Heretics of Dune
Some years ago I was able to pick up an eBook of all the original Dune novels for some ridiculously low price from Google books and remove the DRM to read it in Apple Books. Some years later, and prompted by the new film I’ve started a re-read of the whole sequence. After 4 of them, each a doorstopper had it been a physical book I did take a break but have been drawn back into the universe just because it is so immersive.
This book though has been hard going - there was a lot of talk and not a huge amount of action. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but little of the talk really advanced the story and I couldn’t help feeling this was just a little bit self-indulgent. It concerns the return of people from the scattering, in particular the ‘honoured matres’ and their eventual re-integration into the empire. So yes, atmosphere a plenty, but could have been a little more focussed. The whole sequence is still an absolutely stunning masterwork however.