Chapterhouse: Dune

What a pointless slog of a story. "Dune" has been a part of my life since I was 5 or 6, and to see this part of it end like this is kind of... sad. Ah well. We all grow up.

This book is almost as garbage as "God Emperor of Dune", except more happens in it, so it wins by comparison. Though much of the story is again spent with characters internally debating or debating with each other about maybe doing something eventually. Though they do get around to parts of it. The frequent confusing POV switches were as confusing as ever, and omniscient until they weren't, which was also frustrating.

The constant references to sex magic (which we never actually see) were frustrating. People here and on Reddit call this the weird sex book, and it is, show more but it's all flash and no substance. The most graphic scenes we "see" are a furry/human orgy in the dark, vanilla shower sex, post-coital bed lounging, and the rape of a child, so that's... that. It also contains a ridiculous amount of rightwing griping about taxes and voting, about how ableism is cool, and also one of the weirdest instances of a Christian writing a group of Jews that was at turns stupid and incredibly offensive. We are not just Christians wearing yarmulkes, which is how Herbert writes them.

It's also painfully obvious that although Herbert possibly seemed to grasp that he needed to write more women in this universe, he has no idea how women talk or interact with each other. And it's uncomfortable to read.

None of the characters in this story are appealing. The narrative is miserable. The love "story" isn't compelling. It's a tired retread of the same characters in previous books, but worse. The "philosophy" and politics are pretty dumb. And somehow Herbert took one of my favorite artists - Vincent van Gogh - and made me dread every time his name was brought up.

I will give Herbert this, though: he added furries to the story. That's kind of neat. He didn't go very far with it, but it's amusing that that's in there.

Overall, this was a waste of time for a series that should have ended at least three books prior. People were writing better SF than this in the 80s (and Steven Brust had magic genetics, reincarnation, and past life stuff, too). And they're writing better now. As someone with a soft spot for all the "Dune" adaptations, I hope they never adapt this. show less

With this book, I have completed my full sequential read of Frank Herbert's Dune novels. It ends on an open note, intimating a further dialectical progression of the transhuman possibilities developed in the books so far. But I am unlikely to read the Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson sequels, even though they were supposedly composed on the basis of Frank Herbert's manuscript notes that intimated the plot of a seventh and final book. (Son Brian's notes in late editions of the earlier books were unimpressive to me.)

I had conjectured during my read of the immediately prior volume Heretics of Dune that these two should form a pair charting the rise and fall of a power within what the Bene Gesserit call the Old Empire, and their new show more rivals the Honored Matres call the Million Planets. If so, that power is Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, who ascended to her position at the end of Heretics and provides the primary viewpoint character for Chapterhouse. Odrade is a transformational leader of the Bene Gesserit, and her perspective certainly differs from that of her predecessor Taraza--even though she benefits from all of Taraza's memory and experience, after the fashion of the Sisterhood.

The ghola/clone regeneration of Miles Teg is only about ten years old in this book, thus establishing the relatively short period of time between the two volumes at the end of the series--most comparable to the gap between the first two Dune books. The rekindling of Teg's consciousness in this immature body establishes something of a recurrent trope in the larger series, with its similarity to the Unheimlichkeit of the child Alia Atreides. It is not the only respect in which Herbert here seems to be developing earlier theses by reiterating them with an alternation of gender.

This work is certainly no standalone, and I suspect that it would be basically unintelligible in the absence of the earlier Dune books. One interesting feature in the frame of the multi-millennial future historical arc composed by Herbert is that the Butlerian Jihad has become a mere ancient footnote. By the time of Chapterhouse, robots have become commonplace, and the integration of biology and technology is unsettling the distinction between machines and humanity. Speculative religious elements in this novel involve not only the forward projection into the Honored Matres, but a historically retrospective element in the recovery of a form of spacefaring crypto-Jewry.

The style of the text continues to use italics for internal reflections, and especially for kibitzing by the Other Memory within Reverend Mothers. Usually, this convention was pretty lucid, but it also made for some slow passages with mentation paralleling conversation, where the voices were difficult to untangle.

Since my read of the full Dune series this year was 2/3 re-read and took place more than forty years after my original read of the first four books, I believe I have reached the end of my Dune reading. (I can think of other sf series on this scale that I am more likely to re-read with the time I have remaining.) Its pioneering imagination regarding ecologies and religious traditions seems on reflection to sit within a keenly Hegelian sensibility. I have enjoyed the full passage through the series, and it definitely stands on a plane above much of the science fiction that has since paid it willing or unwilling homage.

Reflections on the culminated plots: I thought there were sort of three divergent endings to this sixth book.

1) The "Chapterhouse" ending: The Sisterhood and the Matres were being hybridized into a more fearsome society with the powers of both, and much of the Tleilaxu cloning science, but guided by the deep identity of the Bene Gesserit and their Other Memory, with Murbella at the helm. This ending fulfills the plans of Odrade, who had been the main viewpoint character of the book.

2) The "Dune" ending: Sheeana and Duncan kidnapped some worms (and the Tleilaxu Master of Masters, and the super-powered Teg ghola) to go start a new empire or jihad or something, with Sheeana as its messianic leader. Duncan has come into his full powers as a serially-resurrected super-mentat. This ending seems to be the likeliest point of departure for an intended sequel.

3) The "WTF" ending: The old couple in the garden who have appeared momentarily in Duncan's visions are revealed to be the apotheosis of the Face Dancers, who have been absorbing the identities and powers of everyone they can get their hands on, ever since their perfection by the Tleilaxu. Implicitly, they account for the vanishment of the "Scattered" Bene Gesserit during the menace from the Honored Matres. They likely have some measure of every sort of superior mental power--precognition, mentat awareness, Other Memory, etc.--sketched in the books so far. This ending is the one that made me feel like the whole series had actually reached a culmination and a sort of conclusion.

I think it would be easy for any reader to focus on one or two of these and miss the full set. show less

Well, that was certainly a book.

Dune: Chapterhouse is mostly empty sand, with a few bits of melange in original thoughts about tradition, power, and survival. The main character is Odrade, Bene Gesserit Mother Superior, who faces the destruction of her order at the hands of the rampaging Honored Matres. Only secrecy, and a Reverend Mother's willingness to die before betraying the order, can buy Odrade precious time to figure out a strategy for survival, a multipronged plan involving a ghola of the Bashar Miles Teg, renegade Honored Matre Murbella, and the ecological transformation of the planet Chapterhouse into another Dune via sandworm.

But here's the thing, a protagonist requires a character arc; a heroic protagonist requires a flaw show more (at least in the classical sense), and the Bene Gesserit in this book provide neither. The are history embodied, through the thousand of other memories that live in the Reverend Mothers. the Honored Matre are a kind of twisted mirror of the Bene Gesserit, all of their vaunted control and power with none of the tempering of wisdom. But what faces Odrade is not barbarians, but what Iain M Banks deemed an 'Outside Context Problem'. What has returned from the vast Scattering of human space and evolution, and how is it beyond the memories of the Bene Gesserit. However, the Bene Gesserit are too unruffled, to serene even in the face of extinction. They're a far cry from the subtle shapers of people and events of Dune, and strangely unaffected by the failure of their 10,000 year program to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, which lead to Muad'Dib and the Tyrant Leto II.

Dune was at its best when it balanced the grand forces beyond human control, the Fremen Jihad, prescient powers, Bene Gesserit plots, etc, with the fact that it mattered that it was these humans, in this time and place, Paul and Jessica and Chani and Stilgar, on Dune, when the power of the Atreides has been broken.

Herbert died before the true conclusion of the series. Duncan foresees an enemy that the Honored Matres are fleeing from, which in perhaps the ultimate example of anti-climaticism, are Face Dancers named Marty and Daniel who have absorbed so many identities they have become super-human.

If Heretics were fragments of a better book, Chapterhouse is those fragments ground to dust. show less

As with much of Frank Herbert's other writing, [b:Dune|234225|Dune|Frank Herbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1434908555s/234225.jpg|3634639] excluded, this one is a novel notable and worthy on the realm of ideas. He never stints on ideas. He might get slighly sloggish and lose the thread of the plot while we plod around in the ideas, but there's always great scenes and always great blow-out reveals. The original classic of Dune has none of these faults. It is a classic and imminently readable from page one and is still my favorite book of all time.

So what about this one? Is it worth reading for everyone else? It's book 6 in the very impressive and automatically Epic series that encapsulates over five thousand years from the show more events of Dune, ending with the centric viewpoint of the Bene Gesserit after the tyranny of Paul's son and the great diaspora that scattered all the peoples of the galaxy after his death.

The planet Dune is effectively destroyed at the end of Heretics of Dune and only a single sandworm and some sandtrout was lifted from the planet to be the seed of a new place where the Spice can be produced. This is especially important after the Bene Tleilaxu were also destroyed or partially submerged under the auspices of the Gesserit after the Honored Matres rampaged through the known universe.

This book takes up the new clones of Teg and Duncan, but mostly revolves around the conflicts between the Bene Gesserit and the Honored Matres. Each side has taken prisoners and tries to subvert the captives. The Bene Gesserit are more than slightly more successful at the task than the "knock-off Bene Gesserit" Honored Matres, despite the others being wildly more dominant and deadly in combat.

What we have is a novel that reminds me a great deal of the later Wheel of Time books with Egwaine in the White Tower, only, I have to point out that Chapterhouse Dune came out first. :) We know that Jordan was a big fan of Dune and stole a tone of great ideas from Herbert, so this shouldn't be too surprising, but rather than a 5-6 enormous spread of books, Herbert accomplishes a success-from-below story in a single novel. :)

The teaching and the subversion is the real main story in Chapterhouse. Don't let the cool space battles and space-opera fool you. This is a story of fantastic women doing fantastic things, the undisputed masters of the galaxy, and a massive conflict between the returning diaspora offshoot of the Bene Gesserit and the main line that stayed behind.

On that level, it's still a great tale despite my other issues with it.

Anything this complex and full of great observations about human nature, politics, and even love should not be discounted lightly. It's super dense with fantastic ideas on every page and even though it will never be considered a standalone classic, it's a very, very worthy novel to read. Especially in conjunction with [b:Heretics of Dune|117|Heretics of Dune (Dune Chronicles #5)|Frank Herbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388186151s/117.jpg|3634575].

And, I assume, [b:Hunters of Dune|20249|Hunters of Dune (Dune Chronicles #7)|Brian Herbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1429681489s/20249.jpg|4911] and [b:Sandworms of Dune|42434|Sandworms of Dune (Dune Chronicles #8)|Brian Herbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442092604s/42434.jpg|41917] carry on the tradition well since I'm going to plow through them and continue the storyline set up here. :) The cliffhanger at the end of Chapterhouse was a doozy. :)

Let's see if Herbert's son and Anderson make the ideas into something more traditional, eh? I can hope. They've had a lot of practice in the universe before attempting the big one. Herbert's death put a stop to the story and most of us fans were extremely upset. Hell, I remember reading this book the first time in '89 and wishing I could have written the sequel to it. I can't be alone in this. :) I can only hope that expectations live up, etc., etc. show less

“Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history.”

I really enjoyed this one. I think it was the one that felt the closest to Dune out of the entire series. I loved that the focus of this one is really just the two powerful sects of women. We have an intense battle going on between the Honored Matres and the Reverend Mothers. It's this interesting power struggle because each side is handling it vastly differently. The Honored Matres tend to rely on brute strength and the control they hold over everyone around them. They shoot for destruction. The Bene Gesserit and the Reverend Mothers have taken a different approach. They are working to ensure the survival of at least some of the Sisterhood in various different show more ways. Even being willing to bargain with their enemies; of course as we've all learned by this point the Sisterhood always has an angle.
I enjoyed that though we had a slight time jump in this one we still got some familiar characters. I was getting tired of following new characters each book. The political scheming is back in full force in this one and it was interesting to watch how it played out. Odrade had a plan pretty early in the book that we don't fully get until the very end. The spice control dynamic is still super important in this one, with the Bene Gesserit willing to destroy their home in order to control it. I enjoyed the way we illustrated the differences but also the similarities of the two factions of women. I thought it was interesting that the book really focused on the lack of emotions and how this played a role. However, I felt like it was unfinished. It just didn't seem like an all wrapped up series. I was left with lots of questions and it just felt too open. show less

As far as I am concerned, this is the last Dune book (besides the Encyclopedia) and should be considered the end. The disappointing tripe of Hunters and Sandworms of Dune by Brian and Kevin are nothing but poorly written fanfiction.

The consequences of Leto's Golden Path are made apparent in this and its predecessor, Heretics of Dune. Sheeana is a intriguing character and so is Murbella and Odrade, as well as the nth incarnation of Duncan Idaho.

Frank Herbert died before he could write Dune 7, so this book was not supposed to be the end of the Dune series. Unfortunately it is, for we have been denied Herbert's genius after his untimely death.

We can assume that with Leto's Golden Path, Siona's 'no-gene' and the Scattering that humans have show more spread across many galaxies and this would eventually give rise to myriad races and civilizations, which in itself is a more than intriguing thought.

Thank you for sharing this fantastic story with us, Frank Herbert, and may your legacy be always cherished (even if not from Brian and Kevin) We love you. show less

Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune begins shortly after the events of Heretics of Dune, with the Bene Gerrerit hiding away from the Honored Matres, who seek their destruction. The Duncan Idaho ghola from the previous novel works to train a ghola of Miles Teg, the Bashar who died when the Honored Matres burned Dune in the previous novel. Under the leadership of Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, the Bene Gesserit plan for war while also scattering as many sisters carrying shared memory as possible in order to preserve their order. The Bene Gesserit also keep Murbella, an Honored Matre, as a captive, working to de-program her as they learn more about their enemy from her. Dar also oversees the transformation of Chapterhouse using sandtrout show more from Arrakis in order to create a new Dune.

Herbert’s ecological focus continues to permeate his science fiction, such as in an interaction in which Dar questions the ghola of Miles Teg about whether people own a planet or whether it owns them (pg. 23). Through the Bene Gesserit and their genetic memory, he also examines the nature of history. For example, continuing the practice of beginning chapters with quotes, Herbert uses a quote he attributes to the Bashar Teg: “The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events” (pg. 80). Further, Herbert cautions about the rise of autocracy, “It was a pattern the Sisterhood had long recognized: the inevitable failure of slavery and peonage. You created a reservoir of hate. Implacable enemies. If you had no hope of exterminating all of these enemies, you dared not try. Temper your efforts by the sure awareness that oppression will make your enemies strong. The oppressed will have their day and heaven help the oppressor when that day comes. It was a two-edged blade. The oppressed always turned, the stage was set for another round of revenge and violence – roles reversed. And reversed and reversed ad nauseam” (pg. 160). And, finally, Odrade says, “Many histories are largely worthless because prejudiced, written to please one powerful group or another” (pg. 232).

As he nears Chapterhouse: Dune’s conclusion, Herbert begins introducing radical changes. The Bene Gesserit successfully transform Chapterhouse into a new Dune, brining back the worms (pg. 290). Their desperation in the face of dwindling numbers from the war with the Honored Matres has, however, lead them to “cyborg” those near death, slowly breaking the proscriptions of the Butlerian Jihad (pgs. 295-296). The Honored Matres employ sophisticated machinery of their own that almost certainly involves thinking machines (395-396). And, through Murbella’s undergoing of the spice agony and killing of the Great Honored Matre, the Bene Gesserit blend their leadership with the Honored Matres. Sheeana, Duncan, and a handful of others do not accept this, though, and depart Chapterhouse. Sheeana’s control of the worms promises to open a new threat to Bene Gesserit order, much like Muad’Dib and Leto II did thousands of years prior.

Herbert intended to write a seventh Dune novel to wrap up these plotlines, but he passed away soon after publishing this book. Twenty years later, Brian Herbert worked with Kevin J. Anderson to adapt his notes for Dune 7 as Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune, but this was Frank Herbert’s final entry in the Dune saga. He concludes the book with thoughts he wrote shortly after his wife’s passing, remarking on life and his appreciation for the happy memories. Even though Frank Herbert never finished the saga, his reflections offer a way to appreciate the six Dune novels he shared with the world rather than miss the one he never completed. show less