And so the Dune series comes to an end…
An unplanned end, since Herbert died before starting work on the next novel, the semi-mythical “Dune 7”, the details of whose plot fans speculated on for over twenty years.
Chapterhouse: Dune (1985, USA) follows on directly from Heretics of Dune (1984, USA). It resolves some of the plot-threads, introduces further questions, and hints at what might have appeared in the following volume. I’d been disappointed by Heretics of Dune (see here), so I was surprised to discover Chapterhouse: Dune is actually one of the better books in the series.
The Bene Gesserit (BG) are under attack by the Honoured Matres (HM), a twisted sisterhood from the Scattering with the ability to sexually bond men. They’ve already reduced Rakis, the original Dune planet, to a blasted cinder. Happily, the BG managed to rescue a sandworm, and are now slowly converting their headquarters world, called, obviously, Chapter House — and no, I don’t know why it’s two words, when the book’s title has it as one, and yet UK editions always have the title as two words… The BG are converting Chapter House into a desert world so they can breed sandworms and produce spice. In a no-ship at Central, their city, they have Duncan Idaho, captured Honoured Matre Murbella, and Scytale, the last surviving Tleilaxu Master. Idaho cannot leave the ship as he doesn’t have the Atreides gene which renders him invisible to prescience.
The BG have also cloned their dead bashar, Miles Teg, and they need to restore his memories as soon as they can, even though he is still only a young boy. There are also worries Teg possesses “unknown gene markers”, giving him unknown abilities (super-speed, for one). It’s also likely the Tleilaxu have added something unknown to the Duncan Idaho ghola.
Most of the narrative is taken up by Darwi Odrade, the Mother Superior, who has devised a risky plan to save the BG. Which is this: merge the BG and HM under Murbella. It is assumed the BG agenda will prevail.
Meanwhile, Duncan Idaho has been experiencing strange visions involving an old man and woman, Daniel and Marty, who admit to being “enhanced” Face Dancers from the Scattering, and whose control he is trying desperately hard to escape. Much as he’s trying to escape whatever the BG have planned for him.
None of this really adds up if subjected to too much thought. The HM sexually bond men — it’s their USP, that and their violence. But the BG can also sexually imprint men — an important plot-point in both Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune, in fact. So are they really all that different? (It’s implied both can do the same to women, but it’s a blink-and-you-miss-it mention.) True, the HM are simply seizing wealth and power because it’s in their nature to be in control, while the BG are “husbanding humanity”, trying to avoid a future foreseen by Leto II. And that future may be out there in the Scattering. After all, the HM are running from something.
It’s likely Chapterhouse: Dune was the middle book of a trilogy, and middle books are typically unsatisfactory. They’re transitional works, setting up the various set-pieces that will be resolved in the final book. And certainly Chapterhouse: Dune features plentiful hooks that probably would have been resolved, or explained, in “Dune 7”. Such as what really happened in the Scattering, and the identity of the enemy chasing the HM. (The identity of Daniel and Marty is explained in Chapterhouse: Dune, although their motives are not.)
And then I think of Unconquerable Sun (2021, USA), by Kate Elliott, a recent space opera, apparently inspired by the life of Alexander the Great, and in that the most interesting elements were the hooks Elliot had placed which hinted at plot twists and world-building revelations in later books. I found Unconquerable Sun mostly unsatisfactory — the opening chapters were just info-dumps and world-building, the characters were interchangeable and inconsistent, there was more than a whiff of mil sf to much of the novel... but some of the ideas, hooks for later plot developments in the series, were quite neat.
According to Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson, in Hunters of Dune (2006, USA) and Sandworms of Dune (2007, USA), the two sequels they wrote based on the notes for “Dune 7” left by Frank Herbert, the enemies the HM were fleeing were the “thinking machines” of the Butlerian Jihad. In the Legends of Dune trilogy (2002–2004, USA), by the same authors, a pair of AIs took control of a faction of “cymeks”, which were little more than brains in jars controlling robot bodies. It’s indicative of the poor quality of these novels that the authors chose to invent a word instead of using “cyborg”, a word actually used several times in Chapterhouse: Dune.
God Emperor of Dune (1981, USA) included a vision by Leto II in which he saw thinking machines tracking humans by prescience and killing them. Clearly, Harbert intended to revisit the Butlerian Jihad, even if that vision read more like fiction by Fred Saberhagen or Gregory Benford than anything suited to the Dune universe. The appearance of Daniel and Marty in Chapterhouse: Dune certainly suggests Face Dancers had a major role to play in “Dune 7”. But…
I’ve always been fascinated by the Face Dancers, I admit it. The ability to mimic anybody and anyone, or any race or gender, initially presented as an art for entertainment, and then as a useful ability for spying, I find appealing. Herbert pushed it one step further by having his new Face Dancers absorb the personalities of those they mimicked, but as an extension of the concept it made no real sense — its mechanism is never explained, it contradicts the BG’s use of ancestral memories, and even the Tleilaxu Masters must have realised the danger inherent in the idea.
It’s difficult to resist the temptation to speculate how Herbert intended to resolve his trilogy in “Dune 7”. Fans of the series did it for decades. And they were deeply disappointed by Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune, not just because of their poor quality, but also because of their plot: the new Face Dancers are shown to be tools of the two AIs which triggered the Butlerian Jihad in the Legends of Dune trilogy. Ugh.
Many popular genre series have become runaway trains. Tolkien. Fantasy series, from The Wheel of Time to A Song of Ice and Fire. There often comes a need, either commercial, or perhaps resulting from laziness by the creator, to deliver more of the same but enhanced. Whether it suits the original story or not. Herbert had created a monster, so to speak, with Dune and its two sequels, and felt a need to up the stakes in everything. I think he lost control of his material — Teg’s super-speed, the enhanced Face Dancers, the confusion over what the no-fields protect against... He presented the HM as the enemy of the BG, but then needed an enemy that was powerful enough to have the HM running scared. Super Face Dancers with multiple memories must have seemed like a cool idea, no matter that it’s pretty much the same as the BG’s ancestral memories. But then there’s that pesky vision of prescient machines destroying humanity in God Emperor of Dune. Not to mention the whole prescience thing itself, which, well, he had sort of written out, also in God Emperor of Dune…
All the same, the pointers to the sequel in Chapterhouse: Dune make the book. Even if “Dune 7” never actually appeared as such. Herbert Jr and Anderson based their sequels on thirty pages of notes left by Frank Herbert, but they still felt it needed three prequels to prepare the ground. I think it unlikely Frank Herbert intended to retell the events of the Butlerian Jihad for “Dune 7” to make sense. Perhaps one day the Herbert estate will publish those notes and we can draw our own conclusions.
If I were to rate the Dune novels by Frank Herbert… I’ve never thought Dune a particularly good book. It has excellent world-building, so good it overshadows everything else, but poor to competent writing. Dune Messiah (1969, USA) is a better-written novel. God Emperor of Dune is the weightiest of the Dune novels, and not just physically. It’s also the most explicitly didactic — in the sense of teaching the reader about the universe — but is stronger for it. Chapterhouse: Dune reveals more interesting things about the post-Scattering world, and is better structured, and so the better novel, than Heretics of Dune. Is it the best Dune novel?
It’s a contender, certainly.
