Dune 5: Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

About a third of the way into reading Frank Herbert’s 198whatever science fiction tome Heretics of Dune, I said to my lover and to my dog (who were sat together on a sofa), “I don’t know if Dune 5 is one of the most pointless, self-indulgent pieces of crap I’ve ever read, or if this is one of the greatest genre texts ever put to paper.”

A few days on, and I’d made a firm decision as to which side of this balance my feelings fell, when I said (again, to my lover and to my dog (the same lover and dog as earlier in the week, for clarity’s sake)), “If you don’t count the Sookie Stackhouse novels, I may have never enjoyed a genre text as much as Dune 5.”

Yes, that’s right: Dune 5 is fucking brilliant.

Slight caveat: it’s fucking brilliant if you like (or more) Dune and the Dune series of novels. It’s the duniest Dune of the Dunes I’ve read – and I’ve read five Dunes.

Yet again (as with Dune 4) we have been swept thousands of years into the future from the previous entry in the series, and although Leto 2: The Worm God Emperor isn’t empiring around any more, one thing does remain the same: Frank Herbert’s distant future future-humans are still absolutely fucking obsessed with cloning back to life the now-millennia-dead Duncan Idaho.

What’s Dune 5 about?

The same as all the other Dunes – machinations and millennia-spanning plots and passed-on memories and sinister cloning and the spice trade and melange stockpiles and creepy spaceworms and honing physical skills and powers of persuasion and breeding plans and trickery and hidden technologies and the legacies and complexities of religion building and the dangers and risks of following messianic figures or – even more dangerous – of being one.

This one is full of rival groups of people formed of the descendants of people who left the “known” universe for millennia and came back – key to these are some long-splintered Bene Gesserit who have returned with agendas and skills (sexual skills) no one else understands…

It is about the Bene Tleilax who are now able to produce bottomless quantities of artificial spice, voiding the Arrakis/Rakis/Dune (no italics cuz I mean the planet not the book) spice monopoly yet not freeing them from their sinister and self-sabotaging religious beliefs and sociocultural addiction to cloning – god, those people love cloning…

It has worm riding, it has descendants of Paul Atreides learning mad mad battle skills, it has intrigue, it has elaborate set pieces and fight scenes and thrilling escapes. It has weird future philosophical-religious debate, it has musings on life and death and spirituality. It has fun with itself, deep within the world and the stories of the previous Dune books, but far into its future and without any overhanging or incomplete narrative threads or-

It’s so Duney.

Like, if you thought Dune was Duney, or if you thought Dune 2 or Dune 3 or Dune 4 was Duney, then you ain’t seen nothing.

Visit the Bene Gesserit home planet! Marvel at the transformation of the danger-filled desert planet into a near-utopian desert planet! Watch a child control the giant worms! And see Duncan Idaho be Duncan Idaho over and over and over again.

If you like these books, you’ll love this one.

Shaggier, sleazier, higher on its own supply: it’s a spice-addled fucking adventure and I, honestly, even sad little nothing me, had a fucking blast.

Yes, Duncan Idaho, yes.

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