Just finished God Emperor of Dune and was reading discussion online and I honestly thought the pacing was fairly normal? If anything, it feels as if there is little time to breathe as you are constantly being shown evolving potential breakpoints for the empire that, on their own, would be manageable, but together have you worried that everything is about to fall apart. Especially at the midpoint when Hwi arrives and literally everything reacts negatively from her presence.

If anything I would have appreciated more rumination since I'm still sort of vague on the Golden Path and the deeper things Herbert could be trying to say with this book. Granted, my thoughts on the pacing are bound to be skewed since I returned to these books as a break from book 3 of War and Peace, which has had truly slow pacing since the war picked up.

Still stewing on the book myself but my initial reaction is that I think I enjoyed Children of Dune more and that the general population greatly overrates the weirdness of this book due to the fact that Leto is a fat ugly worm