Amaçlarının ne olduğunu son sayfalara kadar anlayamamak okumamı biraz baltaladı. :(
Dune sapkınları demek... Çok ilginç bir yaklaşım yine Frank amca<3

Leggero miglioramento rispetto al quarto volume della serie (L'imperatore-dio di Dune), ma molto lontano dal capolavoro iniziale. L'aspetto positivo è dato dalla maggiore presenza di azione ed avventura e molto meno pensieri filosofici. Tuttavia è molto lontano dal tempo di Dune (migliaia di anni dopo) ed è quasi interamente popolato di nuovi personaggi (lato positivo che movimenta la storia), che però non spiccano per caratteristiche (salvo il solo Miles Teg). Il ghola di Duncan Idaho funge da collante tra vecchio e nuovo mondo. La storia non ha picchi particolari, molti aspetti li ho trovati eccessivi e poco interessanti e la conclusione non ha nulla di travolgente.

Buddy Read with Markus

n  Hey old worm, was this your design?n

Soooooo much better than the last book.

This is definitely a case of "The more things change, the more they stay the same." (The "time-jumps" posited in these books is definitely a double-edged sword for readers.)

1500 years have passed since the death of the God-Emperor, sandworms have returned to Arrakis, and they each carry sparks of the God-Emperor, and the universe has scattered into warring factions. But isn't that really right exactly where we started? Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

With the lessening of the Atreides factor, we now get much more of a focus on the factions (primarily the Bene Gesserit, who have become more of a "SuperVillian" faction than anything else, though the Fremen are also still about.)

I've been intrigued by this entire saga to date; there are things that I really, really enjopy, and things that I would live to have seen less of, but Herbers writing style and vision really permeate each book , enough to see me thru the series.

On to ChapterHouse Dune, them I'll see if I'm up for "Hunters" and "Sandworms", which supposedly finish out the "Dune Prime" saga.

Three stars is generous.

There were some gems, especially at the beginning, but the book limped on its own broken bones for too long. It was exciting to start the book thinking that we would be getting heavier doses of Bene Tleilaxu and Bene Gesserit, but instead it was too many chapters circling around themselves while you are left wondering who the protagonist is (after all, every Dune book needs a hero).

One can see a certain inheritance from the original Dune, but the aspects of the first book that made it excellent did not quite find themselves passed down the line.

The sex was regrettable. I expected a Mentat to spend more time analyzing reality rather than the fit of structure to function in the interior design of particular rooms but I guess it's cool that he was a super ninja?

What genre do you call it when fan fiction is written by the author of the original story?

7.5/10

Spoilers for Dune 1-4

“Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?”

Thoughts


Heretics is an interesting novel as it is a follow-up to God Emperor of Dunes which felt like the true ending to the Saga. How do you follow up a masterpiece that is GEoD. Well, no matter it was always going to disappoint if I had those expectations however I did not, so I didn’t feel disappointed. If anything, I was surprised by the additions to the series. As it gives a more in-depth look into behind the scenes of the series in particular with the Bene Gesserit. We have been wondering so much about their involvement, but now we are understanding their upbringing, procedure, and general thought process of this sisterhood. What surprised me most was probably the character work displayed for the sisterhood.

I really enjoyed reading about Taraza and Odrade in particular. These two individuals are particularly close. This creates this interesting dynamic because of what we know about the sisterhood and their stances to certain emotions in particular love. It's interesting how Lady Jessica actions in pre-Dune have significantly impacted the way BG, how they condition its members. Jessica is that living reminder of love being a bad thing as from that Paul came to power then Leto II which was the tyrant dictator that was not pleasant for them to say the least. Even though this is not a sequel in a traditional sense, the effects of Leto II reign can still be felt throughout the galaxy. One thing the other Dune sequels never provided is seeing how Leto reign would impact other civilisations we see small glimpses here. They a reason why I think Herbert is the second-best world-building in fiction behind Tolkien and continues that trend. The sense of the history of Rakis, the culture that developed that grew or regressed in certain elements like God emperor is awesome to read upon. We not only get much more development of BG but furthermore, we get the deeper motivations of Tleilax. Which is the knowledge we wanted to know since Messiah to God Emperor what is their goal. I would probably admit this is probably the weakest POV character (well second or 3rd weakest) by far in this book. I didn’t care about Master Waff compared to every other POV character. However, that stated Waff has some interesting conversations with BG and Honored Matres.

Though I readily admit I was disappointed with the Honored Matres I did not care about them. Like their motivation and power can come across as juvenile even BG consistently calling them whore lol. Unsure what Herbert mindset was when developing these figures, they obviously pose a big threat but feel like the biggest jokes on occasions. I think the empathises of sex being their weapon just came across as silly.

Anyways talking about reoccurring faces well Duncan is back and I enjoyed his plotline once again. I do think this time Frank has addressed a certain criticism of Duncan character consistently gets in this instalment which I enjoyed.  Regarding the resetting of character development, it's tiring to see this really well-written character getting reset already twice. This is basically addressed when all the Duncans personalities- memories fuse so Messiah-Children and God-Emperor Duncan is one person.

Teg is probably the best-written character in this novel which is funny as it's basically a Leto. Throughout the Dune Saga, the idea of free will is consistently being debated especially with Prescience. With the character of Teg and Odrade, the idea of free will is explored quite throughout especially with the two-character backstories of what is pre-determined and what is free will. They are also political topics its addresses which get boring for this review but I liked the way it handles certain topics. Leadership however I talk about briefly it's interesting to see how leadership portrayed in the Dune Saga we talked as a general monarchy to slowly transitioning to something else.

Anyways let's briefly discuss character work. This is a particular field I expected to be quite bare-bones and straight-up bad. However, It's Dune and Frank is a good writer so he great at making distinct characters quite fast. Odrade introduction this is the most apparently you already feel for the character pretty early on with discussions. Anyways I hope to talk about each individual character, but I just state it better than I suspected. However, that said I believe Dune 1-4 has superior character work. One advantage those novels had is well it's one story, so they are reoccurring faces this is a start to a new story altogether. Another Strength is politics, the Dune Saga tackles this with extreme care. The first 40% felt like the original Dune in that regard. It was probably my favourite section in Heretics which was the scheming. Frank is amazing at doing it. Those plans within plans and intelligent characters trying to outwit or outclass the other. It can be boring for some, but I love it.

Though I think it's best to be aware this novel is far more space opera than philosophy science fiction as Dune 1-4. Of course, it still has that intact but it's a more straightforward narrative than any of the Dune novels. I don’t think it’s a bad thing just it's very different. The Cons to this type of storytelling for me is that I never been the biggest fan of Herbert action sequences. Like I love the novels but how action is described never really grabbed me. Except one sequence in Dune and I love the beginning of God Emperor. That said like the other novels its still minimal but more action than the rest of the series.

You're probably curious about the flaws of the novel. Well, I already highlighted some like the Honored Matres and regarding the use of sex for them. But my biggest one has to come to the climax of the novel.  The secret thing inside Duncan and the legit climax of the novel is fucking an Honored Matres. I wish I was joking but that literally, the climax of Duncan arc in this novel is fucking an Honored Matre. I guess it's been building up a 16-year-old body Duncan is going to screw someone but it's just so odd to me. Furthermore, the Duncan story is good just it's been done better in Messiah haha though Teg getting Duncan memories was well done.  To end with positive I think the ending is excellent and fitting.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, over time I have kinda been back and forth but ultimately this is a good novel. Unsure if this is the sequel that people wanted but I liked my time being in this interesting world. Though God Emperor felt like an ending this does follow up God Emperor nicely by being quite distant to not undermine that story. In certain ways, it's more of a sequel than I expected but, in another sense, it's also a different story altogether. Maybe the word would be it’s a thematically a sequel? I know this is a first of an incomplete trilogy but honestly If you are coming in knowing that you should be fine. I think this novel alone is worth reading just because how it enhances the stories before and the one its telling is compelling.

7.5/10

A major event in the Dune universe. A plot brilliantly set and written by Frank Herbert.

[Nota Bene: As Frank Herbert's last two published novels in the Dune series, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune, along with the unwritten Dune 7, in fact comprise a single story that happened to be divided into three parts, I'll post the same review for both of the two published volumes. This review contains no spoilers.]

During the first half of his literary career, Frank Herbert focused most on coming to terms with what it meant to be conscious. The evolution of his thinking on the subject can be traced from real-world events which happened to him in his youth, through his earliest published science fiction stories, crude as they were, and on into novels like The Dragon in the Sea and the stories that would coalesce into The Godmakers, and certainly The Santaroga Barrier and Destination: Void. This line of thinking reached its fruition in the novels Dune and Dune Messiah.

Having expanded his understanding of the full spectrum of consciousness about as far as it could go (although admittedly he never stopped tinkering with the subject), in the second half of his career Herbert refocused his attention on how the limitations imposed upon individual consciousness – or perhaps it might be better to say the limited perspective encompassing a single human lifetime – leaves humanity ill-equipped to confront an infinite and ever-changing universe. In effect we end up in a continuous crisis mode, always vainly insisting that the world of tomorrow conform to the expectations of yesterday. We're persistently and comically always shocked to discover our assumptions are wrong. Elsewhere I have described this aspect of Herbert's thinking, the human failure to deal with, or even to recognize, the implications of an unbounded universe, as an absolute-infinity breach. This theme begins to emerge in Children of Dune and is especially prominent in God Emperor of Dune, for a final surmounting of the absolute-infinity breach is the primary target of Leto II's Golden Path. But we also encounter the concern in Herbert's final trilogy: Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune, and (by implication) in the unwritten Dune 7.

It is a hallmark of Herbert's imagination that he pursues an ever-elaborating expanse of concerns, always tracing a spectral pathway across a continuum of broadening bandwidth, chasing after considerations of widening implications across grander and grander scales of magnitude. An original interest in a fleeting moment of hyperconsciousness ultimately led Herbert into defining consciousness, hyperconsciousness and subconsciousness in all their aspects and dramatizing what he had learned and concluded in his stories; likewise his contemplations of the diverse implications of the absolute-infinity breach. And it might be added that he pushed his spectral analytical approach through time as well, so the Dune saga becomes probably the most temporally discontinuous series ever written. The first three novels take place roughly around the year 21,200 AD. The drama of God Emperor of Dune unfolds 3,500 years later, and that of the last three books (Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune are difficult novels, and attempting to distinguish them as separate novels, or independent from the unwritten Dune 7, is an artificial and arbitrary exercise) takes place an additional 1,500 years after that, placing us circa 26,200 AD.

As the primary goal of Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune was to shatter the innate mythmaking in humanity that compels us to conservative convergence, these last three books are intended to unveil the consequences of living in a multiverse that has become irreparably divergent. This divergence followed in the wake of the downfall of the God Emperor and the subsequent Scattering of humanity not throughout multiple star systems or galaxies, but across multiple universes which are discontinuous with one another. Any threat can now come upon our heroes and heroines from any direction, but with all the eggs no longer in one basket, no matter what catastrophe might befall locally, the whole story can never come to a final end.

In Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985), the Bene Gesserit has recovered substantially from the tribulation of the era of the God Emperor, and now we're allowed a far more intensive view of the inner workings of the Sisterhood than ever before. But the Bene Gesserit and the remnants of the old Imperium, as ever, are confronted by a host of power-hungry enemies, new and old, in the usual style of Herbert's Machiavellian plotting. It is these plots-within-plots that seemingly all other reviewers have focused on, and I'll forego doing the same here.

Herbert said it wasn't until he was writing Children of Dune that he came to understand that an important role of an author was to entertain his readership. That will come as surprising news to some of you who like Herbert, and not to some of you who don't. But it's important to note that the word "entertainment" carries different connotations for readers than it does for hacks or more seriously-aspiring authors. Entertainment is something that is doled out to the action-adventure-thriller crowd, to those who love reading or going to the movies in no small part for the sheer escapism of the thing. Now I'm not overly bigoted about this. There's nothing more boring than a book that's, well, boring. But I think what Herbert was getting at was that as he matured as a writer he came to see, as many writers do, that plot per se is less interesting than character, no matter how many car chases or lasgun exchanges are involved.

I for one can't separate a reading of the last books of the Dune series from knowledge of what was going on in Herbert's life as he wrote them, which he did, by that way, at an absolutely furious pace. This happened to be during the most stressful part of his entire life. His wife, Beverly, had been dying for ten years, and the last two years of her life were especially painful for her and for her husband, both physically and emotionally. I believe that, had he lived, Frank Herbert would have easily written the Dune 7 novel to complete the series. I am less sanguine that he could ever have written another coherent novel after that one.

By the time God Emperor of Dune was published in 1981, and with the signed contracts for the later Dune novels in hand, Herbert was financially secure but, as I've suggested, he was suffering from increasing emotional instability. Furthermore, I can't help believing he was struck by a supreme irony, which is that, like Paul Maud'Dib, he now found himself hemmed in by the conservative mythology of his own image which he himself had created. To this day you can still see this in reviews of his later books, wherein readers who were born after Herbert's death still bemoan the fact that his later books are not like Dune in style. Everyone wanted, and continues to want, Frank Herbert to write books that seem like quote-unquote Frank Herbert books: everyone wanted, and wants, Herbert to remain frozen unchanging in 1965. But in his later years Herbert, with his financial security, felt free to try to break out of that myth regardless of the demands and expectations of his fans, and for this I applaud him. I'm sure he did have basic plot elements in mind for the last three books of the series – call this the "entertainment" necessary to bring the masses along – but it's quite obvious that he had already grown more interested in character development than in weaving such masterful webs of palace intrigue anymore.

Herbert wanted to change course, but he had not yet found a new direction. I see hints of this in Children of Dune, in which Duncan Idaho tells Alia about the practice of setting out blocks of marble in the desert to be etched by the blowing sand of a Coriolis storm. Idaho argues that the sculpted pieces produced are beautiful but they are not art, as they are not carved according to human volition. But in the latter books it is Sheeana who creates an abstract sculpture she calls "The Void," which is art. How might these two kinds of sculpture compare? What is the symbolic significance of Sheeana's abstract work? The question is particularly relevant, it seems to me, when Sheeana's piece is recognized as a symbol set in tension with a Van Gogh which, at the end of Chapterhouse: Dune is carted off into a new, uncharted universe. Clearly, I think, the matter can be read as a form of self-psychoanalysis undertaken by the author. "The Void" is the primitive and unformed new expression welling up inside him; the old and familiar, even conventional Van Gogh has been let slip away with a fond farewell.

A kind of quantum uncertainty pervades Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune which are, after all, a single story occupying multiple volumes. We do not have enough pieces to interpret this story or to fairly critique its parts, which must therefore remain finally unadjudicated and unjudgeable. This is because the unwritten Dune 7 was also to have comprised a full third of the complete tale. We can see that Herbert was bending writing to a new direction, and we can hazard some educated guesses about (entertaining) plot elements that would have informed the third book, but we can never know. The best we can do is ponder any written records or notes that Herbert may have left behind as poles in the sand to mark the path he intended to follow. Anyone who possesses any such notes, it seems to me, can be a good steward to the memory of Frank Herbert only by publishing them in unexpurgated form: lacking that, Herbert's career accomplishments can never be properly assessed. And that is an injustice to an important 20th century American writer.

I know, you are like, wait, 5 stars? Really? And I am, like, I really enjoyed this book. I mean, I learned about much of the Dune universe that was never mentioned in the first four books (sex, Ix, the Tleilaxu, the Bene Geserit proscription of love...) and I really liked Teg and Odrade and even Lucillle and the new ghola. The action was great especially at the end (even if Teg’s capture of the Honored Matre’s no-ship was frustratingly fast-forwarded). Philosophically, there was a LOT to chew on and the tech was probably the most diverse and interesting of all the Dune series since the first one. On to Chapterhouse!

[UPDATE] I am looking forward to Denis Villeneuve's Dune in October 2021. The previews I have seen so far seem to be quite coherent with respect to the book. I was a fan of Lynch's Dune and am curious to see what Villeneuve does with this one. Feel free to comment below.

Fino's Dune Reviews
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune

Five books in and I'm still worrying every time I pick the next one up that THIS will be the one that ruins the Dune Chronicles for me. So far that has not happened thankfully. Every Dune book has been unique but also very engaging. Herbet always seems to find a way to awe me and keep me guessing until the very end, that is what I love about this series and I'm actually quite sad that I only have one left.

"One of the most dangerous things in the universe is an ignorant people with real grievances. That is nowhere near as dangerous, however, as an informed and intelligent society with grievances."

This installment read VERY differently from God Emperor of Dune. This one had the same mass volume of intrigue that Herbet always serves up so well but there was also a butt ton of action in this installment as well. Often times in a Dune book the main focus is the political scheming and the action happens off page. It was a unique choice but it works. In Heretics of Dune we got equal parts action and intrigue which added a level of adrenaline fueled reading that I love but I'm not used to in these books. If you are unsure about continuing on with the series after all the navel gazing that was God Emperor of Dune I am here to say definitely give it a shot there is a good chance you won't be disappointed.

"For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order."

I had read the first three Dune books many, many times, and the fourth one once, and decided I may as well try to get through the last two. (I had heard they were pretty terrible.) I was definitely pleasantly surprised.

Heretics is probably not the book anyone was expecting, which probably led to most of the ill-feeling about it. It's much less a philosophical work and much more an action-adventure story, and I'll tell ya, the sex gets weird. It's not so much a gender-politics thing (although I reflexively flinch every time someone uses the word "whores") as a sex-as-power, power-corrupts sort of deal. That being said, there are some typically interesting characters and situations (although I sort of roll my eyes every time Herbert reveals that some group is following a many-thousands-of-years-old Earth-based religion.)

Short version: if you like the Dune books but are avoiding this one because of the bad press, take a look at it. It's not on par with the early ones in terms of depth, but the universe remains fascinating and it's a pretty decent story.

(I also understand God Emperor much better now - it's not exactly a novel in itself, it's a bridge between the familiar Empire setting of Dune and this drastically different political and social setting of the later books. That doesn't make it an easier read, but it makes me dislike it less.)

Had trouble paying attention all throughout.