Chapterhouse Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 6)
by Frank Herbert
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Book Summary Information
Author: Frank HerbertEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1987-07-01
ISBN: 0441102670
Number of pages: 435
Publisher: Ace
Book Reviews of Chapterhouse Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 6)
Book Review: He Should Have Stopped After the Second One...
Summary: 2 Stars
An alert reader may well ask, if I thought the last four books in this series were that bad, why did I read them all?
That's a darn good question.
Well, I read the original "Dune" in high school some 30 years ago, and I have re-read it a couple of times since, considering it to be a true masterpiece. The sequel, "Dune Messiah," is every bit as good, and I agree with some interpretations that this novel should be considered a companion novel or extension of the original "Dune," since it basically picks up soon after the conclusion of the first, and completes the story of the rise and fall of Paul Atreides. In other words, the first two books could be combined into one novel, and we would have one of the truly great works of science fiction on our hands.
Still, the seeds of stupidity had already been sown in the original "Dune," and brought out further in "Messiah" with the plot twists involving the Alia character. These came to the fore in "Children of Dune," which is Part III of the series. Basically, as anyone who hated the Wesley Crusher character in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," or the Anakin Skywalker kid in "Star Wars: the Phantom Menace" can tell you - NEVER portray little kids with superhuman powers that exceed the capabilities of the adults around them because no matter how you try to spin it, it will not be credible. It violates the rules of "internal consistency" or some such thing that every created fictional universe must follow. But Herbert didn't follow that rule and gave these little kids super powers and it was kind of like "Mighty Mouse in Outer Space," only sillier. Especially when one of the kids starts morphing into a baby sandworm. I am not making this up. So basically, after reading "Children of Dune" in the early 1980s, I gave up on the series for awhile and forgot about it.
Around 1990 I came across "God Emperor of Dune" in a bargain bin in a bookstore and decided just for the heck of it that I would give it a shot. I actually read the whole thing. It was weird, consisting basically of three hundred pages about the 3000 year old kid from "Children of Dune" who had turned into a mutant boy-worm with no testicles suddenly discovering, after seeing a particularly hot space chick, that he can't get laid and maybe regretting he had set the universe on a course that he called "the Golden Path." I never figured out what the "Golden Path" was supposed to be, he never got laid, and in the end he fell into a river and bad things happened to him, or maybe they weren't so bad because this is what he had planned all along for the past 3000 years, because, you know, he had prescient powers and all...
So Book IV was a let-down, which probably has anyone who is still with me here wondering why I kept going. Okay. Fast forward about ten years to the year 2000 or so. I am in the airport in Moscow, getting ready to fly back to the United States with nothing to read and a ten hour flight staring me in the face, and there, in front of me, next to the giant rack of porno mags, is a copy of "Heretics of Dune. This would be Part V of the series, for those of you keeping track. I would summarize this by saying that if I had bought a copy of this in Russian it would have made about as much sense. (Or maybe I should have gone with one of the porno mags.) It is now about 8000 (or maybe 10,000?) years beyond the events of the original Dune, as if that matters, but there are still all these Bene Gesserit women around. Only they seem to be warring for control of the galaxy with another group of women with super powers called Honored Matres or some such thing. The Honored Matres appear to really good in bed and can somehow control men if they have sex with them. Must have good kegel muscles or something. Did I mention that the incidental Duncan Idaho character who was killed about halfway through the first "Dune" novel keeps showing up as some sort of resurrected zombie guy through all these novels, because some group of bio-engineering geniuses with an unpronounceable name like Bene Tleilaxu or something can clone him from a single surviving cell? Anyway, it turns out that the climactic moment of this novel, no pun intended, is when this zombie Idaho guy has sex with an Honored Matre and he is so good at it that SHE falls under HIS control. And somehow his ability to be the greatest lover in the galaxy since Wilt Chamberlain becomes the key to the future of the universe, although after reading this I still have no idea what the hell the Golden Path is supposed to be or if all this sex has anything to do with it. And the worst part of it is that Herbert can't even write a decent sex scene, considering how much sex seems to be a factor to the plots of these stories. Where is Ken Follett when you need him?
Okay, so finally it is 2008. I know that Frank Herbert has passed away, and while his son is apparently busily and simultaneously writing several hundred sequels and prequels and sequels to prequels to the Dune series, all supposedly based on his father's notes, I know that this copy of Chapterhouse Dune I'm looking at on the library shelf in front of me represents the last thing Frank himself ever wrote. So I say to myself - okay - how bad could it be? And I've read all the other ones - maybe I should see how it all turns out.
Well - it was as silly as I imagined, and then some. The Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres are still at war. Another one of the Duncan Idaho zombie guys (or maybe it's the same one) is still having lots of sex. There are Jews running around, and apparently these are actual, bona-fide Jews, although Herbert never discloses whether they are still conducting bris ceremonies on their eight day old male infants, so maybe they're not so Jewish after all, oy vey. In the end, one of the Honored Matres turns into a Bene Gesserit of sorts, uses her martial arts skills like some futuroid version of Jacqueline Chan to dispatch some of the uber-bitch servants of the head Honored Matre, who is cleverly named "THE Honored Matre," and presumably peace breaks out all across the universe. And that is how it all turns out, 10,000 years later, and man I wish I could have had some of what this guy was smoking...
Now if any of you think I gave away any spoilers here, well I didn't, because NONE of this makes any sense. Though I suppose there is at least one fan boy out there somewhere who could probably explain all of this to me, but then this would likely be the same guy who would argue that there is actually some deep meaning to the Matrix movies or the Lost series on TV.
My advice to you is let me serve as a warning to you all. Stop reading Dune books after number two. No - they don't get any better. Just like Rocky movies or Alien movies they just get progressively dumber and dumber, in a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 kind of way, which is why I give this book two stars instead of one. It was so bad it was almost good, if only Saturday Night Live or MST3K could get a hold of it....
Summary of Chapterhouse Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 6)
The desert planet Arrakis, called Dune, has been destroyed. Now, the Bene Gesserit, heirs to Dune's power, have colonized a green world--and are turning it into a desert, mile by scorched mile.
Here is the last book Frank Herbert wrote before his death. A stunning climax to the epic Dune legend that will live on forever...
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