The novel “Chapterhouse Dune” by Frank Herbert was published for the first time in 1985. It’s the sixth book in the Dune saga and follows “Heretics of Dune“.

The Honored Matres keep on conquering planets controlled by the Bene Gesserit. Lampadas, where there was an important Sisterhood school, fell and Chancellor Lucilla was only able to share her memories with Rebecca, a Jewish “wild” Reverend Mother. The Jews managed to escape to the planet Gammu but have to hide in a no-chamber.

On the Chapterhouse planet, the Bene Gesserit are trying to replicate the desert of ancient Arrakis to revive the great worms. To try to turn the tide of what seems like a lost war, it’s essential to raise a ghola of Bashar Miles Teg but Duncan Idaho has his ideas about the child. Duncan is also taken by his relationship with Murbella, the captured Honored Matre who is on her way to becoming a Reverend Mother after being trained as a Bene Gesserit.

“Chapterhouse Dune” is the second book of what was supposed to be the final trilogy of the Dune series. It reprises the story of “The Heretics of Dune” focusing on the years in which the conquest of what was the old Empire by the Honored Matres seems impossible to stop. The merits and flaws of this novel are more or less the same as the previous one.

The 1980s were complicated for Frank Herbert: his wife Beverly’s health declined until her death from cancer, the release of the first film adaptation of “Dune” had mixed reactions, he got married again but he too fell ill with cancer and died in 1986. The vicissitudes also had consequences on the author’s activity and in the last two books of the Dune series, the plots become convoluted with some problems of balance between the various elements and in the development of some important characters.

Here and there, “Chapterhouse Dune” still shows intriguing bits and some gems that offer food for thought. The problem is that a novel of this length cannot be based on fragments but needs overall harmony in the development of the various parts of the plot. Instead, there are abrupt time jumps that make parts of the story a little vague in the first half.

Some characters particularly suffer from development problems. Murbella’s transformation from an Honored Matre to a Reverend Mother is rather superficial, which is a shame considering that she’s a character whose importance grows throughout the novel. Sheeana all too often remains on the sidelines of the narrative despite playing an important role.

The novel also has merits that made me appreciate it. The ecological element was central in the first book and is again important in the last one. The Bene Gesserit attempt to recreate the desert of Arrakis is used by Frank Herbert to discuss the climatic complexity of a planet and the consequences of attempts to control the climate in one area of it.

Among the characters, Mother Superior Darwi Odrade is the great protagonist of the novel with her introspections and her plans to turn the tide of the war against the Honored Matres. Duncan Idaho is perhaps the most interesting character in the novel because the experiences accumulated by so many gholas and the genetic modifications made by the Tleilaxu changed him. After spending lifetimes in the service of the Atreides, it seems the time has come for him to take the initiative and develop his own agenda.

There are interesting developments regarding the Honored Matres as well. In “Heretics of Dune” they looked more like a hurricane than an organization because very few of them had a precise identity. Much more is said about this Sisterhood in “Chapterhouse Dune” and among the significant characters there’s also the Great Honored Matre, nicknamed the Spider Queen.

“Chapterhouse Dune” ends with some twists that were supposed to lead to new developments in another novel that Frank Herbert didn’t have time to write. It took twenty years for his son Brian Herbert to write the controversial final books with Kevin J. Anderson. For these reasons, the last two books of the original saga are often considered markedly inferior. They gave me mixed feelings and I recommend them to Dune fans. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.