The novel “Dune Messiah” by Frank Herbert was published for the first time in 1969 serialized in the magazine “Galaxy” and then as a book. It’s the second book in the Dune saga and follows “Dune”.

Twelve years after becoming the Emperor of the known universe, Paul “Muad’Dib” Atreides is the most powerful man in human history, at least in theory. For the Fremen, he has become a kind of deity, and that fueled a jihad that caused over sixty billion deaths. Paul himself ended up being carried away by that jihad, unable to stop it, as it would cost an even greater amount of deaths.

Paul’s power seems impossible to challenge but a conspiracy unites the Bene Gesserit, the Space Guild, and the Bene Tleilax in an attempt to overthrow him. Irulan, Paul’s official consort in a purely formal marriage, is an accomplice as well. A Guild Navigator uses his powers of prescience to shield the conspirators from Paul’s prescience. As the Face Dancer Scytale begins his mission on Arrakis, a gift is brought to the Emperor: Hayt, a ghola of Duncan Idaho.