Keith's Reviews > Heretics of Dune

Completing each subsequent Dune book is always exhausting. On this, my finally-got-through-it complete reading of Heretics, I realized that last time I tried to read it, I stalled out 70 pages from the end -- that's how much of a grind these books can be.

But unlike the first four volumes, I don't really have the same sense of reward or accomplishment at finishing this one. Like most of the other books, Herbert doesn't really reveal what the book is about until the last fifteen pages or so. Most of the book follows two groups of characters on the run, each protecting a Chosen One from the evil powers that wish to destroy them. Throughout the book, each group repeatedly escapes some offscreen threat and then argues amongst themselves about the next course of action before a new threat emerges, at which point Herbert cuts away to the other group just as the action starts. And, as with most of the other Dune books, Herbert is far more interested in these in-between moments of discussion, usually between characters with various levels of prescience that are each trying to outwit the other. However, Herbert is uninterested -- almost to a fault -- in describing action. Most of the time this just means he's playing to his strengths, but in Heretics (especially in its final pages, where most of the plot takes place), so much happens in the space between chapters, paragraphs, and even sentences that the reader is often playing a frustrating amount of catch up. It's also just a drag to spend 200-300 pages setting up a story that unfolds most of its most important ideas in the last three chapters.

So structurally, there's much to be desired. Herbert likes a slow burn, but the psychological tension, use of language, or simply the espousal of philosophy is typically the real draw anyway. Unfortunately, Heretics is also just sort of criminally stupid in terms of what it actually focuses on. For example, the plots and themes of the first four Dune novels are about the nature of political power, of the limitations of human will and its relation to time and society.

However, Heretics of Dune is about two competing sects of sex nuns. The Good sex nuns are trying to protect one of the Chosen Ones from the bad sex nuns, who are a threat because they are better at full body orgasms. The twist is that this Chosen One is even better at full body orgasms, and therefore the Good sex nuns have to come up with a new plan for how to harness his uncontrollable sex powers.

There's also some culturally insensitive stuff about Islam that completely undoes everything about religion that Herbert handled more thoughtfully in the previous books, but it doesn't really matter because in the end everyone in that part of the book is either dead or having sex with the sex nuns.

This is, really-I-am-not-kidding, the whole plot of this book for the first 445 pages. In the last 25 pages, it changes into an entirely different book that is actually interesting and not something you are embarrassed to type in a Goodreads review, but most of THAT happens offscreen and is described in a serious of rhetorical questions in the last 4 pages.

Also Herbert manages to throw in some digs at Star Wars (deserved) and fancy restaurants (like, he is very angry with restaurants for some reason).

Anyway, I don't even fucking know with this book. There is a giant penis on the front cover that is even more of a giant penis than the giant penises on the other books. That's probably all you need to know.

Also happy new year.