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The New Sisterhood. From 'Chapterhouse Dune' I got the impression that the Bene Gesserit were planning to 'absorb' the Honoured Matres. Gradually, after many years, the whores would realize they had become real Bene Gesserits, like Murbella.
But in Hunters and Sandworms, all the women (including Murbella) are agressive, murdering bitches, worse than the original Honoured Matres!!! In this book, fortunately, Murbella's body count doesn't reach three digits.
The Gholas. Nobody seems to know WHY they were created. For some vague 'part they have to play'. Their special 'abilities'. Or even 'Sheeana's fascination with the ghola-project'.
Their real purpose of course is sentimental; to make this a Real 'DUNE' book. Frank Herbert may have intented to bring back some gholas from Scytale's cell-tube, but I don't think he would have resurrected the entire cast of Dune. This is Ghola overkill.
The new sisterhood sends out a dozen fake Sheeana's to 'rally the troops'. Then it is forgotten completely and the 'Sheeana religion' is never mentioned again until the very end when Sheeana basicly says to Murbella; 'I don't want to be a prophet, I'm staying here'.
It ruins all the hints in 'Chapterhouse Dune' that Sheeana is mysterious and very special.
There is a saboteur aboard the Ithaca. Who could it be?
What should have been an interesting whodunnit story, is spoiled by some not-so-subtle hints. We are told several times that Hawat and the Rabbi smell weird. After Scytale notices this, he even uses his facedancer-whistle on the Rabbi.
Now if the reader still doesn't know WHO the saboteurs are, he/she is just as dumb as the entire crew of the Ithaca.
This, together with the endless plot-summaries and repetitions, proves that BH/KJA think readers are Stoo-pid.
More facedancer sillyness. Murbella has to deal with Shayama Sen, a stubborn Ix-representative. She tests him with a magic facedancer test. He's no facedancer, phew!
Then, several chapters later, he's no longer stubborn. A very nice cooperative guy...
Suspicious, don't you think? What does Murbella make of this: She thinks he's seen the light!!! She does not for one moment suspect a facedancer! Oh my gawd!
Facedancer Rabbi talks Ghola Yueh into killing the axlotl tank and her baby. Now everyone suspects Yueh of being the Saboteur. Mission Accomplished for the Rabbi you would think.
But this facedancer must have had some bad-brain genes, because while Yueh is still imprisoned, he steals a bunch of mines!!!! Now why would he immediately ruin his own 'Ingenious Plan' to incriminate Yueh. It makes no sense.
Waff creates waterworms. As a test, he drops some of them off on an ocean-planet. He chooses Buzzell, a planet owned by.... the Bene Gesserit. Are there no other ocean-worlds in the universe? Stupid.
Later, he kills one of the waterworms and drags it on land; An island inhabited by... Bene Gesserits. The Bene Gesserit look on as Waff extracts a glob of Ultra-spice from the dead worm in a true BH/KJA-style gore-orgy. The BG are 'confused and powerless' and let Waff leave (covered in slime).
It takes these Intimidated BG's a while to tell Murbella that there might be spice-producing worms in their oceans. Of course Murbella doesn't care about free spice on one of their own planets and thinks it's something she might take a look at AFTER the war.
Oh boy, I think 'BG' stands for 'Brain Gone'. And the waterworms are forgotten for the remainder of the book. They were just plot devices to deliver a glob of goo to an evil dwarf with a god-complex.
Waff delivers the glob of Ultra-spice to Edrik the Navigator, because the Guild-Navigators are in dire need of spice. But before Edrik can inform the secret Navigator-meeting and Norma about the new waterworm Spice-supply, he gets killed by Khrone and his cronies.
But later, the complete Navigator fleet comes to to Murbella's rescue, apparently in good health. Where did they get their spice from?
'A Thing of Eternity' already mentioned that the 'Waff on Rakis' plotline is completely pointless, since his experiments with the armoured worms fail.
But wait, there's more to it. On Rakis, he also meets a bunch of spice-robbers that are generally ill-mannered but let Waff do his work anyway. Why are they in the story then you ask? I'll give you the answer: They end up as worm-food, just like Waff. Only Waff gets eaten by another worm. Original Eh?
Now we have 'Pointless plots, within pointless plots'. Very Dunish, I admit.
After Sister Accadia's 'No shit sherlock' prediction that after the plague, the machine attack was imminent.....it took the damned machines 200 pages to arrive. Murbella even had time to build up an entire fleet. Dumb robots....
Chapterhouse is infected. But there is a science station called Shakkad in the middle of the desert that is so remote, it doesn't get infected by the plague.
Ok........And? How is this relevant to the plot? This science station serves no purpose at all and is not mentioned again. Useless 'plot'line.
Duncan hides inside the no-ship for twenty years, because he doesn't want the Enemy(tm) to find him. Then on Qelso, he suddenly decides he doesn't want to hide anymore. He wants to help his poor buddies, who let themselves get captured by a bunch of commandos even though they possess superhuman abilities.....
He says it's because he no longer wants to sit on his a$$, but in reality it is just a plot device for Norma to find him. .
Oh no, the Machines have detected the Ithaca and that evil facedancer has destroyed the engines! With only moments before the machines capture the ship, Teg comes to the rescue. He speeds up and repairs the ship within seconds. But he has given too much of himself to save his friends.... and dies. Wow, a hero's death!!!!......
Actually no. Because the machines capture the Ithaca anyway. Funny stuff don't you think? He died because the plot required another ghola to die.
It reminds me of the pointless death of Hecate in the 'Legends of Dune' series, or Rabban's mysteriously aborted attack on a fleet of ships on some planet in one of the 'House' books.
The machines have captured the Ithaca and put her down on Synchrony. Duncan says to Sheeana; 'We should gather everyone on the ship to prepare our defence. 'What defence' 'Everything we can think of'.
I expected some kind of resistance movement inside the no-ship, but what happens next; Ghola Baron strolls into the ship, sees Alia, stabs her to death, and leaves. Duncan and Sheeana watch this unfold like sheep and let the Baron leave again. Great work Duncan!
Which brings me to Alia's death. Another pointless killing. The only reason for the scene, apparently, was to get 'St. Alia of the Knife' killed with a knife... by the baron. Two 'ironies' in one, so to speak. Because these two writers love 'ironies'. They always follow the same recipe; Take some character or event from the original dune books and turn them around. Kewl eh? NO!!!
-The Baron has to tutor Paul
-The Baron has to live on Caladan
-Baron has Alia's voice inside his head
-An Evil Paul Atreides
-Castle Caladan has been turned into a torture chamber
-Yueh kills the Baron
-Missionarira Agressiva
-The Baron is thin (House Atreides)
-The Atreides are bad, the Harkonnen good (Legends of Dune books)
When Ghola Baron walks away from his Evil deed, Erasmus enters the ship and sees the 'Van Gogh' painting in Sheeana's quarters. He tells her it is not the original. HE painted it. He grabs the painting and like a drunken schizophrenic clown, he tears the thing into pieces and crushes the remains on the floor with his feet.......
.......
.......
Why. WHY? I am speechless. Whoever made this up is either sick, demented or an idiot.
Erasmus lets the two Pauls fight to the Death!!! Why? Because the winner is the real Kwisatz Haderach. Why? I don't know. Ask Erasmus.
Yes, Erasmus lets a potential Kwisatz Haderach die! Apparently he forgot that just a couple of chapters before, he was so happy to have two, because two are better than one. Oh well.
The fight is over! Evil Paolo wins the duel and is convinced he is the Ultimate Kwisatz Haderach. He eats the Ultra-spice to become all god-like. Why ultra-spice? Is regular spice not good enough? Must be because the original Paul drank the WATER OF LIFE to unlock his powers.
Murbella has deployed her fleet of ships. 100 groups!!! 100 ships in each group!!!..... to defend the ENTIRE 'old empire'. That must be how many lightyears?...Thousands? Millions? These writers have no idea how BIG the universe is.
The machines begin their attack on Murbella's fleet at Chapterhouse. Fortunately Norma's Guild Highliners come to the rescue and destroy the first wave of attacking ships. After the battle is over, we are told that the highliners also jump to the 99 other battle-locations to help them out there as well.
Those guildships sure are nice to have as friends... But really, it read like whoever wrote it was so into the Chapterhouse battle, that he forgot all about the other ships and fixed it later as an afterthought.
Leto II merges with the large 'Monarch' worm, Then, all the worms start to merge into one giant worm and dives into the ground. Sheeana knows that the worms will split up again underground and are moisture-resistant because of Leto.
I see four problems with this:
-How can worms split open and merge..... and not die while their organs spill out?
-Why merging into one big worm, when they will split up again underground? Pointless plot again.
-HOW does Sheeana know all this? I didn't know she was prescient?
-HOW does Leto make the worms moisture-resistant?
Duncan, in his Ultimate KH wisdom, commands that the machines, from now on, should live on the lifeless worlds and moons in the universe and the humans on the habitable planets, because they are so rare.
Yes, this sounds logical, but why didn't Omnius, the king of logic, think of that before he started a war?
Scytale, the Tleilaxu. Oh my. Tleilaxu hate Bene Gesserrit. Tleilaxu hate women.
And yet, in the end, Scytale chooses to settle on the new Bene Gesserit homeworld of all places! There he raises the gholas of the Tleilaxu-council members (who follow him like little ducklings) and teaches them to respect women and never ever ever abuse them again by turning them into tanks.
How sweet.... So the last Tleilaxu master, keeper of the holy faith, willingly abandons all hope of a new Bandalong and goes against thousands of years of belief and makes friends with filthy Powindah!!???? I think not.
The moment the council-members would regain their memories, they'd commit suicide AFTER they killed Scytale for his treason.
Paul and Chani choose to live on Rakis. They must be of the sentimental type, because who would want to live on a planet missing half of it's atmosphere? Qelso would be a much more logical place. Dune-like, worms, and their old buddies Liet and Stilgar live there! You can't ask for anything more...
I understand that the story needs closure on Rakis, but the logic is hard to find.
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I'm sure there's more, but what can I say. This is not the ending of the dune saga I was waiting for.
Oh, I hope someone saved that!