God Emperor of Dune

Honestly have a mixed reaction to this installment in the Dune franchise. On one hand, it's brilliantly written, with a ton of interesting concepts, and great moments, but on the other hand, it drags along quite a bit. Moreover, I can't call this a masterpiece on the level of the past few books. It's still good, but I guess it somewhat felt more like a side-story to the Dune universe, since Idaho is really the only character left from the original cast. And I mean, that led into some great “out-of-time” moments with Idaho; arguably one of the best characters in this novel, next to Leto II. When it comes to Leto, I think it came down to personal preference, but I thought his character was extremely intriguing. He's a God, slowly losing his humanity, but as the story goes on, it starts to seem like he still has a lot of humanity left in him, that ultimately stands as his weakness (besides water). I didn't really feel too fond of the newer characters, but I still thought Frank wrote them in a way that made them good characters in my eyes. Story-wise, it's perfect, and it concludes on a decent note. I'm still contemplating if I should continue after this, since a good majority of the original characters are gone now, and all the new characters Frank introduces don't give off the same appeal as the old ones, besides Leto II and Moneo. Overall, it may be the weakest one I've read. The plot is amazing and far surpasses Children and Messiah in terms of grandiose-ness, but it lacked much of an emotional pull that the others had, for me, at least.