/lit/ - Literature

So in Heretics Of Dune there is this guard to the young Duncan Idaho Ghola named Patrin. Patrin "messes up" one day and Duncan leaves the area he is kept in. Patrin is said to have experienced a "Bene Gesserit Punishment" and never speaks to Duncan again. I've wondered all these years, what was the "Punishment" the Bene Gesserit gave Patrin?

>>9950075

I finished reading this yesterday. Honestly, with the way people speak of it I expected it to be far worse. It (and as far as I can tell from the little I've read, the next one) are the only Dune books where the characters aren't flat as cardboard which is the reason why so many people in the board shit on the series. It almost didn't seem like I was reading Herbert's writing.

Speaking about Herbert's writing, I've noticed that the only thing about Dune people almost consistently praise is the world-building, which had been mostly absent since Children of Dune. And it's only now (three fucking books later) that there is even enough information about the tleilaxu to picture them as anything but a bunch of vaguely morbid and untrustworthy tricksters sitting next to an axlotl tank all day since it turns out that whole image is a facade, besides the addition of the Scattering and the Lost Ones to the setting.

The Honored Matres are probably the most convincing and genuinely threatening antagonists in the series, even more so since due to the tleilaxu figuring out how to mass-produce spice, a synthetic replacement for spice being made among the Scattering and the Lost generally not giving a shit about the conventions of the Old Imperium going lolnospice4u is no longer the setting's instawin condition.

So why did so many people dislike it?