Chapterhouse: Dune

The frustratingly slow-paced inner monologues and reactions replete with peyote-laced repetitious libertarian philosophy ranting can get tiring, but that’s why audio books work particularly well for the Dune series! Put the playback speed at 2.5 while walking, riding the subway, in your car, or during housework and you can enjoy the fully-imagined universe, characters and witty plotting you can’t get enough of. Easy to see why Herbert has informed all sci-fi fiction since the original Dune was released.

Excellent chapter in an excellent series of books. The amazing continuity in the entire, 6 book series as it spans vast millennia is wonderful. I consider this series to represent a perfect melding of sci-fi & fantasy, with technology as well as sword wielding, feudal societies, and mystical powers. Plots & conspiracy that have been adhered to and advanced over those millennia, The Bene Tlielax, purveyors and creators of fantastic and forbidden technologies and secret practitioners of a supposedly extinct religion, the Bene Gesserit(sp?) (witches, to some) a society of Women who outwardly exist only to serve, and they do serve well, often enriching those they serve, but with, some would say dark ulterior motives, at the center of which is their ancient breeding program whereby they seek to control the evolution of the whole human race. Women so in tune and in touch with their minds, musculature & nervous systems as to appear to be possessing mystical powers such as Voice the ability to read another so well that one can pitch their voice in just the right tone so as to force compliance on a subject with a word, Truthsense, the ability to read falsehood in almost anyone, genetic memories spanning thousands of generations, passed on from Reverend-mothers about to die with another adept to preserve the combined wisdom and knowledge acquired through the ages. The ability to be relaxing, to be slouching in a chair one instant and be across the room holding your larynx ripped from your bleeding throat quicker than you can blink. There are body shields and house shiields, that stop projectiles making guns all but obsolete, hence the swords. V-STOL aircraft called ornithopters (for their birdlike wings) or thopters for short. The Spacing Guild with their monopoly on inter-stellar travel which they hold in an iron grip. Sword masters who are adept with a wide array of weapons and lightning reflexes and minds that come closer to the Bene Gesserit than almost any others. Mentats, human computers to skirt the ancient laws spawned by the Butlerian Jihad outlawing most "technology" but most especially "thinking machines." and at the heart of it all, The Spice, "Melange" produced once only by the giant sand-worms (the holy makers, Shai-hulud) of Arrakis (Dune). the substance that prolongs life, that sharpens physical and mental prowess, that grants the Spacing Guild navigator their ability to "fold space" to achieve faster than light speed travel, that gives prescient abilities to the Bene Gesserit and to Paul Muad Dib and his descendants,and is highly addictive with the most apparentsymptom being the entire eyeball turning blue, the pupil, the irisand the white. A vast rich universe of adventure. I highly recommend the entire six book series.

“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 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.