Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5) by Frank Herbert

Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5) Reviews

• 
  Manny

  The guards ushered Frank into the office. As usual, the Reverend Publisher was seated at her desk, writing.
  
  So many lives touched by her decisions, he thought.
  
  "Well?"
  
  She looked up. He had promised himself that he would not flinch before the fire of her gaze, and once more he broke his promise.
  
  "It is... almost finished."
  
  "Almost." Her irony was palpable, a force. "Almost is not enough. You know that, Frank. When will it be done?"
  
  "I think... a month. At most two. I am working as hard as I can, Reverend Publisher. I am... not well."
  
  He hated himself for his servility.
  
  "So, why then did you found a dynasty? Your son can assist you. He will continue when you are gone. There are many books left to write."
  
  His throat was suddenly dry. But of course there was no pitcher of water. It would have been unthinkable.
  
  "I am... preparing him. He will be ready in time."
  
  She glanced at him again, and again he flinched.
  
  "There is a transcriber on that desk. Write a page now. I want to see how you work."
  
  He sat down, and fed a sheet of paper into the machine. His lips moved soundlessly. She knew what he was saying. By now, the Litany was stamped deep into his psyche, impossible to eradicate. She smiled secretly to herself. The training was brutal, but it was effective. She watched his mouth, as it formed the words it had spoken so many times before:

  I have no taste.
  Taste is the sales-killer, the hesitation that brings total profit meltdown.
  I will conquer my taste.
  When I have stamped it out, I will look at what I have written.
  I will read through it from start to finish.
  There will be nothing left of a great series.
  Only crap will remain.

  
  
• 
  Michael Finocchiaro

  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
• 
  Nicole

  2,5/5
  Moja silna potrzeba trzymania się czegoś starego, co jest mi już dobrze znane, nieco mnie zgubiła w tym tomie.
  Skupiamy się tu na zgromadzeniach żeńskich, a wśród postaci pojawia się tylko jedna z poprzednich tomów. Miałam duży problem, żeby się w niej odnaleźć i stąd tak niska ocena.
• 
  Bradley

  Re-Read 8/3/21:
  
  Returning to the world of Dune, or rather, what's become of what was once a vibrant, vital center of the universe, is always a treat. Even after Leto had seeded himself across the world.
  
  But truly, the standouts are never whom you thought they should have been.
  
  In this re-read, the fourth, if I'm not mistaken, I had almost all of my attention on a certain young BG who was meant to imprint our young Duncan Idaho in his latest of five thousand years of incarnations.
  
  It's strange how our focus changes over time. I kept thinking over and over about her role in the BG beyond the whole intrigue and massive conflict going on with the HM.
  
  Just what IS the Golden Path by this point? True genetic freedom, not just the unlocking of unimaginable powers, but the freedom to spread those to ALL of humanity's offspring? Or is this another genetic trap, a new kind of pressure to make us eventually jump once again?
  
  Just what DID you see, Leto?
  
  Fascinating. Always fascinating. Some of the best SF. Detailed, rich, and dense.
  
  
  Original Review:
  
  I have to admit that I put this one on the backburner for years and years and years, even though I attempted to re-read the series several times over the decades, I always got stuck right at the end of
  God Emperor of Dune and something in me just didn't want to pick up the two novels afterward.
  
  This is strange to me! I thought the fifth and sixth books were rather awesome, frankly!
  
  And that's why I'm skipping books 2, 3, and 4 altogether and jumping right back into the books that I have only read once. And then I'll be picking up the series carried on by Anderson and Frank's son following the events of Chapterhouse.
  
  So how did I think this book held up after all these years?
  
  Pretty good! There were a few slow parts, but the one thing that Heretics does very well is the worldbuilding. The Great God Leto II has been dead for 1.5k years after taking a dip in the aqueduct, turning into sandtrout that have now become full sandworms. That means that poor Paul's son has a trapped consciousness inside these gigantic monstrosities after having lived for 5k years. (Since birth+as a sandworm+trapped consciousness.) Freaky cool. And of course, religion has a bit part to play in these books as they always have.
  
  What's most interesting is Miles Teg and the new Duncan Idaho. The similarities between Teg and the original Leto are pretty suggestive and the spice trance doubly so. His little transformation blew me away both times I read it. But Duncan Idaho? The obsessively resurrected clone of the original that has come back nearly countless times over 5k years? It staggers the imagination. Leto II really put him through the wringer, but even after the old god had died, the Bene Gesserit and the Bene Tlailax have turned him into the stage of their own conflict.
  
  And it's these two that really own the stage in this side of the universe.... until the great spreading of humanity came back. :) Enter conflict. :) So good.
  
  This is one of those series that take a lot of dedication and understanding to really enjoy. You really have to get deep into them. But these are very, very enjoyable. This one is very complex and deep in a very similar way to the original classic.
  
  Tons of politics and machinations, and if you love that, you'll love this. :)
• 
  Lyn

  I often complain about series and deride their success but here I am reading a series and I think I understand the attraction: escapism, pure and simple. As the pages turned I smiled, recognizing Bene Gesserit (now with more fully described superhuman powers – like Jedi), Duncan Idaho, and yes even the great worms. I surrounded myself, wrapped up like a great cozy blanket, in the familiarity of the world building and closed the door to this reality. I think maybe that is why series are so popular, it is a chance to shut the door, close the windows and embrace another world.
  
  As Heretics of Dune begins, the reign of “the Tyrant” Leto II, the God-Emperor has been over for 1,500 years and has replaced the Butlerian Jihad as a back-story myth and Paul Muab dib and the Lady Jessica have taken the roles of a far distant savior and holy mother. The void left by the death of God-Emperor and the collapse of his empire resulted in the Scattering, a universal diaspora of humanity that provides Herbert an opportunity to re-tool his already complex world building and now various groups vie for power: Bene Gesserit, Bene Thleilaxu, Ix, Guild, Rakis priests and the emergence of a new and ruthless power, the Honored Matres. Heretics also contains a reference to ancient Vincent van Gogh paintings and frequent references to Christian text and old Earth allusions. Heretics also introduces one of the more charismatic and interesting characters in the series: Miles Teg, a mentat military genius trained by the Bene Gesserit.
  
  Herbert was a market adaptive best-selling author and a long-range visionary genius. Heretics is a throwback to the mysterious, espionage, court intrigue and machinations of the original
  Dune. While the series had lagged somewhat under the great worm God Emperor Leto II, Heretics revives the complexity that made Dune so attractive to readers. Herbert uses a very entertaining science fiction story as a vehicle to examine and explore politics, religion, economics, sociology, myth and military science.
  
  There were three years between the time I put down
  God Emperor of Dune and when I finally came back around to finish the series. Heretics of Dune has revitalized my interest in Herbert’s fine work with Dune.
  
  *** 2021 reread -
  
  Somewhere I had opined that this book was almost as good as the brilliant first book and I again adopt that opinion.
  
  While I revised my opinion of the fourth book, God Emperor of Dune, to better appreciate Herbert's great vision, my opinion of this fine work continues to be high.
  
  Miles Teg is truly one of Herbert's great Dune characters and his interactions with the Honored Matres, particularly the final scenes where he displays superhuman abilities are some of the series best.
  
  While the original six should be read in order, this is something of a reset and I'll want to revisit this one again.
  
  
• 
  Gerhard

  I had no idea that ‘Sandworm’ is a nickname for Unit 74455, a notorious Russian cybermilitary outfit. Sounds just like the kind of thing that would have pounced on humanity from the darkness of the Scattering.
  
  By the way, this idea of the Scattering – an edge of the known universe where criminality, smuggling, rebellion, deviance, illicit tech, ideas, and people flourish – is one that both Star Trek (DS9) and Star Wars (Han Solo) have capitalised heavily on. While a lot of attention has been paid to the influence of the original ‘Dune’ on the genre, it is clear that even with ‘Heretics’ in 1985, Herbert was still planting the seeds of ideas that would impact the next generation of SF writers and artists.
  
  If you look at the ratings and review tally for the books on Goodreads, you will see a marked drop off from ‘Children of Dune’ onwards. Yes, the sequence does technically conclude with ‘Dune Messiah’, which is a perfect point at which to stop reading if you want closure on the Paul/Muad’Dib saga. While ‘Children’ was a bit of a hot mess, it did set up what is arguably the best half of the six books. And if you look at each book, they are all uniquely different.
  
  However, it is highly unlikely that every reader of ‘Dune’ will persevere through to ‘Chapter House’. Which is a great pity, because in my view ‘Heretics’ is the best of the sequence up to this point, a tautly plotted sociopolitical thriller that, strangely, largely consists of extended verbal jousts between the wonderfully diverse cast in a range of exotic locations, from desert to snow, and even the beguiling world of Chapter House itself. But it makes for utterly compelling reading.
  
  This makes me think that Herbert might well be the Henry James of SF, because ‘Heretics’ is such an inward-looking chamber piece of a novel, where the sporadic bursts of violent and bloody action are all precipitated by words, glances, gestures, and the hidden intentions behind unstated meanings.
  
  With ‘God Emperor’, the question was how to write an entire book focused on a man-sandworm hybrid that rules over the Duniverse with a tyrannical flipper. And to transform it into both a love story and a tragedy. ‘Heretics’ poses an even more interesting question: How on Rakis do you top that premise?
  
  The opening sentence of ‘Heretics’ is one of the most arresting in the entire sequence to date: “Taraza told you, did she not, that we have gone through eleven of these Duncan Idaho gholas? This one is the twelfth.” (In my Gollancz paperback, this is preceded by a three-page Prologue that I see is excluded in the e-version, and which contains the famous aphorism: ‘In the name of the Bene Gesserit Order and its Unbroken Sisterhood, this account has been judged reliable and worthy of entry into the Chronicles of the Chapter House.’)
  
  Referencing the precise number of Duncan gholas to date (the character played by Jason Momoa in the 2021 adaptation of ‘Dune: Part One’ by Denis Villeneuve, for visual reference) is a neat trick of Herbert to indicate the considerable passage of time that has passed since the events of ‘God Emperor’. So much time that common names like Arrakis and Caladan have been shortened to ‘Rakis’ and ‘Dan’ respectively.
  
  Also, the mysterious sandworms that roam the reconstituted desert of the former planet, said to each contain a pearl of the mind of Leto II, is now known as the Divided God. Sandworms, of course, are at the heart of the mythology of ‘Heretics’, which features some of Herbert’s most lyrical writing about these evocative beasts.
  
  It also seems like we have waited five books for him to use the sentence: “Let sleeping worms lie”, which is particularly apt as a range of factions seek “to meddle with the worm-bound remnants of the Tyrant.” Chief among these is the hidebound priesthood that adopts the seer Sheeana, whose lineage can be traced back to Siona in ‘God Emperor’ (and even further back to the aristocratic Atreides themselves.)
  
  Sheeana, it seems, is able to communicate with the sandworms of Rakis, in accordance with an ancient prophecy from the days of Leto II about the appearance of a mysterious ‘sandrider’. You would think that everyone in the Duniverse would have had their fill of ancient prophecies by now, but alarmingly this is not the case, and so the juggernaut of history rolls on.
  
  But the Bene Gesserit, given their secretive and reclusive nature, know a good bit of religious propaganda when they see it, and set out to investigate the claims, which sets in motion a remarkable domino of events.
  
  If it happens to be true, they will simply incorporate Sheeana’s genes into their breeding programme, referred to memorably as a Stud Book at one point. If she proves to be a fake, then it will be equally simple for the Bene Gesserit to dismiss her and trundle along their seemingly diminishing version of the Golden Path.
  
  This would not be ‘Dune’ without it being creepy or over the top, or both. ‘Heretics’ begins with a rather queasy scene on Gammu, the former Giedi Prime, where the Reverend Mothers Schwangyu and Lucilla debate the potential sexual awakening of the latest Duncan ghola, who is on the cusp of manhood, as it were.
  
  Another key character we are introduced to early on is Reverend Mother Superior Taraza, whom Herbert wastes no time to highlight has already borne 19 children for the Bene Gesserit, an ‘essential service’ we are pleased to learn has not ‘grossened’ Odrade’s flesh, whose full mouth “promised a passion which she was careful to bridle.”
  
  Remember how Reverend Mother Mohiam was referred to as a ‘crone’ and a ‘witch’ in ‘Dune’? Well, now Herbert has gone full circle just like poor old Leto II, and gives us a supremely seductive Sisterhood that counts its sexual wiles as a key weapon in its feminine arsenal, as dangerous even as the Voice. And probably even more pointed than the Gom Jabbar.
  
  We are informed that the Bene Gesserit ‘speciality’ is “the management of procreation and all of its attendant necessities.” There is a wonderful scene near the end where Sirafa gets Lucilla’s hackles up by trying to disguise her as “a fifth-stage adept in the Order of Hormu.”
  
  “Do I presume that you need no explanation of sexual variations?”
  “A safe assumption,” Lucilla said.
  
  Indeed, not only can Lucilla administer ‘vaginal pulsing’, she can control genital temperature, and arouse the 51 excitation points (the sequencing plus the combinations number 2 008), in addition to the 205 sexual positions.
  
  Sirafa was clearly startled. “Surely, you don’t mean – ”
  “More, actually, if you count minor variations. I am an Imprinter, which means I have mastered the 300 steps of orgasmic amplification!”
  
  There you have it. If you are thinking that poor Duncan has no idea what is, er, coming for him in terms of his sexual awakening at the hands of the Bene Gesserit, you are partly right. The fact that the Bene Tleilax have produced so many gholas to date must mean that they are after an elusive something in their own breeding programme, just as the Sisterhood (accidentally, mind you) ended up with a Kwisatz Haderach …
  
  The Bene Gesserit are so sanctimonious in the unquestioned presumption of their own moral authority that at first they do not even comprehend the existential threat posed by the Honoured Matres, who return from the darkness and chaos of the Scattering to, well, wreak havoc. And fuck around a lot.
  
  The fact that they might be seen as an unbridled force of creative and enabling passion leading to ultimate destruction is kind of undercut by Herbert’s dodgy sexual politics coming to the fore when he has the Sisterhood constantly deriding the Honoured Matres as “Whores!” (Herbert even makes liberal use of the exclamation mark to emphasise this point.)
  
  Apart from weaponising sex, the Scattering has also resulted in a lot of really weird tech filtering through into the Duniverse, much of it copies of, and yet infinitely superior to, Ixian manufacture. By now the monopolies on space travel by the Guild and on spice by Rakis have long been broken by technology itself, which has flowered to its full maturity in the secrecy of the Scattering, and in ways that the old Butlerian Jihad days could only have dreamed about.
  
  And so the stage is set for a classic confrontation in the wild sands of Rakis, a confrontation that will (again) determine the fate of the known universe.
  
  Softly, she called down to him: “Hey! Old worm! Was this your design?”
  There was no answer but then she had not really expected an answer.
• 
  Markus

  Buddy read with
  Athena!
  
  “The surest way to keep a secret is to make someone think they already know the answer.”
  
  The tyrant God Emperor has returned to the sands of Dune. The universe that was once ruled by Houses Corrino and Atreides have fallen into chaos and is controlled by dozens of bickering factions. The Bene Gesserit and the Tleilaxu struggle for power, but their ambitions are contested by billions of humans returning from the Scattering. But on the surface of Dune, a small girl might be able to break the balance when she finds that she is able to control the mighty sandworms themselves.
  
  Heretics of Dune is a giant improvement from the last book in the series, God Emperor of Dune. There are more characters, more hidden motives and overall a more interesting storyline. Still, there is much separating even this book from the three brilliant masterpieces of the Great Dune Trilogy. The epic feel is still gone, old boring characters are recycled, and even Frank Herbert's impressive pieces of social criticism are fewer and far between than they once were.
  
  While I enjoyed reading this book, I demand more from this series. What it needs is a breath of fresh air, and I don't know if Herbert was capable of providing that. But Dune is still one of my favourite series of all time, and my aim to read everything still stands.
• 
  Ahmad Sharabiani

  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
• 
  Terry

  I’m one of those weirdos that actually likes the entirety of Frank Herbert’s Dune series even after you get past the first three volumes and the direct history of Muad’Dib and his family and start wading into some seriously weird stuff (and saying that the later volumes of the series are weird when you compare them to the earlier ones is saying something). Don’t worry though, I’m not crazy enough to have anything but contempt for that cash grab series of prequels and sequels floated by Herbert’s son and his ghost writer pal…blech! Part of the interest for me in the later volumes is seeing how the prescience of Muad’Dib (and even more so of his son the god-emperor Leto II) affected the human race and noting how humanity responded in an attempt to free themselves from the ‘Golden Path’ that it brought about. The other reason, I must admit, is that I find the character of Duncan Idaho, or more precisely the Duncan Idaho gholas which populate these books, fascinating. Be warned: there are some spoilerific details for previous volumes of the original Dune series below.
  
  In the previous volume
  God Emperor of Dune we got a close-up view of the tyranny of the man-worm himself, the god-emperor Leto II (all done for humanity’s own good of course) and also saw his fascination with bringing back his family’s old retainer, the inimitable sword master Duncan Idaho again and again in ghola form over a period of centuries. Why Duncan Idaho? What’s so special about him? And why did Leto keep bringing him back (and ultimately killing him) over and over again? Was he expecting some result other than companionship and ultimately betrayal? It appears to have been a question the sisters of the Bene Gesserit started asking themselves as well and once they were free from the direct yoke of the god-emperor (though not of his pre-destined plan for humanity), they decided to keep up the tradition for themselves and see what the result might be.
  
  And so we begin this volume of the series at a Bene Gesserit fortress located on the planet Gammu (formerly Geidi Prime, home of both the Harkonnens and the original Duncan Idaho) watching as a young ghola is being trained for purposes that even his teachers and protectors aren’t fully aware of. Of course this ghola is merely the last in a long line of Duncan Idahos, not yet aware of his previous existence, and just as uncertain of his purpose as those who watch over him. Despite the fact that this book takes place thousands of years after the time of Muad’Dib some familiar features survive: as noted the Bene Gesserit are still controlling bloodlines (though with the express purpose to perfect human breeding while at the same time to explicitly avoid the appearance of another Kwitsatz Haderach) and holding a precarious, though powerful, position in the political hegemony of human culture in the former precincts of the Padishah Empire; the Bene Tleilax still tinker with the genetic code of humanity in a much more direct way (including supplying the Bene Gesserit with their desired Duncan Idaho gholas) and hope to supersede all political rivals through plans and machinations of their own; and the Spacing Guild and industrialists of Ix still survive albeit in much weakened forms. Two of the most drastic changes are that the Bene Tleilax have finally discovered a way to artificially produce the spice melange and thus break the stranglehold previously held by those who controlled the Worms of Arrakis (or Rakis as it is now called); not to mention the fact that a multitude of peoples who had left the Empire after the fall of the god-emperor in an event called the Scattering to populate the vast reaches of space are now returning and want to conquer all of the supposed secrets of the humans they left behind in the regions of the old empire.
  
  The overarching tale is one of political intrigue as the Bene Gesserit face off against the mysterious Bene Tleilax and each hopes to outplay the other in a bid to control the former empire; of course in addition to this they both face the threat of the nearly overwhelming forces of the Scattering and their mysterious and deadly leaders, the Honored Matres. At a much more human level it is the personal story of several key players against this wider backdrop: the Duncan Idaho ghola as he comes into his own and must decide how to live in this new world separated from all he knew by thousands of years; his teacher and mentor Miles Teg, an Atreides scion and mentat-warrior of great ability who has served the Bene Gesserit all of his life; Sheanna, a young native of Rakis apparently born with the power to control the sand worms into which the god-emperor transformed himself; and Darwe Odrade a sister of the Bene Gesserit who must navigate difficult waters and test her loyalty to the sisterhood that made her and the many plans within plans that have formed the basis of her society.
  
  I enjoyed this volume, though I think on this re-read I didn’t find it quite as captivating as I remember my first reading to have been. This also is very much the first half of one story as it ends nearly in mid-crisis and leaves much to be resolved in the next volume (which I remember being the weirdest of the bunch and which itself unfortunately left many unanswered questions). If you want to keep following Frank Herbert on the ride through his crazy Dune universe and see the impact of the Atreides on the human race then this is a required volume; on the other hand if you were happy to leave things where they were at the end of
  Children of Dune, or found the politics and world of
  God Emperor of Dune confounding then perhaps you should leave this one on the shelf.
  
• 
  Mizuki

  Premise: 1000-plus years after the regime of Leto II, human races had spread across the known galaxies and beyond, with the godlike tyrant (Leto II) out of the picture, different races and power groups/religious groups now ruled different parts and corners of the different civilizations, and the power struggle and scheme continued.
  
  I enjoy the first four books of the Dune series, but by the fifth book, I must admit something in the story is getting old. I mean, you can only reuse the idea of weird breeding program, court intrigue, characters hiding and giving chase in the desert etc etc that many times.
  
  Plus, hardly any character stand out in the book. The main characters are a reasonable enough bunch but they just aren't very remarkable, as to the 'villains'.........they are even more unmemorable. For example, in book 4 I can always see Leto II clearly but in this book, I can't picture any of the characters as a lively being and the ideal they stand for, in my mind. *sighs*
  
  Furthermore, what I really don't like about this volume is, the slut shaming is getting really much, I mean, the Bene Geserit had been using sex as weapon for god know how long, but when there is a bunch of newcomers coming along, also using sex to control men (okay, as usual homosexuality is not mentioned), said newcomers were labeled as sluts nonstop, I mean, come on.
  
  PS: I also don't think this volume brings much insight for its readers, but I will read the next book anyway.
• 
  Books with Brittany

  3.5⭐️😬
• 
  Eric Allen

  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.
• 
  Montzalee Wittmann

  Heretics of Dune
  (Dune #5)
  by Frank Herbert
  New characters but very interesting! Duncan has been in every book! Over 5,000 years and Duncan is still there, cloned but still there! His clone is different this time! Dune is renamed. A new character that has extraordinary abilities! A child.
• 
  Bilal Y.

  Dune dizisinin beşinci kitabı yeni bir başlangıç sayılabilir ve bu haliyle dizinin ilk kitabının yarattığı etkiyi yaratabilir.
• 
  Ivana Books Are Magic

  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.
• 
  Uğur Karabürk

  Dune Sapkınları 5. Kitap
  Dune Sapkınları kitabını çok beğendiğimi söyleyemeyeceğim. İlk dört kitaba nazaran biraz zayıf buldum. Seride sadece üçüncü kitabı sevmemiştim beş de biraz onun kıvamında ilerledi. Konu karakter geçişleri çok hızlıydı ve belirli noktalarda kesilince olaylar, okumaya ket vurdu. Bu eserde kadınlar çok ön plana çıkarılmıştı ama dördüncü kitaptaki bütünlükten sonra beşi okuyunca biraz sıkıldım. Yine de her şeye rağmen yazarın yarattığı evren ve karakterler çok üst düzey. Şimdi son kitap kaldı fakat onu birkaç ay sonra okumayı planlıyorum.
• 
  cristi

  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
• 
  ♥Milica♥

  Was this better than God Emperor of Dune? Yes. Was it also kinda meh? Yes.
  
  Three stars for Sheeana and Duncan, and Sheeana and Duncan ONLY.
• 
  Nikola Pavlovic

  Ovaj peti deo Dine odlikuje ubedljivo najbrza radnja u citavom serijalu do sada.
  Navikao sam da Herbert u jednom pasusu lomi radnju i pravi znacajne obrte ali ovoga puta kada to radi deluje da ne drzi sve konce u rukama i da po malo i nasilno stvari tera ka konkluziji. I pored toga ovo je jedan neverovatno dobar deo, a koji to nije, Hronika Dine i sa velikim zadovoljstvom ali i po malo tuzan prelazim na poslednji deo ovog malo je reci monumentalnog serijala.
• 
  Kevin

  Compared to the questionable God Emperor of Dune, this regains some of the original Dune novels taste for plots, counter-plots, espionage, conspiracies and so on. God Emperor of Dune was too heavy with little action to break it up, and besides, it was so hard to visualise Leto II as the hybrid creature he became. Heretics of Dune however is a big return to form, with lots of action and different character focus, combined with the mysticism, religion and philosophical discourse that characterises this whole series of novels. This is why I gave this top marks, as it is a page turner and, like the other four books, makes you think about things.
  
  The setting this time is one thousand years after Leto II's death which would be nearly five thousand years after the original trilogy- I mean, Frank Herbert was certainly not conservative with dating his fiction was he? This time, the Bene Gesserit are the books main focus, with their wheeling and dealings, their breeding program all playing a major role. Also, there is actually some *sex* in this book, which was pretty erotic to say the least. About time too. Leto II's Golden Path is reaching its culmination as well, and yes, Duncan Idaho is still reincarnated as a Ghola yet again.
  
  Dune, I am slowly realising, is a classic set of novels - well written and philosophical, dealing with religion, mysticism, martial arts, feminism and a whole spectrum of contemporary issues, despite the fact that these books were written from the mid 1960's to the mid 1980's - and still deal with modern subjects that are as important today as they were back then. Also, well apart from God Emperor of Dune, they are not dry to read, or bogged down with descriptions of future tech, which is a good thing. Recommended.
• 
  Scot Parker

  Well, I thought The God Emperor of Dune was bad, but in Heretics of Dune, it got worse. Somehow full of even more misogyny than the previous novel and now with a dusting of anti-progressive political vitriol, this book is a dumpster fire in my opinion. I am not looking forward to reading Chapterhouse: Dune, I will only do so because of my stubborn resolve to not leave a series unfinished, but after that, thankfully I will be done.
• 
  Siona St Mark

  After three tries, I finally managed to finish this book lol. Definitely not as good to the first four by any means, but it was still enjoyable. I think the ending was truly the hardest part to finish. Gonna wait awhile before I go on to Chapterhouse. I did really like Darwi and Taraza in this book, they were the most interesting characters.
• 
  Bob R Bogle

  
  
  [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.
• 
  Michael Campbell

  After the long philosophical rambling disguised as a novel that was the last book, I hadn't much interest in continuing the series. Yet, the trailer came out for the new Dune movie, and I had a choice, reread the first Dune novel or continue the series. With only two books left written by the father, it seemed a shame to leave it unfinished. I chose to continue the series, and feel like this, as well as the series after the first, were both mistakes.
  
  There is little doubt in my mind the first Dune book(which was meant to be a trilogy in of itself) was meant to be the only book. Messiah was still good, if unnecessary. I remember not disliking Children of Dune, except for the ending. God Emperor was just barely above a one star review, and this book, while better, made me sad. The grand vision that was Dune seems like little more than a money grab to me now. In my heart, the series isn't a series at all but a single novel that ended with Paul as emperor and the knowledge of the Jihad to come.
  
  Well, I guess I could talk a bit about this book specifically now that my morose ramblings are at an end. The characters were pretty decent, the most memorable ones since the first book. Other than that though, I was bored and slightly appalled throughout. It's quite obvious things are made up as he goes along, and ideas conflict with earlier ideas in the previous books.
  
  The whole sex addiction making slaves of an empire comes across as little more than silly fetishism to me and doesn't work in my mind. Humanity is and has never been, an entirely sexual nor heterosexual species. The idea that sex can be so damn good with these women, that any man that has it is a slave for life made me grimace.
  
  There were plot conveniences throughout. Seemingly insurmountable enemies were suddenly given a glaring weakness, or the good guys were just as suddenly given an unexpected power or ally. The ending in particular was rife with convenient escapes.
  
  Now, there are flashes of that original Dune brilliance, some neat quotes and ideas here and there. Plus, as I said, the characters were well done for the most part. Everything else though, made it hard to finish this book. Will I read the final Frank Herbert Dune book? Probably, it seems almost silly to stop here, but I really wish he had stopped with Dune. Some prequel novels might have been fun, but that's really all I can see being necessary. Everything after Dune takes away from Paul's prescience and design for the universe.
• 
  Ramón S.

  I am sorry to say that but it is a bummer. I don’t connect with Dune world at all at this point of the series. Elites vs Elites plotting, using jargon all the time, no senses, mysteries non interesting at all....Pufff
• 
  Aleksandar Sarkic

  What to say, after i have read previous four books, Heretics of Dune came into my hands, and i must say that i am to some degree dissapointed. It has everything that you expect from Frank Herbert, great plot, characters, political intrigues, pace, and yes Arrakis is again desert planet, but something is missing, especially i was dissapointed by the end of the book. It is written fast and Herbert lost himself or it was just like that so he can make part 6, i think the second option is more realistic. Another important notice for me that Heretics of Dune lost spiritual and mystical side which previous books all had it and it was one of the aspects why i fell in love so deeply with the whole Dune universe. The Heretics of Dune is more on political intrigue side mixed with action parts of the charachter Miles Teg and strange sexuality. The most interesting thing for me in the book was strong presence of Tleilaxu, one of the strangest factions in the Dune Universe. Definetely i will read Chapterhouse Dune to finish the original serial but the quality of the books drops after Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune wanted to be highly philosophical but it ends pretentious but it is still better book than Heretics of Dune. Children of Dune still stands as my favorite from the series followed by the first book.
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  Özgür Balmumcu

  Muazzam başlayan Dune serisi bence ilk üç kitabın ötesine geçmemeliymiş. Çünkü dördüncü ciltte başlayan irtifa kaybı, beşinci ciltte çakılma emareleri göstermiş. Okurken öyle zorlandım, öyle sıkıldım ki bunu doğru kelimelerle izah etmem zor. Yazar ilk 4 cildin ardından bu beşinci cildi yeni bir üçlemenin ilk halkası olarak planlamış. Yeni üçlemenin ikinci, serinin altıncı kitabından sonra yazarın ani ölümüyle de tamamlanamamış bir seri aslında Dune. Yani toplamda 7 cilt olacakken 6. ciltle nihayete erememiş. Frank Herbert'in ölümünden sonra oğlunun tamamlayıcı çalışmaları var seriye ilişkin. Neyse, Frank Herbert yeni bir üçlemeye yelken açtığı serinin beşinci cildinde bu sefer dördüncü ciltten 1500 yıl sonrasına gidiyor. Dördüncü ciltte de bir 3500 yıl atlamıştı. Orijinal hikâyeden neredeyse tamamen kopuyor bu ciltte yazar artık. Hâliyle hikâyenin ana temaları da değişiyor. Başka bir şey okuyoruz, atmosfer değişiyor. Kadın karakterler, hamilelik, doğurganlık, cinsellik gibi unsurlar öne çıkıyor. Karakter sayısı artmakla kalmıyor, karakterizasyonlar da bayağı zayıflıyor. Bu kadar hacimli bir kitapta tek bir karakterle bile yakınlaşamamam beni şaşırttı. Diyaloglar da tavan yapıyor, bu da metnin ritmini olumsuz etkiliyor. Olay örgüsü ve kurgu oldukça zayıf kalıyor bu şartlarda. Takip etmek benim açımdan çok güç oldu bu dağınıklığı. En azından ilk üç ciltte saat gibi işleyen birçok artı özellik dördüncü ciltte ortalama seyrettikten sonra bu ciltte, yeni bir başlangıç aşkından mı bilmiyorum, baş aşağı gidiyor. Üstelik serinin en hacimli cildi, 627 sayfa ne anlatıyorsun be Herbert demekten kendimi alamadım çoğu zaman. Seriye olan saygım olmasa Dune Sapkınları'na bakışım ☆, okurken o kadar sıdkım sıyrıldı romandan. Acaba dedim sona doğru mu açılacak, çünkü insan ister istemez bu çorba sonda tatlanacak herhalde diye düşünüyor okurken. Ama o da yok, vasatın altında ve aceleci bir final var. Her şeyi tadında bırakmak lazımmış, bu seri de bana kalırsa üçüncü ciltle son bulmalıymış.
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  podczytany

  Żałuję, że słuchałem jej w audio... Mam wrażenie, że przez to sporo mi umknęło. Jednakże nadal ją doceniam. Jednym z gorszych rozwiązań jest cały wątek tworzenia z "ludzi" maszyn seksu. Nie wiem jak to inaczej nazwać. Nie podoba mi się ten zabieg, jednakże rozumiem jego podstawy i fakt, że seksualność jest w stanie zabić umysł. Z takim zamiarem jest właśnie ona używana w tym tomie.
  
  Rzekłbym, że średnio na jeża.
  
  Ocena: 3,0.
• 
  Trish

  Oh my, it seems as if Frank Herbert saved a plot almost as complex as the one of the first four books for the last two!
   
  I'm very much looking forward to Villeneuve's interpretation of Dune that will be shown in theaters this year so I decided to not only read the original book but also the rest of the series.
   
  1500 years have passed since Leto II, the God Emperor, has died. Arrakis is now called Rakis and has become a desert planet again. As planned by Leto, his death spawned the resurgence of sandworms (able to thrive when the desert took over again). While his death resulted in the hope that spice will be flowing once again, it has also triggered a kind of exodus, called the Scattering, when the Empire crumbled.
  Dominant powers in what is left of the Empire are the Bene Gesserit, the Ixians (inventors pushing the boundaries of what is technologically allowed ever since the Butlerian Jihad, thus developing (amongst other things) the no-ships which are invisible to detection), and Bene Tleilax (an isolationist group of genetic manipulators that have developed the axlotl tank in which the gholas are being bred and in which they can now produce spice even; they have also developed a new form of face dancers). Manipulators one and all and all of them strangely … weak now.
  The ones who left the Empire are called the Lost Ones. Most powerful amongst them are the Honoured Matres - an off-shoot of the Bene Gesserit that, while having peculiar powers, also seem to have devolved from the Sisterhood: they have lost the ability to absolutely control their bodies and emotions. Nevertheless, they should not be underestimated.
   
  Simultaneously, it has come to the Bene Gesserit's attention that there is a young woman on Rakis that can control the sandworms (Sheeana , a descendant of Paul, as is only to be expected, causes mayhem amongst the fish speakers that have turned into priests on Rakis as people start worshipping her like they used to worship Muad'Dib).
  Perhaps it is therefore no coincidence that the Lost Ones are returning now of all times, bent on conquest.
  The Bene Gesserit have foreseen this conflict and prepared accordingly despite the Sisterhood being divided internally. Thus, another Duncan Idaho ghola has been bred and is being trained while they are also keeping tabs on Sheeana. Another asset in their struggle for supremacy is a former military commander, (Bashar) Miles Teg (another descendant of House Atreidis). Darwi Odrade, one of his daughters (biological, unbeknown to him), is a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit and sent to Rakis to take over the keep there.
   
  So yes, all forces are converging on Dune. And then, the unthinkable happens ...
   
  I could go into more detail about the battles, the assassinations (both attempted and successful), deceptions, the captures and escapes, the fight between religious fanatism and cold logic, the plots and counter-plots. Equally, I could tell you of the weird but highly interesting powers the different factions display or accidentally trigger. But I shan't. Discovering the richness of the plot yourself is half the fun of reading these books after all.
  
  Seriously, I had my doubts about how I'd like these last two books after how volume 4 ended (what could possibly come after that, especially since there was nobody left for me to connect with).
  I should have trusted the author more.
  Just seeing the Atreidis legacy, all the consequences even from small actions from about 5000 years earlier - it all brought home just how big the threat to humanity was and why such drastic sacrifices were necessary to ensure the Golden Path would be followed ... or did something happen that thwarted Leto's plans?
   
  As predicted, I didn't connect too much with most characters here. However, I did love Duncan very much again and I pitied him for his "childhood".
  I also loved everything about Teg. He was brilliant and very much like the original Leto. Which OF COURSE meant that he had to die. *sighs*
  What I really didn't see coming or didn't want to consider possible despite all the signs was Arrakis' destruction. I mean, Chapterhouse had been talked about in the previous book already (sneaky) and became more and more important here. Nevertheless, we're talking about Dune! *cries*
  
  No idea what will happen now. Naturally, there is only victory or defeat (and there is no telling which would be part of the Golden Path) but what either will look like is a mystery - showing the author's mastery!