The grande finale of the whole of Frank Herbert's six Dune novels. Interesting ending (were the old couple actually god and his wife?), although it leaves many unanswered questions and various loose threads - which apparently his son Brian Herbert has tried to tie up in the later novels based around his Fathers notes. However I hear mixed reviews on these books. Maybe I will try and read them some other time.

The Space-Operatic original book, Dune, went very philosophical from Dune Messiah onwards, and Chapterhouse Dune is no exception. The characteristic plots, counterplots et al that furnish all of the Dune novels still continues, and this time the books total focus is based around the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood whom are under threat from the Honoured Matres, an offshoot of the Fish Speakers and renegade Bene Gesserit from the 'scattering' that occurred after Leto IIs demise.

All in all, I prefer the original trilogy (Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune); I believe that God Emperor was just not good - too far fetched - I preferred the hero story plot of the first three books, afterwards I think, even though I give this 5 stars, they all seemed to become difficult to visualise things, probably too philosophical, so far removed and divorced from the Paul Mua'dib/Jessica/Alia and Fremen storyline which was such an original tale, combining religion, mysticism, fantasy and sci-fi elements without becoming too dry with future science - and that was a neat breath of fresh air compared to some Science Fiction. However, Chapterhouse Dune is a good ending, carrying on from where Heretics of Dune finished. Recommend

Uffff çok fena yerde bitti

A good end to the Dune series. The final 150 pages really took off into something excellent, climbing and climbing until peaks of ultra-epicness appeared that I wish the rest of the book matched. Maybe my mediocre enjoyment of the first 280 pages or so was my own fault, which I will find out someday in the future when I hope to reread the whole series. I found it a bit too slow and uneventful for some time, with actual events of interest or importance being too far apart, and the whole thing losing steam for a while. But then, all around the same time, everything started to come together and get really, really good, exciting, enthralling, and melancholy in anticipation of the end.

It was overall enjoyable and fitting, with the always awe inspiring world of Dune constantly surprising and impressing, and a grand quality unlike any other fictional universe.

I can only imagine how Herbert's death got the fans widly speculating on what implications or conclusions could be drawn from the ending, which finely closes the books on a mysterious and entrancing note, but also leaves room for much to follow. I understand Frank's son wrote follow ups years later. I don't know if I'll ever read them, but the series has ended appropriately, and is to me the pinnacle of epic science fiction imagination and lore, begun by one of the masterpieces not only of the genre, but of literature.

the anti-semitism went nicely with the terrible writing and idiotic plot

In continuing my reread of the original Dune series, I really struggled with Chapterhouse: Dune this time around. In this book, we have the culmination of the war between the Bene Gesserit and the Honored Matres.

This book actually continues where Heretics of Dune left off. The problem is that it delved much too often into philosophy and my eyes glazed over so many times. I remembered what was coming so I stayed with it to get to those good bits, which I did enjoy.

I’ve decided to continue with the final two books which were written by Herbert’s son, Brian and Kevin Anderson based on notes found years after his death. I’ve decided to switch to the audiobooks for the last 2 books to finish this part of the Dune series.

RTC

Chapterhouse: Dune
Dune Chronicles Book 6
By Frank Herbert

A Dune Retrospective by Eric Allen

Chapterhouse: Dune is the final Dune book published by Frank Herbert, the second in the storyline began with  Heretics of Dune. Though he did leave behind a 20 page summary of "Dune 7" he never wrote that book, and we'll take a closer look at that next month with Hunters of Dune.

Ten years have passed since the destrution of Dune and the Bene Gesserit are beginning their own scattering, taking Sandworm larva to the corners of the known universe and beyond that the species and the pearls of Leto's awareness that they carry will not die out, creating new Dunes throughout space.

Meanwhile, the Honored Matres are hunting the Bene Gesserit planets down and utterly destroying them one by one, slowly but surely exterminating them.

The Bene Gesserit have cloned Miles Teg, and have planned a final desperate attack upon the Honored Matres to bring them under control, or, if that fails, buy time for the remaining Bene Gesserit scatterers to escape. Everything comes together in an explosive confrontation between the two orders for a truly unpredictable outcome.

The Good? One of the biggest problems of the previous book was that it didn't explain a single thing. Not who the characters were, why they did things, why we should care about them, why anything is happening, why any of it is important, and why anyone should give a damn. This book is far less vague and seems to have an eventual goal in mind throughout it's entirety, and it does eventually reach it. These were things that were lacking in Heretics so greatly that the book is nearly unreadable. Chapterhouse makes some vast improvements upon that. The writing has improved drastically over the previous two novels and it feels a lot tighter and more focused. It actually seems to have a point and purpose, two things that have been lacking in this series for a long, long time.

The blatant and offensive sexism of the previous two books has been toned down significantly. It still exists if you are keeping an eye out for it, but it's not right up in your face throughout the entirety of the book, and I count that as a plus. Honestly, reading the previous two books made me rather uncomfortable because of Herbert's blatant and utter hatred of women. Here it's more an annoying buzz in the background like it was in the first two books. While not exactly good, it is an improvement and a step in the right direction.

The Bad? I could almost consider this to be a good book if not for two huge, glaring flaws. The first is irrelevance. There are so many scenes in this book that serve no purpose whatsoever to the plot. They just take up space. They're rather boring to read through, and I found myself constantly asking why these scenes and conversations and whatnot were even in the book at all. I could edit this book down by one third to one half of the word count and had you never read it before, you would be none the wiser. The rest of the book suffers greatly for the inclusion of all the irrelevant crap and I'll bet that the editor was utterly terrified to even mention it to Herbert for fears that he would take his book to another publisher. Every scene, every page, every sentence and word should be absolutely VITAL to the story. If you can remove any of them, you SHOULD remove them before it is published.

Secondly, this book is built upon the foundation laid out by the previous book, and that foundation was about as flawed as is possible. It explained nothing. It gave no motivation for ANYTHING at all, not the characters or the events. It didn't do a very good job of introducing characters and conflicts in a way that anyone could give half a crap about any of them. And so, as the followup, Chapterhouse suffers greatly because it details the further adventures of the same characters whose motivations were unclear to begin with, if they even had any at all, and the same situations which were vague, out of context, and uninteresting. As a result, we still have no idea who any of the characters are at heart, even if some of their motivations have been made much clearer in this volume. We still don't know why anything is happening, what is driving events, and why we should care about any of it. The foundation upon which this story is built is so weak that even though the events of the book itself are rather enjoyable, the entire thing collapses under its own weight because we literally have no idea why any of this is going on, and why any of it is important because, the author failed to tell us in the previous book, and assumes that he did in this one.

The Ugly? Child rape. Okay, the teenaged Duncan Idaho having two MUCH older women fighting over which one gets to force herself on him, resulting in the unveiling of his sexual super powers was bad enough. It's made slightly less icky by the fact that he had the memories of a grown man and the body of a child. Not by much, mind you, I ranted pretty hard about how disgusting and wrong it was in the previous review. Here we have a ten year old boy, with no memory of his past life, being raped by a woman in her thirties, graphically and in disgusting detail. There is no excuse for this. There is no defense for this. This is a horrific abomination that should not be justified in any way shape or form. Any child being forced into sexual situations is horrific, offensive, and downright uncomfortable to read about. Why is this in this book? Why does Herbert keep throwing child rape at us like it's a good thing? I don't get it. He more than makes up for toning down his sexism by having a ten year old boy getting screwed by someone three times his age in graphic detail. This is not cool. This is not okay. This is not acceptable under any meaning of the term. I hope that Herbert was ashamed of himself for this before his death, and anyone that finds it to be entertaining or not all that bad should also be ashamed of themselves. Child rape is never acceptable, whether the victim is male or female, it is still just as horrific for one or the other.

In conclusion, though this book makes some vast improvements upon the previous volume, it still must try to stand upon the weak foundation that that book laid for it, and frankly it just failed to do so. The narrative collapses under its own weight because the basic building blocks of storytelling used to prop it up were so weak. Far too much of the book can be removed from it without notice, and Herbert really doesn't seem to know where he wants to take the series as a whole from this point. The story was enjoyable, and it had a great climax, it just would have benefitted from a bit more editorial influence and a much stronger foundation to build the story upon. And yeah, child rape... NOT COOL!!! Herbert started out very promising with Dune and Dune Messiah, but the series really started to fall apart after that and get out of his control. He appeared to be trying to rein things in with this book, but, unfortunately, he died soon after its publication and was unable to. It's probably the third best book in the series for pure enjoyment, but the drop between second and third is a rather steep one.

Check out my other reviews.

The last three books of the series did less and less for me. At some point plans within plans just turned into total mess and Chapterhouse did little to fix it. Yes, the humanity survived, but wouldn’t it persist even without the Golden Path? What was its destination? Reverend mothers/honoured matres hybrids as the future of the humanity? What about all the rest of the people and especially men? And for the love of God, why both Leto II and reverend mothers needed to use poor Duncan over and over for centuries as a stud? This thing was the most appalling for me in the last three books. The ultimate case of "we’ll get you even after you’re dead". Let the guy rest in peace already.
At least in this book there were almost no yucky sex scenes like in the last one. +0,5 star just for that.

Man, I finished. I did it. It's done.

Frank Herbert really never, ever wanted us to admire his powerful figures, and this doesn't go away with Chapterhouse: Dune. As endlessly twisted as one might expect, and at a point where you might be expected to start backing the main faction of this novel, Herbert throws in a scene of unforgettably inhuman tactics as part of a grand scheme that reminds us that he was out to warn us against admiring those in power. His powerful figures have probably never been more immensely and directly problematic as they are in this one.

Dune is very odd and difficult to like at times but I think what I appreciate about it most of all is that most of these books feel very intentional. Things get very weird, and grand strategies becomes impossible to sympathize with and it's just hard to guess what's going to happen even though he's waving it in front of your face the whole time, and I guess that's part of the mystique of this series.

The ending to this one is possibly the weirdest yet, too. I wonder what that freaky old guy would've written as his final Dune book, had he been given more time. Nice one, Frank. You freaky old guy.

Chapterhouse:Dune is the sixth and final book of the original hexology written by Frank Herbert. It has been a truly epic ride. The sheer time span of this series has only been matched, in my reading, by Asimov's Foundation series and the Warhammer 40K universe. Dune's story also evolves over thousands of years.

The Scattering has returned a terrible enemy. The Honored Matres come to invade the Old Empire and to destroy the Bene Gesserit. Using the Duncan Idaho ghola and, now, a ghola of Bashar Miles Teg, the Bene Gesserit must fight against a force seeking their extinction. At the same time they are terraforming Chapterhouse into another Dune, so that the sandworms can breed again.

I shall not spoil this amazing story. If you've never read Dune in its entirety, then I suggest you take the time to do so. One of the great, foundational works of sci-fi. As I am rereading this series, I shall attempt to go in order. Thus, the next book will be "Hunters of Dune" by Brian Herbert, which finishes out the story after the events of Chapterhouse.

Book: 3 stars
Audio CD: 3 stars

In Dune, Frank Herbert achieved a near perfect balance of story, character and exposition. In fact, the story and characters expressed the themes of the book, and Herbert avoided long, philosophical discursions. Dune is a self-contained novel needing no prequels or sequels. However, Herbert had more to say and produced five further novels set in the Atreides Imperium that were interesting to the compulsively completist amongst us (and I number myself one in this case) but came no where near the power and passion of the original. IMO, the series hit its nadir with God Emperor. The two subsequent novels - Heretics of Dune and the one under discussion - recaptured a bit of that original power though they, too, suffered from far too much plodding, philosophical distractions.

For the most part, I like what Herbert has to say about politics, emotions, the role of history and other themes but they destroy the books' pacing, threatening to turn them into Platonic dialogs rather than novels.

The plot: It's several thousand years after the Tyrant's death. The Old Empire fell, and humanity was Scattered, breaking the iron bonds of Leto's prescience and presumably ensuring Man's survival. Now, elements of the Scattering are returning. In particular, a group known as Honored Matres - women who exhibit inhumanly fast & deadly combat skills and enslave males through sexual domination. Herbert never reveals their exact origins but they display Fish Speaker and Bene Gesserit origins, with perhaps a dash of Tleilaxu. Whatever the case, they rampage through the Old Empire, destroying any opposition with insane orgies of violence that leave entire planets (including Dune) "sterilized." And the Bene Gesserit are the particular targets of their wrath.

The best aspect of these latter works is that we deal with an almost entirely new cast of characters, with the exception of the ubiquitous Duncan ghola. Duncan Idaho was never a favorite character from earlier novels but I've grown resigned to his presence in every book. Far more interesting were the new characters, in particular two. There's Miles Teg, a military genius and the BG's military leader. He represents a further advance in the Atreides' gene line, having the ability to "see" no-ships and is able to function at superhuman speeds for brief periods of time (faster even than Honored Matres). Then there's Darwi Odrade (another Atreides descendant), who eventually becomes Mother Superior and the architect of the plan that saves the BG from destruction at the hands of the Honored Matres.

I enjoyed the novel well enough in both is print and audio forms but I would recommend it only to those I mentioned above who need to know how things turn out.

I'll take this opportunity to close with a few comments on the abominations that Herbert's son, Brian, and his collaborator, Kevin Anderson, have produced. I tried reading Dune: House Atreides but the writing was so atrocious, I gave up in disgust. From what I gather, I am not alone in my reaction. For my money, the best post-Dune, non-Frank Herbert resource, if uncanonical, is Willis McNelly's The Dune Encyclopedia. It's only failing is that it was published before Heretics or Chapterhouse so there are only a few, tantalizing entries discussing the post-Leto universe, and we're forced to rely on the amateurish scribblings of Herbert fils and Anderson to complete the saga.

It pains me to give a Dune book three stars, but this book doesn't have the impact the other five have for me. Well, I guess the first four. The fifth one was similar to this in impact but still stronger overall. I enjoyed, most of all, getting to know the Bene Gesserit better. This book tells us more than any other what the B.G. really does, what their true roles are, what their fate is. I like Dar as a main character, and I enjoyed seeing different aspects of Murbella, especially. The revelation of a secret religion surviving through millenia was a great addition to the Dune world. I loved seeing a different perspective than the Zensunni belief system and then the worship of the God King. As always, threads are tied together by the end, and it all makes sense, a gift Herbert had, for sure. But I just felt like this book lacked depth of personal connection despite retaining the psychological and political depth of the other novels. It's hard to explain the difference because it's something I feel from my own experience, so maybe some would find this book just as deep and complex as the others. For me, the main appeals are concluding the series, seeing the arc completed (or, is it??), as stated above, getting more in depth with the Bene Gesserit, and, finally, finding answers about the Honored Matres. As a separate book, it's interesting because it's so mysterious and for the philosophical, political, and sociological perspectives, but its real value comes in concluding the story of Dune/Arrakis/Rakis. I do have to wonder, though, if Herbert had been able to write more novels before he passed away, would they become more like Star Wars? The Old Empire, the Million Planets, is just a core cluster of galaxies, but after the Scattering, we have infinite possibilities, potential, and variety. It would have been interesting to see what Herbert did with an expanded Duniverse.
By the way, the dedication to Herbert's wife, Bev, who passed away from cancer, is one of the most beautiful, one of the saddest, one of the most joyful dedications I've ever read in a book. It's definitely worth reading the last few pages.