Dune Messiah

A while back I felt ambitious about reading a bunch of classic sci-fi series.  I bought Rendezvous with Rama and Rama II, I bought all of the Foundation series, and I bought 3 sequels to Dune.  I have slowly been making my way through these because I find that I have to separate them out from my normal reading sequence. While I have really enjoyed the first books in each of these series, I have not been enamored enough of any of the sequels to delve further into their worlds. 
When I picked up Dune Messiah, I figured that I would see the continuation of Maud'Dib's rule and hoped that I would get a bit more backstory to the mythology that Frank Herbert exposes his reader to in Dune.  One thing that I liked about Dune, and something that I also found frustrating, is that he offers up a rich world with a built-in mythology that he only barely explains.  He lets the reader pick up bits and pieces of the various cultures and religions the figure heavily throughout the novel.  On one hand, I like an author who trusts his audience enough to be able to put together enough to get through a novel without laying everything out for them.  I am also a patient enough reader that I am happy to piece things together and to let things go until/unless the author comes back to them.  I don't need every single novel to be overly plotted and planned and have everything tied up neatly.  A shaggy dog here or there never killed anyone.
But Dune Messiah isn't interested in delving anymore into these aspects of Dune that I found fascinating.  Herbert also doesn't seem all that interested in continuing the action of Dune.  To some extent, this is okay because Paul Atreides has won his Jihad and reigns.  This novel is about intrigue and the difficulties of maintaining power won.  But there is a lot of talk, and a lot of it is very repetitious. 
I don't want to get too much into plot here because it is both a simple plot and convoluted.  It is simple in the sense that the parties are introduced quickly or are already known from the previous novel and the conflict is rather straightforward.  But it is convoluted in the approach.  Herbert must find a way for his characters to deceive and trick a character with the power of prescience, or the ability to see multiple potential future timelines.  The way that Herbert pulls this off is rather clever and exposes Paul's fatal flaw.  It is the more clever because of the way that it places Paul in a company of mythic figures whose hubris leads to an eventual downfall.  This all fits well into the archetypal hero's journey.
The read is quick and it is satisfying in its return to known quantities but I didn't get as much out of it as the original novel.