It took me a long time to read Heretics of Dune this time around; not because I didn't enjoy the book, but because I had a lot of other things going on that were proving a distraction. I also took a long time to read Chapterhouse: Dune. Unfortunately, not all of that time can be purely ascribed to external events: it's a vey weird book.
Chapterhouse is not a generally well liked novel, but I think some of the condemnations are perhaps a little harsh on Herbert. While he was writing Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert's wife passed away. Less than a year after its publication, he too died. It is not always possible to point to external events in an artist's life and say "look, that had a profound effect on this piece of work", but the obituary to her at the end of Chapterhouse suggests that the loss of his wife did greatly effect him and I think that his mental state during her illness is reflected to a certain extent in the story. This is far from Herbert at his best.
Chapterhouse follows on more or less directly from the end of Heretics. The Sisterhood have suffered great losses at the hands of the Honoured Matres, and are more of less confined to their main planet of Chapter House. There's the usual politicking and philosophical elements to a good Herbert story, but they feel less cohesive and the characters that felt so alive in Heretics seem a little more wooden here. As the book progresses, things steadily get weirder, as Duncan begins to have visions of what can only be described as divine beings and there are hints of a cosmology rather more Christian than what Herbert had previously penned. The main plot of the book is not too bad, and the ending quite a nice twist, but overall it feels like a somewhat anti-climatic end to the series.
There are moments of greatness in amongst the ramblings, however. The slow transformation of Chapter House, with orchards slowly withering as the desert encroaches, is a poignant refection on loss and the transience of civilisation. At times, the questions asked by the Bene Gesserit over whether the survival of their order is worth the sacrifices they are making, feel like they were taken straight out of a history book, rather than a work of fiction.
