Effrum Scufflegrit's Reviews > Heretics of Dune

A friend of mine with similar taste told me they hated this book. And that I would hate this book. And for 70% of the book, I thought them a pessimist. Or myself a moron who just enjoyed everything. I never thought it would be a contender for my top book or two of the series, but I found it..fine. Well, every bit of these 3 stars is for that first 70% of the novel.

When I crossed the 70.1% threshold, I watched not just this book, but the Dune saga itself, take a spiraling nosedive in quality. What was once a series that left me pondering subjects like politics and religion, or grappling with new concepts just introduced to me, devolved into an experience that ultimately left me just feeling sorry for Herbert. With everything going on in his personal life at the time, it's hard not to ascribe the drop in quality to personal upheaval.

The book's biggest crime is that it cheapens the rest of the saga. Herbert has always had some issues as a writer, but they are at their most obvious and most impactful in Heretics. Dune sometimes left me feeling stupid, but it was never because I couldn’t grasp the actual concepts or ideas or anything. It was because I was trying to follow the scattered author. Several times, I found myself asking, "Wait, how did they know each other?", "Wait, what happened with that attack?", "Wait, why do they want [thing]? Didn’t they say they hated [thing]?", etc.

Then, of course, there are the infamous sex topics and scenes in Heretics. It's not the horror of them that hurts this novel so gravely. It’s not even the subject matter. It’s that it reads like a 14-year-old trying to write a weird dark humor short story. And that, really, sums up most of Heretics so perfectly. It’s all just a shame.