^{This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, Librarything & Tumblr by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission}
Title: Heretics of Dune
Series: Dune Chronicles #5
Author: Frank Herbert
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 484
Format: Digital Edition

1500 years have passed since Leto II, the God Emperor of Dune, has died and relaxed his iron grip on humanity. After his death came the Hard Times and the Scattering. Humanity spread out to stars beyond count. Only now, they are returning and they want control of the Old Empire. Ix has produced mechanical space navigating machines and the Tleilaxu produce the Spice by the ton from their axlotl tanks.

The Bene Gesserit are still playing their genetic game. They have been continuing the line of Duncan Idaho gholas through a connection with the Tleilaxu. They have also been keeping their hand in the Atreides gene line and their top protector, Supreme Bashar Miles Teg, is an Atreides who’s mother was Bene Gesserit. She also trained Teg in the Bene Gesserit ways.

At the same time, a young girl named Sheena starts communicating with the worms. She comes under the Bene Gesserit’s control and they’re plan is for her and the latest Duncan Idaho to mate and have lots of little worm talkers. Things don’t quite go as planned.

Honored Maitres, some of the returning forces, attack several Bene Gesserit worlds and put Sheena, Duncan and Teg all in danger. Teg is captured, levels up under torture and escapes. He rescues Duncan and eventually Sheena and they go off in a No-Ship. No-ships are invisible to guild navigators and other prescient beings.

The book ends with the Bene Gesserit planning on being conquered by the Honored Maitres and planning on subverting the Tleilaxu for their own purposes.

I was able to appreciate just how this is the beginning of a new Dune trilogy. The first, Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune all form a tight weight on one side of the see-saw. God Emperor of Dune is really the pivot point and here we begin to see the other side of the balanced weight. It is almost exciting to realize such a literary device.

There is a lot of talking going on in this book and I mean a lot. Monologuing, diatribes, half-finished sentences, blah, blah, blah. Herbert gives us all the unnecessary in excruciating detail while completely ignoring a fantastic action story. But hey, that’s typical Herbert for you. In many ways, this could have been as exciting a novel as Dune with its huge scope and action scenes. Teg and Duncan are running from a planetary invasion of Honored Matres for goodness sake. Sheena is balancing between the Sisters and the Rakian Priesthood and the Bene Gesserit are dealing with Face Dancers that can mentally imprint and BECOME that person, to the point that the Face Dancer loses its own self-identity and forgets that it is a Face Dancer. Those are all completely awesome ideas.

And Frank shoves them off to the side to talk about control and sex and government and esoteric religious ideas. Don’t get me started on the sex. Not graphic, but it is underlying everything. Reading my review from ’12 when I last read this, it was obvious that that was what stood out to me then. This time I was able to look past it a little, but still, it is like the Spice. It is in everything, it is everywhere and you can’t get away from it.

The main reason this gets a 4star rating and not a 4/12 or 5, is because so many of the ideas are cloaked in half-sentences and unfinished thoughts. That kind of writing infuriates me. If you have a clever idea, or a big idea, or just a plain old hum drum idea, state it! Don’t hint at it, don’t take an upskirt photo surreptitiously, don’t hem and haw around the edges. Grab that sucker, throw it down on the bed and ravish it! As you can tell, Frank’s freudian obsession with sex has overcome me and now everything I say or do will have some sort of sexual connotation.

So I’m going to end this review. Read this book ONLY if you’ve read the previous 4 and liked them all. Not liked them a little bit, but liked them a lot. You’re going to need that “like” to get you through.

★★★★☆

• Heretics of Dune (2012 Review)
• God Emperor of Dune (Book 4)
• Children of Dune (Book 3)
• Dune Messiah (Book 2)
• Dune (Book1)

^{This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, Librarything & Tumblr by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission}
Title: God Emperor of Dune
Series: Dune Chronicles #4
Author: Frank Herbert
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 436
Format: Digital Edition

Dune is transformed. The worms are gone. The Spice is a dwindling product handed out each decade by the God Emperor from his private stores. Leto is now a pre-worm and 3500 years old. Mentats are outlawed and gone. The Fremen no longer really exist. The Tleilaxu grow Duncan Idahoes for Leto. Leto has taken control of Bene Geserit breeding program. The Ixians supply Leto with technology while experimenting on their own.

There is peace. The Great Houses are gone. Populations reside on their own planets and enjoy a level of living that has been unheard of before. Leto’s Fish Speakers, an all female army, provide whatever force is needed should a situation arise.

Leto is fermenting humanity. Trying to change it from the inside out. He sees the glimmer of this in Siona Atreides, who is currently leading the rebellion against him. She can fade from his pre-sight, which means that her descendants will free humanity from the curse of prescience and prophecy.

Of course, Leto has enemies. The Tleilaxu plot his overthrow with their face dancers. The Ixians are breeding a human who is the perfect fit for Leto, and who they will control. Siona co-opts the current Duncan and they are figuring out how to kill Leto.

Leto knows.

Leto also knows that when he dies, his body will release sand trout that will begin the desertification of Dune once again and bring back the worms and the spice in a couple of hundred years.

This version that I read had an introduction by Frank’s son, Brian. While I normally hold my nose at the travesty he and that son of a goat Anderson created with the Dune prequels, I did find this introduction extremely enlightening and helpful. It prepared me for the kind of book this would be.

This felt like a play, with Leto II being front and center and soloquizing for most of the book. A lot of action happens, a lot of information is told, but it is all off stage, as it were. Leto talks. A lot. With his Major Domo, Moneo Atriedes [Siona’s father], with The Duncan, with Siona, with the love of his life Hwi.

Hwi. Now there is pathos. To have someone built to love you and to have them built so as to attract you. It is redeemed from pablum by Hwi knowing all of this and still choosing Leto over her Ixian masters. She does love Leto, willingly and unwillingly.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read, yet again.

However. If someone were to read this book and call it boring, dialogue heavy or unenjoyable, I would not try to correct them. Leto constantly tries to push other characters into understanding by asking them questions instead of answering their questions. Leto does that a lot and it can be frustrating. There were a couple of times that I wanted to shake him and shout “Just answer his question, you gigantic jerk!”. This was an idea book but those ideas were not all nicely queued up like bowling pins in an alley. They were disguised, hidden, scattered. It was frustrating and I will not deny that. I don’t think it is a weakness of the book or the writing though. It was deliberate. Herbert wanted his readers to think and thinking can be hard work at times.

This was a re-read book, like all the other Dune Chronicles books I’m reading. My first recorded instance of reading it was only back in ’12. However, I know I read it in highschool and in Bibleschool at least 3 times. So this is my fifth time? The fact that I’m still frustrated with it and yet enjoying it so much says a lot about the quality of the writing.

 ★★★★ ½

1. God Emperor of Dune (2012 Review)
2. Children of Dune (Book 3)
3. Dune Messiah (Book 2)
4. Dune (Book 1)

^{This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission}
Title: Children of Dune
Series: Dune Chronicles #3
Author: Frank Herbert
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 420
Format: Digital Edition

Paul is dead, Alia is ruling as regent and conspirators to topple the Atreides Empire are crawling out of the woodwork.

Paul’s children, Leto and Ghanima, are 10 years old and must begin to take on the trappings of power. They must also avoid the path of Abomination that has overtaken Alia [she’s given in to the inner voices and allowed one of them to take control at times] while fulfilling the vision that Leto has of the human race. A vision that apparently Paul saw and couldn’t bring himself to commit to.

So all the children have to do is: survive their aunt who wants them dead, survive their grandmother who wants them as pawns for the Bene Gesserit, survive a rogue group of Fremen who want all Atreides dead, survive the other Houses who want to ascend to Imperial status and finally, survive the lives inside of them who want to take over.

Easy-peasy.

Overall, my thoughts haven’t really changed from my ’12 read. There were places that still bored me to tears. I suspect some of that is because the underpinnings of Dune have an islamic cast to them and so I couldn’t follow all the half-sentence, unfinished, thoughts.

This time around I realized that Leto had seen the Golden Path before he was dosed with spice, so what he was seeing was not a prescient view of the future. So how did he see it? He makes a point of calling it a vision instead of prescience, but where did it come from? Paul’s “visions” were him looking into the future when he was high on spice. Leto couldn’t take the chance of taking spice because the inner lives would overwhelm him during that time. The only thing I can think of is that he was able to see everything his father saw because of his preborn condition.

The other thing I noticed was that most of Herbert’s speculation about viewing the future and such were all predicated on there NOT being an Omniscient Being. Which is interesting because the Dune mythos is built on the whole idea of prophecy and gods, albeit humanity ascendant. Prophecy, or visions of the future, are something that come from God. He is an omniscient, omnipresent Being and hence is not bound by time or space. Herbert’s idea of The Future was where humanity was not constrained by ANY force, within or without. He was writing about humanity without a guiding hand. Which is the antithesis of what I believe as a Christian. And yet the questions he asks are just as intriguing and eye opening as any I could think to ask. And THAT is why I like the Dune Chronicles so much. The questions about humanity.

Completely satisfied about this re-read. While I had re-read it back in ’12, I hadn’t read it before then since at least ’99. This is one series I am very glad to own in hardcover as well as in digital form for my Oasis.

★★★★ ½

1. Children of Dune (2012 Review)
2. Dune (Book 1)
3. Dune Messiah (Book 2)