Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

Power always comes with a price, even for Paul, who has gained more power than he can handle as Emperor and the religious figurehead of "MuadDib", and he is aware that he is headed towards a down fall. The impending doom comes in the form of a ghola, a reanimated and resurrected  body in the form of Duncan Idaho. Even Paul's sister Alia is aware of a terrible plot, but both are blind to all the details, and are estranged often from the everyday aspects of life.
This novel played out like a Greek tragedy, but it held such a human tone that I actually forgot it took place on a far off planet in a made up universe.
While the Harkonnen was Paul's enemy in Dune, "MuadDib" became his enemy in Dune Messiah. The expression of a fool saint was used often throughout the book and foreshadowed Paul's inevitable fall. But the way the story was told was once again philosophical and epic.
Paul is almost three people in the novel: The emperor, the prophet and the human. The emperor seemed lost and confused, overwhelmed at times, but he was still a threat to his enemies. The prophet was a force of evil in the guise of good that grew more an more into a threat as the story progressed. Then Paul, forced to deal with the past, future and present was trapped in a web of his own making, and longed for the simple life, living with Chani as a freeman of the desert.
This story played with the danger of a man becoming a god, but oddly enough, we watch through Alia's eyes. Alia is Paul's sister, the reverend mother and someone else all together that she doesn't understand. Her struggle to fit in, be normal and just be human was a very strange and yet familiar story. It was the hero's journey to discover the self, and the goddess's journey to become human at the same time.
Once again Frank Herbert created a layered epic with powerful and human characters.
I recommend this book after Dune, but I admit it was a struggle to view Paul as an antagonist, protagonist or both, which might have been Herbert's point. What I will say is regardless of his many faces, Paul was human.