"I liked this one. Immersive, fun, not to deep or dark story with intrigue, wonderful animals, and creative forms of magic. Nice and long and gently good."

"Stuart Kauffman observes that physics often accounts for what is, without accounting for how it got that way.

And how it got that way is actually really really important to account for.

Particularly when you’re talking about the origins of life.

Kauffman posits that life originated as an autocatalytic process, where by each stage enabled the next.

Kauffman argues that in a dead universe, nothing matters. But as soon as something depended on something else for existence, then that something else “mattered” to that something.

And mattering matters.

Kauffman asserts that the language of physics is mathematics, but mathematics can’t actually describe mattering in any kind of useful or meaningful way.

And as soon as you have mattering and enabling, you are in a world beyond physics.

You’re in a world of agency, adaptation and emergence.

Kauffman is a very idiosyncratic thinker and writer.

In fact he’s a total wild man.

The book is short.

It’s very thought provoking.

Full of brilliant energy.

I loved it."

"The love the Bene Gesserit tried to deny was everywhere, Odrade thought. In small things and big. How many ways there were to prepare delectable, life-sustaining foods, recipes that really were embodiments of loves old and new. This bouillabaisse so smoothly restorative on her tongue; its origins were planted deeply in love: the wife at home using that part of the day’s catch her husband could not sell.
The very essence of the Bene Gesserit was concealed in loves. Why else minister to those unspoken needs humanity always carried? Why else work for the perfectibility of humankind?

This is the end of my Great Dune Reread, which I began just before Denis Villeneuve’s Part One adaptation came out. I last read the entire sequence as a teenager. It is interesting how my perceptions, and appreciation, of the six books have changed over time.

Chapterhouse, which I disliked initially due to that (in)famous cliffhanger ending, now emerges as my favourite of the series. Indeed, the second trilogy is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch.

What is also clear is how uniquely different each Dune book is, and yet how they all form part of a greater whole. Here we pretty much pick up where Heretics left off, but Chapterhouse is a far more contemplative novel – and all the richer for it.

Our main viewpoint character is Mother Superior Odrade, whose favourite pastime is to walk through the orchards of her beloved home planet. Here she notices the telltale signs of the inexorable changes gathering momentum as the last wild sand trout begin the transformation of Chapterhouse into another Arrakis – the second Dune.

Odrade enjoys her favourite meals, spars with her closest aides, and engages in much ruminative reflection on the nature and mission of the Bene Gesserit, the meaning and consequences of Leto II’s Golden Path, and how everything is now up in the air thanks to the determined onslaught of the Honored Matres.

And that is pretty much it for plot. Odrade does eventually hatch a plan to save the Sisterhood, culminating in a rousing final battle between the two great rivals that Herbert paces expertly. (We will ignore the final chapter.)

Herbert’s dubious sexual politics are still firmly on display here – awakening the ghola Teg Miles’s memories of his previous life involves a scene that is pretty much male rape of a minor. Plus, there is some kind of racial profiling going on with Scytale and the Bene Tleilax that I can’t really figure out.

And we have representation of the Jewish faith in the form of the Rabbi and Rebecca, a wild Reverend Mother. If you think that is odd at this distant point in the future, just recall the Orange Catholic Bible from Dune. And it does go to show how the Bene Gesserit respects other cultures and seeks to preserve them, as much as it enjoys meddling in their affairs. All for the betterment of the species, of course.

Herbert’s discourse on government and politics continues to develop and is far more nuanced here. Even his dictum that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ now morphs into ‘power attracts the corruptible’. So is the Bene Gesserit a benevolent, yet ultimately autocratic, bureaucratic institution?

It is a debate that vexes the Mother Superior greatly, who at the same time has to contend with the cold hard fact that the Honored Matres are hellbent on exterminating the Sisterhood. Does this show up the innate weakness and softness of the Bene Gesserit? Or is it an opportunity for them to embrace change, just as Chapterhouse is being changed by the sand trout?

If you have reached this point in the series, you are long used to the general weirdness and eccentricity of the Duniverse, which combines the baroque and the gothic in the most fantastic ways possible. What makes Odrade such an appealing character is that she is fully rounded and present in the moment, balancing the forces of history against the survival of Chapterhouse and her Sisterhood.

Herbert’s wonderful nature writing lingers long on the blessings of the Bene Gesserit home world and how the desert encroaches upon it. A major theme of the Dune series has always been transformation and evolution, and this really comes full circle in Chapterhouse.

As for that cliffhanger, which Herbert obviously added as an opener for a potential third trilogy, enough clues are scattered throughout the book for the reader to work out who the mysterious Daniel and Marty really are, not to mention the unknown and terrible threat that sent the Honored Matres scurrying back into the Known Universe in the first place.

I have no intention of reading the two ‘sequels’ that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson wrote, apparently based on an outline from Herbert’s papers for ‘Book 7’. Enough reviewers have pointed out how dire these are, but I suppose they do ultimately have a place in the Duniverse (just think how many crap Star Wars and Star Trek novels are out there as well.)

My only wish is that you have seen Villeneuve’s fine Part One and are curious to read the books, or if you have only read Dune itself, that you go on to read all the rest. From the outset it is impossible to predict the strange and wonderful directions that Herbert takes his story. That it culminates in the autumn of a planet and a Sisterhood, as an old woman reflects on her life and the choices, sacrifices, and mistakes that the Bene Gesserit have made along the way, is an incredible parting gift to Dune readers."