable of love, and plots to use this as a weapon against him. At the same time, the new Ixian ambassador, Hwi Noree, is sent to the court of the God Emperor. Immediately entranced by her beauty, grace, and purity, Leto begins to be tortured by the knowledge that he and Hwi are separated by his continued transformation. For her part, Hwi desires nothing more than to serve the God Emperor, and she quickly becomes a confidante, finally expressing her love of Leto. The latest incarnation of Duncan is also captivated by Hwi's beauty, but is rebuffed by Leto, who warns that Hwi is his alone.

Because of his intense feelings for Hwi and the fact that she had never appeared in his prescient visions, Leto realizes that she is a trap, trained and sent by the Ixians to weaken him. However, he is unable to send her away, and she gladly accepts his offer to remain. It is revealed that Hwi had been grown inside an Ixian no-room — a device that shields its occupants from prescient view — from cells of a former Ixian ambassador, Malky, who had been a cynical and roguish friend of the God Emperor.

Through discussions with Moneo and Leto, Duncan learns about Leto's transformation, the Fish Speakers, and the oppressive measures Leto takes to maintain his absolute control over the Empire. He begins to grow more agitated and restless, though he continues in his duties, defending the God Emperor from an attack by Tleilaxu Face Dancers. Duncan struggles with feelings of inadequacy and the confusion and disorientation that result from existing in a time alien to him. Duncan meets Siona, and though the two of them are coldly formal to one another, they eventually unite to kill Leto and end his tyrannical rule over mankind.

Leto and Hwi decide to marry, and lead a wedding procession from Leto's Little Citadel to Tuono Village, where Duncan and Siona have been sent. While crossing the Idaho River, Siona orders Nayla to cut the supports of the bridge with a lasgun, spilling Moneo, Hwi, Leto, and a number of couriers into the jagged rocks in the canyon below. Nayla obeys despite her fanaticism toward the God Emperor, believing that the instructions are a test of her loyalty. Leto survives the fall, but is immersed in water, and his body begins to dissolve, just as did the sandworms of ancient Dune. In a final conversation with Siona and Duncan, Leto reveals that Siona is the embodiment of the Golden Path, a human completely shielded from prescient view. He explains that humanity is now free from the domination of oracles, free to scatter throughout the universe, never again to face complete domination. After revealing the location of his secret spice hoard, Leto dies, leaving Duncan and Siona to face the task of managing the empire.

The major themes explored in God Emperor of Dune are the cyclical patterns of human society. Using his ancestral memories, Leto II can recall the tyrannical fashions from Babylon through the Jesuits and thus builds an empire existing as a complete nexus of all these methods. The empire differs from the historical tyrants in that it is deliberately designed to end in destruction, with the hope that humanity will never succumb to such patterns again. Leto II personally explores the emergent effects of civilisation, noting that most hierarchical structures are remnants of evolutionary urges toward safety. Thus by forming a perfectly safe and stable empire, Leto II delivers a message to be felt throughout history.

Characters/People edit see section history

Leto II Atreides: son of Paul Atrides, god emperor of Dune
Moneo: descendant of Paul Atrides, Leto's majordomo
Duncan Idaho: Ghola, commander of Letos' army
Malky: ex Ixian ambassador on Rakis
Siona: Moneo's Daughter, leader of rebels against Leto II
Mother Anteac: a Bene Gesserit on Rakis
Hwi Noree: Ixian ambassador on Rakis
Nayla: a Fish Speaker, she serves Leto and Siona

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Quotes edit see section history

“Oh, the landscapes I have seen! And the people! The far wanderings of the Fremen and all the rest of it. Even back through the myths to Terra. Oh, the lessons in astronomy and intrigue, the migrations, the disheveled flights, the leg-aching and lung-aching runs through so many nights on all of those cosmic specs where we have defended our transient possession. I tell you we are a marvel and my memories leave no doubt of this.”
The Stolen Journals
“Sometimes I indulge myself in safaris which no other being may take. I strike inward along the axis of my memories. Like a schoolchild reporting on a vacation trip, I take up my subject. Let it be...female intellectuals! I course backward into the ocean which is my ancestors. I am a great winged fish in the depths. The mouth of my awareness opens and I scoop them up! Sometimes...sometimes I hunt out specific persons recorded in our histories. What a private joy to relive the life of such a one while I mock the academic pretensions which supposedly formed a biography.”
The Stolen Journals
“You, the first person to encounter my chronicles for at least four thousand years, beware. Do not feel honored by your primacy in reading the revelations of my Ixian storehouse. You will find much pain in it. Other than the few glimpses required to assure me that the Golden Path continued, I never wanted to peer beyond those four millennia. Therefore, I am not sure what the events in my journals may signify to your times. I only know that my journals have suffered oblivion and that the events which I recount have undoubtedly been submitted to historical distortion for eons. I assure you that the ability to view our futures can become a bore. Even to be thought of as a god, as I certainly was, can become ultimately boring. It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.”
Inscription on the storehouse at Dar-es-Balat
“Enemies strengthen you.Allies weaken.I tell you this in the hope that it will help you understand why I act as I do in the full knowledge that great forces accumulate in my Empire with but one wish - the wish to destroy me. You who read these words may know full well what actually happened, but I doubt that you understand it.”
The Stolen Journals
“Some say I have no conscience. How false they are, even to themselves. I am the only conscience which has ever existed. As wine retains the perfume of its cask, I retain the essence of my most ancient genesis, and that is the seed of conscience. That is what makes me holy. I am God because I am the only one who really knows his heredity!”
The Stolen Journals
“Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as a rekoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul, but listen instead to your anger and your rage.”
Lord Leto to a Penitent, From the Oral History
“Odd as it may seem, great struggles such as the one you can see emerging from my journals are not always visible to the participants. Much depends on what people dream in the secrecy of their hearts. I have always been as concerned with the shaping of dreams as with the shaping of actions. Between the lines of my journals is the struggle with humankind's view of itself - a sweaty contest on a field where motives from our darkest past can well up out of an unconscious reservoir and become events with which we not only must live but contend. It is the hydra-headed monster which always attacks from your blind side. I pray, therefore, that when you have traversed my portion of the Golden Path you no longer will be innocent children dancing to music you cannot hear.”
The Stolen Journals
“I know the evil of my ancestors because I am those people. The balance is delicate in the extreme. I know that few of ;you who read my words have ever thought about your ancestors this way. It has not occurred to you that your ancestors were survivors and that the survival itself sometimes involved savage decisions, a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works very hard to suppress. What price will you pay for that suppression? Will you accept your won extinction?”
The Stolen Journals
“The female sense of sharing originated as familial sharing - care of the young, the gathering and preparation of food, sharing joys, love and sorrows. Funeral lamentation originated with women. Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested from them only after its social power became too dominant. Women were the first medical researchers and practitioners. There has never been any clear balance between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes with knowledge.”
The Stolen Journals
“Over here sand blows; over there sand blows.Over there a rich man waits; over here I wait.”
The Voice of Shai-Hulud, From the Oral History

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“This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.”
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“Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”
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Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat.
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“Never attempt to reason with people who know they are right!”
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The difference between a good administrator and a bad one is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate choices.” “Acceptable choices?” “They usually can be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, hesitates, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems.”
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“Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.”
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Most civilization is based on cowardice. It’s so easy to civilize by teaching cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery. You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons. You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos. You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
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“You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you would not want to die.”
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Enemies strengthen you. Allies weaken.
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“This is their weakness, Duncan. Radicals always see matters in terms which are too simple—black and white, good and evil, them and us. By addressing complex matters in that way, they rip open a passage for chaos. The art of government as you call it, is the mastery of chaos.”
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Setting & Locations edit see section history

Rakis - new name for Arrakis

Onn: city on Rakis

Organizations edit see section history

First Sentence edit see section history

The three people running northward through moon shadows in the Forbidden Forest were strung out along almost half a kilometer.

Errata edit see section history

Page 58, instead of 'Sonia said' it should be 'Siona said'.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 4 of 9 in Dune Chronicles. (standard series)

Preceded by Children of Dune, and followed by Heretics of Dune.

This is book 4 of 16 in Dune Universe. (universe)

Preceded by Children of Dune, and followed by Heretics of Dune.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

Frank Herbert (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Putnam
Country: United States
Publication Date: May 28, 1981
ISBN: 0575029765
Page Count: 423

Classification edit see section history

Library of Congress: PS3558.E63 G6 1981
Dewey: 813.54

Subjects edit see section history

Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Authors, A-Z › ( H ) › Herbert, Frank
Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Science Fiction

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Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

The Jesus IncidentFrank and Ranson, Bill Herbert

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God Emperor of Dune (1981) (edit title/settings)

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