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Rating:  -
I've read and re-read the DUNE series including books done by Brian Herbert. I've read Frank's original DUNE series up to Heretics about 3 times or more. I've always wondered why I can't remember anything abpit Chapterhouse Dune until I started reading it again. It is booooooriiing - that's why. I don't think I ever finished it and I probably made 2 attempts. I finally found the audiobook for it just to force myself to listen to the book while driving - big mistake. The book was putting me to sleep. I have since been listening to the audiobook only when I take public transport - or sometimes when I want to fall asleep at bedtime. God Emperor of Dune was a tedious read for me the first time but I found myself able to read it again and enjoy it now. This book though just doesn't get me excited or interested. I'm only listening to it now so I can read Brian H's sequel - Sandworms and Hunters of Dune. I just wish I could find an abridged version of this book. I think it can be summed up in 2 or 3 chapters. There's just so much pages wasted on people's thoughts, musings, endless talking, etc. that doesn't capture my attention after the first paragraph of a page. I'm still plodding through this book and hopefully will be done with it. I would like to google and see if I can find a really really short version of this book someone hopefully posted online and save myself the misery.
Rating:  -
An alert reader may well ask, if I thought the last four books in this series were that bad, why did I read them all?
That's a darn good question.
Well, I read the original "Dune" in high school some 30 years ago, and I have re-read it a couple of times since, considering it to be a true masterpiece. The sequel, "Dune Messiah," is every bit as good, and I agree with some interpretations that this novel should be considered a companion novel or extension of the original "Dune," since it basically picks up soon after the conclusion of the first, and completes the story of the rise and fall of Paul Atreides. In other words, the first two books could be combined into one novel, and we would have one of the truly great works of science fiction on our hands.
Still, the seeds of stupidity had already been sown in the original "Dune," and brought out further in "Messiah" with the plot twists involving the Alia character. These were brought to the fore in "Children of Dune," which is Part III of the series. Basically, as anyone who hated the Wesley Crusher character in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" or the Anakin Skywalker kid in "Star Wars: the Phantom Menace" can tell you - NEVER portray little kids with superhuman powers that exceed the capabilities of the adults around them because no matter how you try to spin it, it will not be credible. It violates the rules of "internal consistency" or some such thing that every created fictional universe must follow. But Herbert didn't follow that rule and gave these little kids super powers and it was kind of like "Mighty Mouse in Outer Space," only dumber. Especially when one of the kids starts morphing into a baby sandworm. I am not making this up. So basically, after reading "Children of Dune" in the early 1980s, I gave up on the series for awhile and forgot about it.
Around 1990 I came across "God Emperor of Dune" in a bargain bin in a bookstore and decided just for yucks that I would give it a shot. I actually read the whole thing. It was weird, consisting basically of three hundred pages about the 3000 year old kid from "Children of Dune" who had turned into a mutant boy-worm with no testicles suddenly discovering after seeing a particularly hot space chick that he can't get laid and maybe regretting he had set the universe on a course that he called "the Golden Path." I never figured out what the "Golden Path" was supposed to be, he never got laid, and in the end he fell into a river and bad things happened to him, or maybe they weren't so bad because this is what he had planned all along for the past 3000 years, because, you know, he had prescient powers and all...
So Book IV was a let-down, which probably has anyone who is still with me here wondering why I kept going. Okay. Fast forward about ten years to the year 2000 or so. I am in the airport in Moscow, getting ready to fly back to the United States with nothing to read and a ten hour flight staring me in the face, and there, in front of me, next to the giant rack of porno mags, is a copy of "Heretics of Dune. This would be Part V of the series, for those of you keeping track. I would summarize this by saying that if I had bought a copy of this in Russian it would have made about as much sense. It is now about 8000 (or maybe 10,000?) years beyond the events of the original Dune, as if that matters, but there are still all these Bene Gesserit women around. Only they seem to be warring for control of the galaxy with another group of women with super powers called Honored Matres or some such thing. The Honored Matres appear to really good in bed and can somehow control men if they have sex with them. Must have good kegel muscles or something. Did I mention that the incidental Duncan Idaho character who was killed about halfway through the first "Dune" novel keeps showing up as some sort of resurrected zombie guy through all these novels, because some group of bio-engineering geniuses with an unpronounceable name like bene Tleilaxu or something can clone him from a single surviving cell? Anyway, it turns out that the climactic moment of this novel, no pun intended, is when this zombie Idaho guy has sex with an Honored Matre and he is so good at it that SHE falls under HIS control. And somehow his ability to be the greatest lover in the galaxy since Wilt Chamberlain becomes the key to the future of the universe, although after reading this I still have no idea what the hell the Golden Path is supposed to be or if all this sex has anything to do with it. And the worst part of it is that Herbert can't even write a decent sex scene, considering how much sex seems to be a factor to the plots of these stories. Where is Ken Follett when you need him?
Okay, so finally it is 2008. I know that Frank Herbert has passed away, and while his son is apparently busily and simultaneously writing several hundred sequels and prequels and sequels to prequels to the Dune series, all supposedly based on his father's notes, I know that this copy of Chapterhouse Dune I'm looking at on the library shelf in front of me represents the last thing Frank himself ever wrote. So I say to myself - okay - how bad could it be? And I've read all the other ones - maybe I should see how it all turns out.
Well - it was as bad as I imagined, only worse. The Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres are still at war. Another one of the Duncan Idaho zombie guys (or maybe it's the same one) is still having lots of sex. There are Jews running around, and apparently these are actual, bona-fide Jews, although Herbert never discloses whether they are still conducting bris ceremonies on their eight day old male infants, so maybe they're not so Jewish after all, oy vey. In the end, one of the Honored Matres turns into a Bene Gesserit of sorts, uses her martial arts skills like some futuroid version of Jacqueline Chan to dispatch some of the uber-bitch servants of the head Honored Matre, who is cleverly named "THE Honored Matre," and presumably peace breaks out all across the universe. And that is how it all turns out, 10,000 years later, and man I wish I could have had some of what this guy was smoking...
Now if any of you think I gave away any spoilers here, well I didn't, because NONE of this makes any sense. I suppose there is at least one fan boy out there somewhere who could explain all of this to me, but then this would probably be the same guy who would argue that there is actually some deep meaning to the Matrix movies or the Lost series on TV.
My advice to you is let me serve as a warning to you all. Stop reading Dune books after number two. No - they don't get any better. Just like Rocky movies or Alien movies they just get progressively dumber and dumber, in a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 kind of way, which is why I give this book two stars instead of one. It was so bad it was almost good, if only Saturday Night Live or MST3K could get a hold of it....
Rating:  -
I enjoy everyone of the Dune books, and the sequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. I always love to read any Dune books on my free time.
Rating:  -
Of the Dune Chronicles, this was the hardest to read enthusiastically. I enjoyed Heretics, because I really liked Teg and Sheanna a lot. The only saving grace this novel has for the first half is Duncan, leaving the Great Honored Matres, Scytale, and Odrade to make the story happen. The new characters in this story provide very little of interest, and the characters surfacing from diaspora are even more lame. The second half of the book gets much more interesting, but barely saves this story. The last 100 pages are pretty good, and unpredictable. I'm actually looking forward to reading Hunters of Dune, although after reading this one, I don't understand why the first 300 pages of this were even necessary, because it was just a lot of political and religious philosophy. I think Frank lost his muse (and greatest editor) when his wife died, and may have centered the story on Odrade for the first half in honor of her. Well written, and decent ending, just doesn't live up to its predecessors.
Rating:  -
In Chapterhouse Dune, the usual players are back with the Bene Gesserit and the Bene Tleilaxu coupled with the Honored Matres, who are hell-bent on destroying everything in their path coming back from Leto the Second's Great Scattering. Previously, the reader briefly meets the Honored Matres, the corrupt offspring of the Bene Gesserit sent out into the Scattering and Heretics of Dune ends with the capture of a valuable Honored Matre in Murbella. Fast forward to the present and Murbella is becoming more and more heavily influenced by the Bene Gesserit and starts to give up her Honored Matre roots to become a full Reverend Mother. In Chapterhouse Dune, Murbella becomes a valuable tool for the Bene Gesserit, both in giving them invaluable insight into the ways and ideas of the Honored Matres but also as a valuable advisor to the Sisterhood itself. In addition, the Bene Tleilaxu are being wiped out in incredible numbers from both the Honored Matres from the Scattering and their own corrupt Tleilaxu that came back from the Scattering.
As indicated earlier, the Honored Matres are back from the Scattering and hell-bent on not only destroying every planet in Leto's Old Empire, but intently seek the Bene Gesserit's home planet of Chapterhouse Dune so that they may have a firm rule on the galaxy once and for all. Yet, there are some questions surrounding the Honored Matres that the Bene Gesserit begin to ask. Why are the Honored Matres back from the Scattering? Is it strictly their hatred of the Bene Gesserit and all it represents? Or were they driven back from the Scattering by someone or something? These questions are answered in Chapterhouse and the answers are fairly surprising.
In come the Bene Gesserit and their quest to save the known empire. Odrade is now a full Mother Superior stepping in for the deceased Mother Superior Taraza. A lot of the issues that faced Taraza are on Odrade's plate now. A lot of the book revolves around Odrade's "mysterious plan" that she lets others in on in bits and pieces. However, Odrade throughout a lot of the book goes against the typical Bene Gesserit grain and she must balance maintaining order within the Bene Gesserit and it's few factions with battling the Honored Matres against the slaughtering of all of the planets they've worked so hard to populate. There are a few new cogs in her plan as Murbella comes to their side, as Sheeana gradually begins her training for the Bene Gesserit, and a new ghola of an old friend from Heretics of Dune are all part of Odrade's new plan.
What I liked a lot about this book was the fact that the Bene Gesserit finally SEEM to be human. For the past 5 books or so, all the reader saw was a very manipulative religious sect that did whatever it could as long as it benefited the Bene Gesserit line. If it didn't benefit humanity too then that was just too bad. Chapterhouse Dune gives the Sisterhood a very human side as their new Mother Superior in Odrade struggles against time honored traditions and rules of the Bene Gesserit in her attempt to adapt the Bene Gesserit into the modern world and for once, saving humanity as well.
The main reason I give this book only 4 stars, is the fact that the final battle between the Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres was a disappointment overall. I expected a little bit more of an epic battle/struggle/etc that what transpired in the last 40 pages or so. In addition, an improbable solution between the Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres seems a little ridiculous after their vicious hatred for each other and especially their histories throughout the last 2 books or so. Then the Tleilaxu getting very little face time in Chapterhouse and being passively slaughtered without a big fight really was a little disappointing. They were such an intriguing group in the whole plot against Paul, Leto II, and the Bene Gesserit.
Yet, despite my few complaints towards the end, I still absolutely loved Chapterhouse Dune. I haven't enjoyed a series this much since I read Stephen King's Dark Tower Series and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series. As others have said, Herbert spent 6 years just researching the concepts that would make the Dune Series alone and in a great portion of the books, you can tell it's very well-researched and thought out. Couple that with the fact that a lot of these books are going for bargain prices on Amazon Marketplace makes the series an even more attractive one to any potential Dune readers. I almost gave up on the Dune Series 3 years ago when I couldn't understand the first book in Dune. The terminology sometimes is difficult, but my best advice would be just to read through it. Particularly do a lot of your glossary reading in the first book and even though there aren't any glossaries in the rest of the books, you can deduce a lot of terms just from the first book alone. Above all, Thank you Frank Herbert for some of the best science fiction I've read.
-Travis
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