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?

I was really scared to start this after God Emperor of Dune because that one was kinda hard to read. But after a few chapters in Heretics of Dune, I was really enjoying it! It had a lot of action and introduced some cool new characters.

Questo libro mi ha fatto ben sperare all'inizio di avere qualche spiegazione in più sulla Via Aurea vista da Leto e su queste specie di streghe delle Bene Gesserit, invece ancora una volta mi sono ritrovata in un colossale intrigo tra Theilaxu, Bene Gesserit e le nuove arrivate sulla scena, le Matres Onorate; tutto un gran casino, a mio parere sfuggito di mano ad un certo punto pure allo scrittore, che mi ha lasciato tanti interrogativi ancora aperti e che probabilmente non si chiuderanno mai. Insomma una bella confusione!
Non riesco, proprio non riesco ad abbandonare un libro,soprattutto se poi mi viene regalato e quindi, a colpi di sbadigli, ho proseguito fino a quando non rispunta sulla scena colui che mi sta facendo continuare questa serie : Duncan Idaho con la sua ennesima versione (leggere i precedenti libri per saperne di più). Là dove c'era Siona, ora c'è Sheena che tutti vogliono disperatamente per il suo potere con i vermoni della sabbia, parti del Tiranno o Gran Dio del precedente volume (anche qui leggere il libro per capire qualcosina è essenziale). Poi c'è Odrade, una Bene Gesserit che ammetto mi ha stupito alla fine quando ha capito finalmente quale era il piano della Reverenda Madre di questa specie di setta di streghe. Dato che, alla fin fine, è tutto un gran casino di genetica, mi ha fatto piacere ritrovare sulla scena anche vecchi personaggi con nuovi nomi che però ricordano tutto (sempre per il concetto della prescienza).
E le Matres Onorate, praticamente una costola eretica delle Bene Gesserit, si possono definire tutto,tranne che poco furbe ( il succo del vero potere ce l'hanno proprio loro, altro che la famigerata "spezia" visto che le altre hanno deciso di spegnere completamente i sentimenti umani e proseguire nei loro intrugli genetici).
Negli ultimi capitoli ci viene presentato,in modo molto caotico, anche qualcosina di alcuni mondi, che secondo me sono davvero interessanti, dove naturalmente ruota tutto intorno al Potere, ma finalmente ci sono elementi di fantascienza veri e propri.
Sinceramente, non ho capito bene se finisce questa storia perché un personaggio è ancora lì che sta vagando, o se lo ritroverò nell'ultimo volume; un altro ha tirato le cuoia che manco me ne sono accorta, viene spiegato così, en-passant, tra un capitolo e l'altro.
Nel complesso, sostengo che questa serie continua ad essere molto particolare, a tratti molto "womens power",ma assolutamente non di facile lettura. Per fortuna mi manca l'ultimo volume,ora faccio un intervallo e poi lo inizio.

Heretics of Dune (Dune #5), Frank Herbert

Much has changed in the millennium and a half since the death of the God Emperor. Sandworms have reappeared on Arrakis (now called Rakis), each containing a fragment of the God Emperor's consciousness, and have renewed the flow of the all-important spice melange to the galaxy. With Leto's death, a very complex economic system built on spice collapsed, resulting in trillions of people leaving known space in a great Scattering. A new civilization has risen, with three dominant powers: the Ixians, whose no-ships (The technology in the Dune universe) are capable of piloting between the stars and are invisible to outside detection; the Bene Tleilax, who have learned to manufacture spice in their axlotl tanks (The technology in the Dune universe) and have created a new breed of Face Dancers; and the Bene Gesserit, a matriarchal order of subtle political manipulators who possess superhuman abilities. However, people from the Scattering are returning with their own peculiar powers. The most powerful of these forces are the Honored Matres, a violent society of women bred and trained for combat and the sexual control of men.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز بیست و یکم ماه فوریه سال 2019 میلادی
عنوان: بدعتگذار تلماسه؛ نویسنده: فرانک هربرت؛
ا. شربیانی

Completing each subsequent Dune book is always exhausting. On this, my finally-got-through-it complete reading of Heretics, I realized that last time I tried to read it, I stalled out 70 pages from the end -- that's how much of a grind these books can be.

But unlike the first four volumes, I don't really have the same sense of reward or accomplishment at finishing this one. Like most of the other books, Herbert doesn't really reveal what the book is about until the last fifteen pages or so. Most of the book follows two groups of characters on the run, each protecting a Chosen One from the evil powers that wish to destroy them. Throughout the book, each group repeatedly escapes some offscreen threat and then argues amongst themselves about the next course of action before a new threat emerges, at which point Herbert cuts away to the other group just as the action starts. And, as with most of the other Dune books, Herbert is far more interested in these in-between moments of discussion, usually between characters with various levels of prescience that are each trying to outwit the other. However, Herbert is uninterested -- almost to a fault -- in describing action. Most of the time this just means he's playing to his strengths, but in Heretics (especially in its final pages, where most of the plot takes place), so much happens in the space between chapters, paragraphs, and even sentences that the reader is often playing a frustrating amount of catch up. It's also just a drag to spend 200-300 pages setting up a story that unfolds most of its most important ideas in the last three chapters.

So structurally, there's much to be desired. Herbert likes a slow burn, but the psychological tension, use of language, or simply the espousal of philosophy is typically the real draw anyway. Unfortunately, Heretics is also just sort of criminally stupid in terms of what it actually focuses on. For example, the plots and themes of the first four Dune novels are about the nature of political power, of the limitations of human will and its relation to time and society.

However, Heretics of Dune is about two competing sects of sex nuns. The Good sex nuns are trying to protect one of the Chosen Ones from the bad sex nuns, who are a threat because they are better at full body orgasms. The twist is that this Chosen One is even better at full body orgasms, and therefore the Good sex nuns have to come up with a new plan for how to harness his uncontrollable sex powers.

There's also some culturally insensitive stuff about Islam that completely undoes everything about religion that Herbert handled more thoughtfully in the previous books, but it doesn't really matter because in the end everyone in that part of the book is either dead or having sex with the sex nuns.

This is, really-I-am-not-kidding, the whole plot of this book for the first 445 pages. In the last 25 pages, it changes into an entirely different book that is actually interesting and not something you are embarrassed to type in a Goodreads review, but most of THAT happens offscreen and is described in a serious of rhetorical questions in the last 4 pages.

Also Herbert manages to throw in some digs at Star Wars (deserved) and fancy restaurants (like, he is very angry with restaurants for some reason).

Anyway, I don't even fucking know with this book. There is a giant penis on the front cover that is even more of a giant penis than the giant penises on the other books. That's probably all you need to know.

Also happy new year.

I enjoyed this one. The world-building is exceptional as ever and it managed to bring me back into the Dune Universe after the previous  God Emperor of Dune

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

I'm going to be another one of those people who is going to read the last book simply from the time invested thus far. Oof.

Heretics of Dune
Book 5 of the Dune Chronicles

A Dune Retrospective by Eric Allen

Heretics of Dune is a bit of an odd book in my experience. The first time I read  God Emperor of Dune I was so put off the series by it that I refused to pick Heretics up for almost an entire decade. When finally I did pick it up, reading through the entire series again with the hope that age had given me new perspective on life to keep God Emperor from sucking so hard, it was probably my second favorite book in the series. It had characters I liked, things actually happened in it, and the story was pretty enjoyable with a huge OMFG DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN moment at the end. In comparison to God Emperor, Heretics is a friggen masterpiece. Of course, just about anything is a friggen masterpiece next to that abomination.

I have read this book several times since, and I remember enjoying it each time. However, this time, I made a bit of a mistake. I read Fragments by Dan Wells immediately before picking up Heretics, and that was so much better written, with so much more interesting characters, in a much more interesting setting, with a better story that is told better in every way than Heretics of Dune. And so, this time around, all I could think of was how mediocre it was, how it wasn't as well written as Fragments, how the characters weren't as interesting as the creations of Dan Wells, how the story was so distractingly vague and didn't seem to be going anywhere.

And after this experience, I have come to the conclusion that Heretics of Dune can either be a very good book, or a soul-crushingly mediocre one depending on what you read immediately before picking it up.

We begin after another 1500 year jump into the future. After the fall of the God Emperor due to his own stupidity, arrogance, and lack of any enjoyment factor for anyone reading the books in which he appears, humanity scattered to the nine corners of the universe, multiplying and finding new planets to call home. Why this could only happen AFTER the death of the God Emperor is anyone's guess, but whatever, I'm sure it made sense to Herbert as he was writing the book and who am I to tell Herbert what is stupid in his own universe?

After the Scattering people are beginning to return to Arrakis, called Rakis now, and the surrounding part of the universe, bringing with them the Honored Matres. These women are a perversion of the Bene Gesserit, ruling their people through the power of sex. No, I'm not kidding. In fact, the book goes into extensive and graphic detail on this point, and let me tell you... Herbert ain't no sex writer, that much is for sure.

The Bene Gesserit see them as a threat because ... and some girl is born on Rakis with the ability to ride the worms and this is important because ... and the Bene Gesserit have cloned Duncan Idaho yet again to do ... and they make an alliance with the Tlelaxu where they are clearly the underdogs because ... Do you see what I keep saying about Herbert leaving WAY too much of what would make his books make more sense vague and up to the reader's own imagination instead of giving us clear character motivations and explanations on the import of certain people and events that bring us into the story?

The Good? In a story that literally spans across thousands of years, Herbert bridges these books together with a common character, Duncan Idaho. It's not the same Duncan in every book, but he's got the same memories and personality so it works to hold the series together. Though he's more of a minor character in the first three books, he becomes a more central figure as the series progresses and all other bridges to the earlier volumes are washed away. He works pretty well in this role and is probably one of the more entertaining characters in the series for his penchant for saying the exact thing that will most piss people off in any given conversation.

The scope of the story, spanning across thousands of years shows Herbert's true visionary powers. That he was able to concieve of a story spanning so great a time, and account for the passage of time, like the names of planets changing, and show the long term effects of decisions made in the distant past by long dead characters, speaks to his prouesse as a storyteller.

At last, after three books of nothing but plots, within plots, within plots, wrapped in layers upon layers of intrigues, Herbert brings some much needed action back to the series. It's not that I don't like the political intrigues. Herbert is excellent at writing them. It's just that when that was ALL that there was to the story, it started to get a little stale. When characters do nothing but plot, and plot, and plot, and NEVER DO ANYTHING ELSE, it gets boring. People stop caring if anything is going to happen next, because they've seen that it isn't going to. When I first read this book, I loved the ending, because the last 25% of it is basically just non-stop action, which was something I was craving from this series since the first book ended, being a teenaged boy at the time and all.

The Bad? Although Herbert's sexism is not as pronounced in this book as it was in the previous one, it still comes out. Nearly every female character in this book is described by the size of her breasts, or by the attractiveness of her figure. The whole women perfecting the art of sex to enslave their followers thing is just a little too far over the top for my taste, and shows, once again, that Herbert thinks women are the scum of the universe. His mommy must never have held him as a child or something... There's thinking you're better than women because you happen to have been born with a dick, and then there's the complete and utter hatred that Herbert seems to have. He's in a class all of his own.

This book is not very well written. In fact, it's almost downright terribly written. Herbert used to be able to tell a coherant story, but as his career meandered on, he became less and less able to do so. The plot of this book, frankly makes no sense, it goes through several reversals, keeps the readers completely in the dark on the motivation and reasons behind generally everything going on, and skips over serveral key scenes without even referencing them or what went on during them. This book needed a lot more editorial influence than it got. Herbert really needed to sit down with a good and experienced editor and work through the plot for a few months before setting to work on the final drafts. These are things that could easily have been fixed, and I'm completely baffled that they weren't.

Characters do things that make no sense, because their motivations are never made clear to the reader. As such, their actions have no context. When we don't know what drives a character to do what they do, anything that they DO end up doing is confusing and pointless. Emphasis and importance are prescribed to certain people or places for no apparent reason because the author never saw the need to explain his own story to us or elaborate on all of the vagueness. Being vague is not bad in and of itself, you can build up mysteries in your stories to ratchet up the suspense and keep the readers interested. That's NOT the problem here. It's that NOTHING--N O T H I N G--is explained. Not who characters are, why they are important, why they do the things they do, why those things are important, what is going on, why any of that is important, why I should care about any of it, and so on. There's building up mysteries and plot twists, and then there's leaving the readers in the dark to the point that they begin to wonder if even YOU know what you're talking about. Characters start doing wildly irrational things and I can't even tell if it's in their character to do so or not, because they're not developed well enough as people for me to know anything about their personalities.

Nothing that happens in this book feels as though it was part of a flowing narrative where events move seamlessly and flawlessly along until it all comes crashing down at the end. Instead it feels like a whole lot of different scenes that have nothing to do with each other being tied together by the fact that they just happen to occur around the same characters. This book is a monumental failure to tell a story right from the foundation on up, and the worst thing about it is that it could have been fixed with just a little editorial influence. It didn't HAVE to be this bad. But Herbert had to come down with that whole George Lucas Syndrome thing and well, here we are, with a book that desperately needed an editor in the worst way, and never got one.

During almost every single scene in this book I was constantly asking one of the following questions. Why is this important? What does this have to do with anything? Why is this scene even in the book at all? What is going on, and how does it relate to anything else? These are questions that I should never find myself asking during a story. A narrative should be cohesive, with every single scene serving a purpose to the whole, flowing seamlessly from one event to the next and culminating in an epic climax. The entire story of this book is so disjointed and nonsensical that I was constantly trying to figure out how any given scene was supposed to relate to any of the others. And on top of that, several key scenes seem to have been cut near the end. On one page, Teg is plotting a bloody revolution to escape whatever planet he was on. And on the VERY NEXT PAGE, he's on Rakis waiting for a sandworm to arrive with some little girl whose importance STILL has not been touched upon by ANYONE at the very end of the book. I can make GUESSES at her importance to the plot, but Herbert holds her up as a golden child to be worshiped by all, but never tells us WHY. There was CLEARLY a deleted sequence here and the lack of it had me flipping back to see if my book was missing pages. Do you see what I mean when I say this book is disjointed and none of the scenes lead into any of the others? A good 30 pages seems to be completely missing from the published draft of the book.

The Ugly? Duncan Idaho: Teenaged Sex God... Need I say more? Okay, people, I've likely said it before, and I'll say it again, as many times as I need to for the point to sink in. Pedophilia of ANY sort is NOT COOL. Now, imagine if you will, that Duncan Idaho is not a fourteen year old boy, but a fourteen year old girl, and the sex temptress forcing herself on him is a man rather than a woman. Does this scene start to feel a little more uncomfortable to you? It should. It should have been just as uncomfortable to anyone as it is. Pedophila is pedophila, whether the victim is male or female. It is just as wrong either way, SO WHY IN THE HELL IS AN UNDERAGE BOY BEING RAPED BY AN OLDER WOMAN SO ACCEPTED IN FICTION IN OUR SOCIETY!?!?! It is just as bad when it happens to a boy as it is when it happens to a girl, and nothing that you can say will justify it. Pedophila is pedophila. It's the same damn thing, and I shouldn't have to explain why it is to anyone. This is a double standard that has both baffled and angered me for just about as long as I can remember. A young girl has an older man force himself on her and it's horrible and unthinkable, the same thing happens to a boy with an older woman and everyone is like, "good for him." NO!!! NOT GOOD FOR HIM!!! That's called pedophila, AND IT IS WRONG!!! Just because a woman is far less likely to sexually assault a teenaged boy than a man might be to assault a teenaged girl doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, and that it's not just as wrong when it does. Sexual abuse toward ANY child, male or female, is still sexual abuse, and guess what, having sex with a fourteen year old, no matter how many lifetimes of memory he might have, qualifies as sexual abuse.

This book has no protagonist. A Protagonist is the hero of the story, the one around whom the events of the story unfold. A Protagonist is a surrogate for the reader, a character that we can project ourselves onto and imagine having all those fantastical adventures as. They will be faced with some sort of conflict, and be tried and tested, coming to the very brink of ruin before finally learning and growing as a person and overcoming all opposition. Not every story is the same, I will grant you that, and not every story has to follow that exact pattern, but typically, there's at least a central figure in the story around whom events are woven. There's a main character that is vital to the plot, and without whom there is no story. Not so with Heretics of Dune. There are characters in this book. Some of them do things, though the vast majority of them only take up space, but the book isn't really ABOUT any of them. Without a strong central figure to identify with, we're left with the fragmented plot and the terrible writing to draw us into the book, and as they were both awful, what are we left with? Is it so much to ask that a fictional story I'm reading actually BE ABOUT SOMEONE? This is a concept as old as stories themselves, so why do so many authors these days have trouble identifying to the readers who their book is about and why we should care about them? Say what you will about Stephenie Meyer, but she at least knows who her books are about, and how to tell a cohesive story surrounding them. I mean... they SUCK, but at least they're put together better than this crap.

Anyway, despite liking this book in my younger years, I found it terribly written, convoluted, and far too vague for comfort. None of the narrative seems to flow along, and it feels something like a shattered stainglass window rather than a clear picture of a story. None of the character motivations are clear, and far too many plot points are left entirely to the reader's imagination. There is far too much pedophila going on for comfort here, and the fact that I never see anyone bring that point up about this book has me feeling a little nervous over where society is going. Despite bringing some much needed action back to the series, this book fails to entertain because it is written so poorly, and the plot reads like a map for a roadtrip planned out by a crack addict. Compared to God Emperor of Dune, it was a masterpiece. Compared to anything else, it's pretty much crap.

Check out my other reviews.

Heretics of Dune, the book fifth in the Dune series, is a sequel to God Emperor of Dune but it takes place a long time after the rule of God Emperor Leto II. When I say a long time, I mean one thousand five hundred years after the rule of Leto II Atreides (that also lasted for a rather long time). In that sense, the universe it describes is quite different. As a reader, you need to be aware of that books five and six in the series are somewhat different from the rest.

The previous novel covered a long period of time (3, 500 years long reign of Leto II) , but it was a time dominated by a single man/god/tyrant so it was pretty monotonous (even if very interesting from some points of view). In contrast, the world of Heretics of Dune is full of unknown. You could even say that this book requires some imagination and patience from its reader. It demands of its reader to understand the Golden Path and its implications. Still, there are many familiar players. You could say that the known world is reverting to its old Dune ways, for example with the spice remaining as important as ever). The Bene Gesserit are stepping on the stage again. The sisterhood is perhaps the only force that is fully aware of the golden path. However, they might struggle with deciding on their role. The sisterhood must evolve or perish.

Heretics of Dune witnesses humanity in a new light, no longer imprisoned by Leto II's rule but rather walking on the Golden Path. Even if nobody is really sure what the future will bring, it seems that emperor Leto's plan to save humanity from destruction has worked out- at least to an extent. By imprisoning the human race under his rule for more than three thousand years, Leto II caused humans to 'go boldly forward where no man has gone before' i.e. the Scattering- his plan all along. The human kind has scattered into space we are made to see- but we are not shown what it really means, but rather as readers we are invited to ask some questions ourselves. Moreover, as this novel opens some of the scattered are coming back- and they do not hold much love for the Old Empire. The Honored Matres, a violent female organization that enslaves males sexually so it could control them, seek to destroy the sisterhood and just about anyone who opposes them. The Honored Matres are extremely dangerous and violent, so drunk on power that they are willing to turn entire planets into dust on any provocation.

Heretics of Dune is closely tied to its sequel Chapterhouse: Dune. Don't expect a clean ending in this one. Many of the subplots will be develop in the following novel. This novel introduces us to a new Dune universe that will be expanded (but possibly not fully explained) in the final novel. There are many interesting characters in this novel. Like its sequel, the emphasis is on female characters, with the exception of Miles Teg and Duncan Idaho.

The leather of Bene Gesserit in this novel is Taraza, a strong Mother Superior who seems to always be one step ahead of others. A Fremen girl Sheena who learns that she can control the worms will became an important figure once Bene Gesserit gets hold of her as well. As always, there are Atreides characters. Miles Tag, the genius military strategist working for the sisterhood and his unorthodox daughter Odrade. Taraza and Odrade become closely associated, known under nicknames Tar and Dar, despite doubts that sisterhood places in Odrade who remains something of a romantic.

..“Taraza cleared her throat. “No need. Lucilla is one of our finest Imprinters. Each of you, of course, received the identical liberal conditioning to prepare you for this.” There was something almost insulting in Taraza’s casual tone and only the habits of long association put down Odrade’s immediate resentment. It was partly that word “liberal,” she realized. Atreides ancestors rose up in rebellion at the word. It was as though her accumulated female memories lashed out at the unconscious assumptions and unexamined prejudices behind the concept. “Only liberals really think. Only liberals are intellectual. Only liberals understand the needs of their fellows.” How much viciousness lay concealed in that word! Odrade thought. How much secret ego demanding to feel superior.”.

I found this novel a fascinating and a quick read. The events take place quite quickly and the plot makes sense. Miles Teg, in particular, was a very dynamic and interesting character. However, perhaps I enjoyed the sequel to Heretics of Dune a bit more than this book, just because it was a bit more philosophical. Moreover, in the final book, there is a more detailed analysis of power, government and Bene Gesserit. Still, I would recommend this one just as much. These two novels would be really hard to understand one without the other. It is always best to read the Dune books (I mean the original Frank Herbert series) in the chronological order, that is, the way they were published- and especially so with these two. In some sense, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune feel like the same novel to me, perhaps because they feature almost the same set of characters. Apart from those characters that are killed or perish, all the main characters repeat in the sequel Chapterhouse: Dune, so these two novels are definitely closely connected. I recommend taking on the sequel right after you finish Heretics of Dune, or you could forget some important details. To conclude, this is another novel in the Dune series that I enjoyed immensely.

What was the point of this omfg

This is the most disappointing Dune novel that I have completed up to this point and really discouraged me from reading Chapterhouse: Dune especially if it has more of the same forgettable characters. In my opinion the Dune Saga is the Story of Paul and Leto Atreides, Since neither of them are in this novel I just could not connect with this dull main cast.