In practice, things just grew messier and messier and we're left with a soft reboot that may as well have been another franchise altogether for all that it contributes to the overall mythos. Ultimately, Heretics and Chapterhouse feel like an effort to stall for time while the author tried to think up some kind of grand conclusion that might tie the disparate threads together. Again, Duncan is an incredibly boring protagonist, Teg is barely any better, and the rest of the cast are barely distinguishable from one another. The ending of Chapterhouse almost seems to acknowledge this in an underwhelming finale. The Honored Matres are barely distinguishable from the Bene Gesserit, except in the petty terms of the latter, making it difficult to care about the conflict between the two. Instead, we see fairly mundane characters (in relation to the dark messiahs that preceded them) who fumble about fighting an adversary that is of no particular interest. Having killed off all of the interesting protagonists, books 5 and 6 form a weird soft reboot without those powerful themes. The interplay between characters was informed by these ideas. Books 1-3 were centred around incredible, high-concept sci-fi superpowers and the horrific consequences thereof. However, regardless of outside circumstances, Chapterhouse Dune was a continuance of the dull meandering that made Heretics such a bore. While it's true that Chapterhouse wasn't intended to be the final book in the main Dune series, Frank Herbert's unfortunate passing has cemented it as such.
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