Leto II does indeed cover himself with (immature) sandworms and becomes a giant sandworm with a teeny human face, which takes something like 5,000 years, during which he amuses himself by reforming the galaxy, becoming the God-Emperor of all mankind, and endlessly cloning Duncan. IIRC, he has various handmaidens? wives? at different points, but really? Leto is all about the Duncans. The serial Duncans have a distressing tendency to self-destruct, attempt to kill Leto, or go insane. One would think this might be a hint to Leto that he should stop cloning them, but no.
By the time the third books starts, Arrakis has been terraformed into a lovely garden, the last few descendents of Leto's twin (?) sister - now looong dead, as she inexplicably declined to cover herself in worms - all hate Leto's guts and are trying to overthrow him, and the Bene Gesserit, Space Navigators, and whoever-the-unpronouncable-gene-modifiers-are are all plotting. I can't remember what, just general plotting. IIRC, one of the plotters is a genetically engineered asexual shapeshifter, which is random but cool. Our viewpoint character on all these shenanigans is Duncan Number 10384920183.4, who is conveniently as clueless as the reader on everything and can just wander around being infodumped at.
We also periodically spend time in Leto's point-of-view, whenever Herbert wants to say something particularly profound and portentious about humanity.
There's some girl, who Leto falls in love with. There are hilarious scenes of angst in which we are treated to the sight of a giant worm romancing a woman under the silvery moon. It is very unconvincing, because it has already been established that Leto is all about the Duncan.
In the end all the plotters manage to blow up a bridge that Leto's hovercar is crossing. For some reason that escapes me, Leto's hovercar fails to hover, and he plummets to a watery grave along with his new bride. But not Duncan, because Herbert - I mean, Leto - has a thing about Duncan.
But! Leto is not really dead, for when he hits the water he splits apart into a million baby sandworms, all with a tiny unconscious seed of his personality. And Leto knew that the whole thing was going to happen - that's precog for you - and it was all part of his cunning plan to civilize humanity by taking the spice away, but then stop them getting to decadent by breaking up his own empire and forcing a massive expansion, powered by the once-again available spice, produced by all the little baby Leto-worms.
(oh, I nearly forgot - Leto has an awesomely cool personal army composed entirely of women, called the Fish Speakers, because he views male armies as a threat to civilian populations. At one point Duncan is comprehensively pwned by the Fish Speakers, who kindly inform him that he is 5,000 years out of date and an inferior model of humanity)
And then we get to book 4, which is something like 5,000 years into the future _again_, but in which they are still cloning Duncan. Evil temple prostitutes return from other galaxies and attempt to take over civilisation with their evil sex magic, but Duncan Number 34523052093548230223490 manages to stop them by becoming a kind of cross between Superman and Jesus.
I think there is a book 5 as well, which I haven't read, but it is a pretty safe bet that it involves a Duncan.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sat, Apr. 12th, 2008 07:35 pm (UTC)Leto II does indeed cover himself with (immature) sandworms and becomes a giant sandworm with a teeny human face, which takes something like 5,000 years, during which he amuses himself by reforming the galaxy, becoming the God-Emperor of all mankind, and endlessly cloning Duncan. IIRC, he has various handmaidens? wives? at different points, but really? Leto is all about the Duncans. The serial Duncans have a distressing tendency to self-destruct, attempt to kill Leto, or go insane. One would think this might be a hint to Leto that he should stop cloning them, but no.
By the time the third books starts, Arrakis has been terraformed into a lovely garden, the last few descendents of Leto's twin (?) sister - now looong dead, as she inexplicably declined to cover herself in worms - all hate Leto's guts and are trying to overthrow him, and the Bene Gesserit, Space Navigators, and whoever-the-unpronouncable-gene-modifiers-are are all plotting. I can't remember what, just general plotting. IIRC, one of the plotters is a genetically engineered asexual shapeshifter, which is random but cool. Our viewpoint character on all these shenanigans is Duncan Number 10384920183.4, who is conveniently as clueless as the reader on everything and can just wander around being infodumped at.
We also periodically spend time in Leto's point-of-view, whenever Herbert wants to say something particularly profound and portentious about humanity.
There's some girl, who Leto falls in love with. There are hilarious scenes of angst in which we are treated to the sight of a giant worm romancing a woman under the silvery moon. It is very unconvincing, because it has already been established that Leto is all about the Duncan.
In the end all the plotters manage to blow up a bridge that Leto's hovercar is crossing. For some reason that escapes me, Leto's hovercar fails to hover, and he plummets to a watery grave along with his new bride. But not Duncan, because Herbert - I mean, Leto - has a thing about Duncan.
But! Leto is not really dead, for when he hits the water he splits apart into a million baby sandworms, all with a tiny unconscious seed of his personality. And Leto knew that the whole thing was going to happen - that's precog for you - and it was all part of his cunning plan to civilize humanity by taking the spice away, but then stop them getting to decadent by breaking up his own empire and forcing a massive expansion, powered by the once-again available spice, produced by all the little baby Leto-worms.
(oh, I nearly forgot - Leto has an awesomely cool personal army composed entirely of women, called the Fish Speakers, because he views male armies as a threat to civilian populations. At one point Duncan is comprehensively pwned by the Fish Speakers, who kindly inform him that he is 5,000 years out of date and an inferior model of humanity)
And then we get to book 4, which is something like 5,000 years into the future _again_, but in which they are still cloning Duncan. Evil temple prostitutes return from other galaxies and attempt to take over civilisation with their evil sex magic, but Duncan Number 34523052093548230223490 manages to stop them by becoming a kind of cross between Superman and Jesus.
I think there is a book 5 as well, which I haven't read, but it is a pretty safe bet that it involves a Duncan.