Absolutely interminable. The first 80% is just endless prattling. Characters spend entire chapters just sat around thinking, apparently thrilled at their own musings. I imagine Frank Herbert sat in a writer’s shed somewhere tittering away at how smart he is, plot be damned! Odrade spends an entire chapter ruminating in the canteen. Duncan and Scytale are pretty much wandering around a no-ship for the entire story. Oh Duncan, by the way, remember, the Weapons Master from Dune? Yeah, we’ll he’s a mentat now. Just is.

The style is cold, ponderous and self-satisfied. Dune is a stone cold classic and it’s out of my love for that book, the universe and curiosity that I made it all the way to the end of the original hexalogy, but it was a tremendous effort of will.

I read it on a kindle so I can tell you that barely anything happens for the first 80% and then in the last 20% Herbert remembers he should probably put a plot in there and things actually start to happen. There is a bit of a story then, which is alright.

I feel like I’m committing blasphemy criticising it as I know there are fans out there who will love this and be angry at this review. Fair play to you and all the best, but this is not for me and I am so, so glad it is over. Other than that, I enjoyed it.

“Surely you know bureaucracies always become voracious aristocracies after they attain commanding power.”

As foretold, I have completed my reading of Frank Herbert’s original six Dune books.

Spoiler alert: Frank the tank went to meet Shai hulud in the afterlife right after finishing this book so it doesn’t really have a complete ending to the story. It may have been for the best because he probably would have wound up churning out sequels like the fast and the furious and tanked his reputation instead of letting his kid do it.

So the last two books are weird and all over the place. There is a ton of strange sex stuff in including one thing I found disturbing to the point of questioning why he would include it. But basically the bene gesserit have been harried near to their ending by the “whores” the honored matres who have returned from the scattering to deep space. Herbert’s writing got better and better over the series but it also got more dense and convoluted.

It seems like the whole thing is an argument against centralized, bureaucratic government because it holds back the interests of humanity in favour of its own power. It seeks to condition free thinking and individualism out of people from early childhood on so they may be ruled more easily.
I heard Herbert was into psychedelic drugs and was probably a big hippie so it makes sense and it’s a valid point.
So anyway, I liked all the books in the series but you have to be in the mood for it. Part one and four are my favourites.

Still with the sex with boys. Still with the weird sexual enslavement of men. But this time with the anti-semitic twist of a secret society of space jews! but for real though, what the fuck was that? That made no sense what so ever. God damn am I glad to be done with this fucking series finally. Jesus H. Christ was that too damn long. On the plus side, he finally figured out how to write a halfway decent action scene.

3.0 to 3.5 stars. After loving the first five books in the series, I was a little disappointed in this last installment of the Dune Chronicles by Frank Herbert. While I have always been a big fan of Herbert's heavy use of dialogue and philosophical argument to advance the themes of the story, I thought that its use in this volume was not as crisp and felt a bit too plodding. That said, I did like it and it is certainly not a bad book, but it does suffer in comparison to the previous installments.

Now I have to decide if I am going to sample any of the subsequent novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

Frank Herbert's last Dune novel suffers from the same flaws as Heretics of Dune. One that I didn't mention in my review of that novel, but which certainly applies to both, is the lack of a character to care about. In the first four Dune books, Leto, Paul, and Leto II provide central figures whose rises and falls the reader becomes invested in.

None of the characters in Heretics or Chapterhouse stand out in that same way. The fact that almost every character is a Bene Gesserit, trained by a Bene Gesserit, or belongs to a similar order only exacerbates the problem, as does the fact that dead characters keep returning as gholas. Maybe another part of the problem is that I was never impressed with or interested in Duncan Idaho, the only character who appears in all six Dune novels.

The love the Bene Gesserit tried to deny was everywhere, Odrade thought. In small things and big. How many ways there were to prepare delectable, life-sustaining foods, recipes that really were embodiments of loves old and new. This bouillabaisse so smoothly restorative on her tongue; its origins were planted deeply in love: the wife at home using that part of the day’s catch her husband could not sell.
The very essence of the Bene Gesserit was concealed in loves. Why else minister to those unspoken needs humanity always carried? Why else work for the perfectibility of humankind?

This is the end of my Great Dune Reread, which I began just before Denis Villeneuve’s Part One adaptation came out. I last read the entire sequence as a teenager. It is interesting how my perceptions, and appreciation, of the six books have changed over time.

Chapterhouse, which I disliked initially due to that (in)famous cliffhanger ending, now emerges as my favourite of the series. Indeed, the second trilogy is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch.

What is also clear is how uniquely different each Dune book is, and yet how they all form part of a greater whole. Here we pretty much pick up where Heretics left off, but Chapterhouse is a far more contemplative novel – and all the richer for it.

Our main viewpoint character is Mother Superior Odrade, whose favourite pastime is to walk through the orchards of her beloved home planet. Here she notices the telltale signs of the inexorable changes gathering momentum as the last wild sand trout begin the transformation of Chapterhouse into another Arrakis – the second Dune.

Odrade enjoys her favourite meals, spars with her closest aides, and engages in much ruminative reflection on the nature and mission of the Bene Gesserit, the meaning and consequences of Leto II’s Golden Path, and how everything is now up in the air thanks to the determined onslaught of the Honored Matres.

And that is pretty much it for plot. Odrade does eventually hatch a plan to save the Sisterhood, culminating in a rousing final battle between the two great rivals that Herbert paces expertly. (We will ignore the final chapter.)

Herbert’s dubious sexual politics are still firmly on display here – awakening the ghola Teg Miles’s memories of his previous life involves a scene that is pretty much male rape of a minor. Plus, there is some kind of racial profiling going on with Scytale and the Bene Tleilax that I can’t really figure out.

And we have representation of the Jewish faith in the form of the Rabbi and Rebecca, a wild Reverend Mother. If you think that is odd at this distant point in the future, just recall the Orange Catholic Bible from Dune. And it does go to show how the Bene Gesserit respects other cultures and seeks to preserve them, as much as it enjoys meddling in their affairs. All for the betterment of the species, of course.

Herbert’s discourse on government and politics continues to develop and is far more nuanced here. Even his dictum that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ now morphs into ‘power attracts the corruptible’. So is the Bene Gesserit a benevolent, yet ultimately autocratic, bureaucratic institution?

It is a debate that vexes the Mother Superior greatly, who at the same time has to contend with the cold hard fact that the Honored Matres are hellbent on exterminating the Sisterhood. Does this show up the innate weakness and softness of the Bene Gesserit? Or is it an opportunity for them to embrace change, just as Chapterhouse is being changed by the sand trout?

If you have reached this point in the series, you are long used to the general weirdness and eccentricity of the Duniverse, which combines the baroque and the gothic in the most fantastic ways possible. What makes Odrade such an appealing character is that she is fully rounded and present in the moment, balancing the forces of history against the survival of Chapterhouse and her Sisterhood.

Herbert’s wonderful nature writing lingers long on the blessings of the Bene Gesserit home world and how the desert encroaches upon it. A major theme of the Dune series has always been transformation and evolution, and this really comes full circle in Chapterhouse.

As for that cliffhanger, which Herbert obviously added as an opener for a potential third trilogy, enough clues are scattered throughout the book for the reader to work out who the mysterious Daniel and Marty really are, not to mention the unknown and terrible threat that sent the Honored Matres scurrying back into the Known Universe in the first place.

I have no intention of reading the two ‘sequels’ that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson wrote, apparently based on an outline from Herbert’s papers for ‘Book 7’. Enough reviewers have pointed out how dire these are, but I suppose they do ultimately have a place in the Duniverse (just think how many crap Star Wars and Star Trek novels are out there as well.)

My only wish is that you have seen Villeneuve’s fine Part One and are curious to read the books, or if you have only read Dune itself, that you go on to read all the rest. From the outset it is impossible to predict the strange and wonderful directions that Herbert takes his story. That it culminates in the autumn of a planet and a Sisterhood, as an old woman reflects on her life and the choices, sacrifices, and mistakes that the Bene Gesserit have made along the way, is an incredible parting gift to Dune readers.

This isn't how I wanted my time reading Dune to end, but I knew that this would be the most likely outcome. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to connect with this final book at all. There were bright spots in the darkness, but they were far and few between. Overall I just couldn't be interested, invested, or care. Fortunately, this doesn't detract from how I feel about the first four books. There's nothing else I have to say.

I'm not crying you are crying...

Space Jews? Gimme a break...

Herbert was really scraping the bottom of the barrel by now and just writing hundreds of filler pages of meandering, go-nowhere rants about politics, religion, sex, and economics. He should have stopped after book 4, but was likely under publisher obligations to keep milking the cash cow. Each ‘character’ in this book (and in the book previous) is just a one-dimensional mouthpiece for Herbert’s waffling pseudo-philosophical ideas. Nothing happens in this story. It’s just page after page of omnisciently-narrated conversations between flat, unbelievable people.

Such an abysmal offering is deeply sad and ruins the legacy of the truly inspired original Dune. Herbert was a one-hit wonder whose genius outstayed its welcome.

And don’t get me started on the schlock that his son continues to squeeze out...

*sighs in disappointment*

3.5 - I wish we were able to have the seventh novel that Frank wanted to write because you can feel that this was set-up for it in the end. Overall, this was more enjoyable than Heretics of Dune and it provides a decent inconclusive ending for the series. I feel like this one went back to the feel of the first Dune novel finally and I really enjoyed that. The one thing I enjoyed the most about this final novel is that it really didn't feature any one particular character heavily, everyone kind of felt like our main story teller. It was enjoyable to finish the series with.
I cried reading the end dedication to Bev ❤️

After tens of thousands of years, the theme of ultimate prophetic prediction, spice (i.e. water/oil) dependence, universal religious programming, not to mention a great primer on behind-the-scenes political activities, comes to a close. and what a perfect way to bring this series to an end. Well worth the devotion, this series follows one genetic line with supra-sensory perceptions which gave birth to a messianic figure and his son, whom became a galactic tyrant in the name of progress, nay, of love. i could gloss over the insane amounts of information and wealth of ideas/ research Mr. Herbert put into this story-line, but would rather you deduce for yourself. The series gets bigger and better with each new book. Do yourself a favor; there's a reason why this series is considered the Sci-fi LotR.........