Real boats rock, and other life lessons Dune taught me

It's done. I've completed the Dune series. And I just realized I read the last 5 books of the series in 2011. Wow. I'm addicted.


Chapterhouse: Dune, the sixth and final chapter of Frank Herbert's Dune series, focuses in on the Bene Gesserit. The Honored Matres have been massacring Bene Gesserit controlled planets and are poised to take over everything. Or so they think. The Honored Matres are brash and violent where the Bene Gesserit are reticent and calculating. The Honored Matres crash around while the Bene Gesserit concoct plans within plans.

Did I mention they are all women? It is a war of deadly women.

In previous books, the Bene Gesserit were always around, genetically choreographing futures for people, but Chapterhouse gives the reader an intimate and multi-faceted new perspective of these complicated women. You see behind the veil of their strength and wisdom; you see the machinations (and feelings) of the puppet masters.

This is a book of sisterhood and learning. And wisdom: "Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty."

So, at the end of it all, in the midst of a tumultuous final battle, after six books...how does one end such a momentous series? Herbert doesn't disappoint.

In a series that spans thousands of years, there is no tidy loose end tying finish. Instead, there is satisfaction that The Golden Path is still followed and the characters readers know and love are still out there living their (fictional) lives. Just as they will live on in my mind (and when I re-read the series because...obsessed).

Until next time Dune.

"We witness a passing phase of eternity. Important things happen but some people never notice. Accidents intervene. You are not present at episodes. You depend on reports. And people shutter their minds. What good are reports? History in a news account? Preselected at an editorial conference, digested and excreted by prejudice? Accounts you need seldom come from those who make history. Diaries, memoirs and autobiographies are subjective forms of special pleading. Archives are crammed with such suspect stuff."
Frank - critical thinking - Herbert