the more i go ahead beyond Paul's story the more i miss one particular aspect of it -everyone in the world has their own agendas and their own script on how to perform a persona in both public and private spaces. So (for example) a soldier may not trust his ruler's consort, while not really hating her, but they'd have to talk around each other and keep analyzing if the other person is a danger to them. Because of that, there's lot's of pretense and social scripts each person adopts, lots of careful long-term planning they walk through.

that's not the part i miss! that still happens. but these people also used to succumb to their own emotions and made interesting decisions that go against any sort of "perfect" plan. someone could have a fully-laid out logical plot to benefit themselves, and ruin it all because they genuinely loved their partner.

so Dune Messiah and Children of Dune have complex plotting done by various factions against each other too, but the more you progress from the former to the latter the more you see that the story becomes simply about how the different folks on the chessboard will outmaneuver each other. and because of that, we see plans being held back from us, the readers, until it's most dramatically satisfying to have the plot reveal dazzle us.

that's standard for these types of books, and it's also not what the first Dune did! in a scene with multiple folks plotting against each other, you'd always know what those plots were and how each person in that scene felt about carrying them out. the drama was not from withheld information, it was from seeing these people wrestle with themselves and fall into doubt because of these interpersonal dynamics.

it was about the people!! not the plotting!!!

there's also some weird decisions in this book i'm still not fully onboard with. it's overall fine, but i do wish it was better. or at least different and divorced enough from the first that i wasn't constantly comparing it to the first Dune.