Ash Kingery

Dune is weird.
Look, the first book is as popular and influential as it is for a reason: it’s good. Like, genuinely good. It certainly reads like a sixties sci-fi novel, but it’s good, and you should at least give it the old college try.

And then a funny thing happened: slowly but surely, the books started to get worse. That happens; some series really do peak early on. The author keeps writing because they have more ideas to share, because they have a contract, because they like money. I’m not here to knock any of that. But regardless, sometimes a series should just… stop. Usually, you can’t tell when it should’ve cut its losses until it’s already too late. So it goes.

As the Dune series continues, we get further and further away from Paul. Decades, then millennia, pass, and Paul’s bloodline endures. Dune Messiah is still mostly about Paul; Children of Dune is about his twin children, Leto II and Ghanima; God-Emperor of Dune is about Leto II’s 3,500-year-long reign as the titular God-Emperor. And Heretics of Dune, the book that bedevils me now, is about a lot of people, but no there is no singular Atreides protagonist. Actually, I take back my “slow march downhill” metaphor. Imagine, if you will, a staircase. Dune stands at the top, rightfully triumphant. Then Messiah takes one step down the staircase. Children takes about three steps down. God-Emperor takes about four steps down. Heretics pauses, looks down at the many stairs left, and jumps for it.

There’s still one book left, by the way. One book that Frank Herbert wrote, that is. Chapterhouse: Dune sits on my shelf, waiting patiently for its turn.

“If you dislike Heretics so much, why are you reading it?” you might ask. Good question! I have no idea.

Okay, I guess I have some ideas. I can say with a degree of truthfulness that reading it is good for me as an author. Now I know what I don’t want to do, both in terms of storytelling and the actual mechanics of writing.
But really, I’m reading it out of stubbornness. See, I got the first four books from my dad in a boxed set. I am glad I read them. Now I want to see it through, for no good reason other than stubbornness… and spite.

In recent years, I’ve allowed myself to put down books that I’m not enjoying instead of suffering through them. It doesn’t happen often, thankfully. If you’re reading this, I, a random person on the internet, give you permission to do the same. You should enjoy what you’re reading. And in a perverse way, I guess I do kind of enjoy Heretics of Dune. I enjoy seeing how much worse it can get. Like a train wreck, I can’t avert my gaze entirely. Yes, I do keep getting books from the library and reading those instead of just buckling down and finishing the damn book, but I spent money on completing my Dune collection, so I might as well actually read the books instead of letting them sit on my shelf. Same energy as when I got a game on sale on Steam, didn’t actually enjoy it that much, and finished it anyway because I wanted to get my money’s worth.

I don’t recommend doing what I’m doing. “If it sucks, hit da bricks,” a wise man once said. He was right. The problem is that I’m a stubborn jerk, and my monkey brain needs to prove something.

Anyway, that was a lot of words about something with no real purpose or resolution. Hey, life imitates art.