Book Review: Heretics of Dune
4/10
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. When I read the first Dune novel, I was eager to delve further into the fictional universe Frank Herbert created, but wondered how far into the sequels I should go. A handy guide circulating on the internet presented various options and convinced me to go with Option 3: The Golden Path, which meant reading the first four novels. Some fans hold the view that God Emperor of Dune is even better than the original. While I’m not sure I would go that far, I loved that book, with all its lengthy philosophical diatribes, as well as the character of Leto II. It’s probably my second favourite in the series.
The same guide said that the quality drops off dramatically after God Emperor, though it described the fifth and sixth novels as “above-average”. I enjoyed the first four Dune books so much, I had to move ahead with Option 4: I Love Frank Herbert. My understanding is that Herbert originally meant for Heretics of Dune to be the first part of a trilogy. Unfortunately, he died after finishing the next instalment, Chapterhouse: Dune, which I hear ends on an unresolved cliffhanger—though I’m sure Herbert’s son Brian tried to rectify that in the endless novels he’s written with sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson, which most Dune fans deride as inferior cash-ins.
Ironically, by taking Option 4 and reading Heretics of Dune I love Frank Herbert a bit less now. Heretics brings out all of Herbert’s weaknesses as a writer, and is the first book in the Dune chronicles I did not enjoy reading. The novel takes place 1,500 years after the death of “God Emperor” Leto II, who chose to become a human-sandworm hybrid and reigned for thousands of years as he sought to preserve humanity through his “Golden Path”. His spirit lives on in the pages of Heretics—literally, since Leto managed to imbue fragments of his consciousness among the different sandworms on the desert planet Arrakis, now known as Rakis.
The plot of Heretics of Dune allegedly (according to the back cover) revolves around the discovery of Sheeana, a girl on Rakis who can control the sandworms. Sheeana’s story starts on an interesting note with a family tragedy. Priests on the planet who worship Leto come to venerate Sheeana. But at a certain point, Sheeana’s story seems to drop by the wayside, after which her character is rarely seen. We don’t even understand by the end why she can control the sandworms. It’s the first sign of this book’s basic problems: flat, dull characters and a confusing plot that doesn’t kick into gear until the last few chapters. That’s a major problem in a novel that is 669 pages in my paperback edition.
Recently I was trying to explain to someone how I was almost 500 pages into a novel and still wasn’t totally sure what was happening or what it was about. Since Leto’s death, trillions of people fled across the galaxy in a development known as the Scattering. That would have made for an interesting book in itself; instead, we’re merely told about it here. The main plot thread concerns the Honored Matres, a rival group to the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. The idea has potential, but it’s not effective here because we aren’t clear about what the Matres’ goals are for hundreds of pages. So much of this novel is exposition; characters thinking, plotting, and talking to each other, and descriptions of the rooms they’re in.
There are many characters in this story, and yet no clear protagonist. Herbert shifts perspective so often that it’s difficult to get invested in any of them, especially since they are so poorly drawn. The only real standouts are Miles Teg, a Mentat and former Supreme Bashar (high-ranking military leader) of the Bene Gesserit; Darwi Odrade, a Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit; and the latest Duncan Idaho ghola—human duplicates grown in axlotl tanks using cells harvested from a dead body. While I’ve enjoyed Duncan in previous novels, his endless reincarnation as a ghola is tiresome at this point. Herbert tries to mix things up by making this Duncan ghola a teenager, similar in age to Paul Atreides in the first novel. I can understand Herbert using this character to tie together stories that take place over a timespan of thousands of years. Still, I rolled my eyes when yet another Duncan Idaho ghola showed up.
For much of this novel, we’re told about vague plans by the Honored Matres, and vague abilities the Duncan Idaho ghola possesses. We don’t find out what these are until the last chapters, which is where most of the interesting plot developments happen, and in a rushed way that almost feels like Herbert just wanted to get the novel over with. While Herbert’s Dune books have a reputation for getting weirder as they go along, the big revelations about the Honored Matres’ plans and the powers of the ghola are frankly laughable.
Spoilers ahead.
Essentially, the power of the Honored Matres is that they are really, really good at sex. They’re so good at sex that they can use these skills to manipulate men and turn them into their slaves. But it turns out the young Duncan Idaho ghola is even better at sex. It’s similar to the plot of the original novel in which Paul Atreides is the first male to possess abilities of the Bene Gesserit, except in this case more horny. These revelations leads to a big climax (no pun intended) in which the Duncan ghola and a young Honored Matre named Murbella have what I can only describe as a sex duel. For some reason, two other characters watch them have sex through glass. When they’re finished, Murbella decides Duncan’s sex skills are too good and he must be killed. But Lucilla, a Bene Gesserit Imprinter who watched them have sex, tells Murbella that no, the ghola must go to Rakis.
I’m no prude, but I have to say this is the silliest stuff I’ve read in the entire Dune series. A lot of reviewers have mocked Herbert’s awkward, clinical descriptions of sex, and yeah, it’s not the best erotic writing you’ll ever read. This wasn’t really a problem for me; I was just glad something was finally happening. While it’s easy to ridicule these aspects of the novel as Herbert working out his kinks or sexual fantasies, the concept is interesting. The drive to have sex and procreate is surely one of the biggest motivating factors for human behaviour, and I respect Herbert for trying to use that as a key plot element in his epic science fiction universe. That doesn’t make the idea of super sex powers any less ridiculous though.
It’s also funny that Brian Herbert in his introduction talks a lot about “the strong characterization of women” in the Dune series, particularly in Heretics and Chapterhouse, and how “female characters get stronger and stronger as the series develops … in Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune, women are running most of the important planets in the Dune universe.” Brian describes the leading role of women in these novels as in some sense a tribute by Frank Herbert to his wife Beverly, who was suffering from cancer while he was writing Heretics. Yet the very description of the Honored Matres—villainous women who control men with sex—is misogynist in itself, as is the recurring theme in this series that a man with the same abilities of women will naturally be better at using them. (And of course, Herbert ignores gay men who would not be susceptible to the charms of the Honored Matres.)
One of the worst aspects of Heretics of Dune is how vast swathes of the text are just exposition and setup with little payoff—and when things finally happen, they’re rushed through. The most obvious example is the destruction of Rakis. This planet has been the setting for every novel in the series up to this point, and yet we are told that it has been destroyed almost in passing in a single sentence. In the final chapter, Odrade “thought of Waff and his Face Dancers dead with Miles Teg in the terrible destruction of Rakis.” That’s pretty much it. We don’t even learn how it was destroyed. It’s frankly unforgivable for a writer with such talent for world-building to gloss over the annihilation of the main setting for his series.
The book ends with an interesting setup for Chapterhouse. The Bene Gesserit have escaped with a sandworm from Rakis that they plan to drown in order to turn it into a sandtrout, which will transform the Bene Gesserit’s homeworld into a desert planet like Rakis. The goal, I assume, is to produce the spice melange under the direct control of the sisterhood, as well as to dilute “the collective consciousness of the God Emperor … into just one sandworm, freeing humanity from the shadow of his prescience forever”, as Wikipedia puts it.
Like a lot of reviewers on Goodreads who were disappointed in Heretics, I’m still committed to reading Chapterhouse—not only because I already own a copy, but because having come this far, I might as well read Frank Herbert’s last Dune novel. I love Herbert’s world-building and his ideas, but based on Heretics, he probably should have stopped with God Emperor. Still better than the Disney Star Wars movies though. Even with his weaker Dune sequels, like this one, Herbert introduced new ideas and at least tried to do some things different.