"Mileage may vary" on these books.

Personally I found this was where the illusion broke and I stopped seeing the books as a peek into an alternate universe, and started seeing them as the weird opinions of an old man in the 20th century. It started to break for me during God Emperor - while the premise was good, all the interesting stuff is established in the first couple of chapters, and the philosophical/historical discussions were just so weak, shallow, and unconvincing that it felt more like the musings of an opinionated 20th century sci-fi writer than those of an immortal prescient god emperor worm.

I think that's part of what makes those last books feel so dated. He really doubles down on gender bioessentialism. It's kinda present in Dune, but it's not so blatant - there's a lot of stuff that seems like it's just the result of the whole society being patriarchal, with the exception of magic powers that don't seem to be particularly tied to reality. But in those later books, it does seem to get deeper into ideas of how men & women are fundamentally different, and does so in a way that feels very 20th century.

I don't mind that it was all conversation - I just got the impression that Letwo was supposed to come across as clever and insightful, if also cruel and manipulative, but instead he really just sounded like someone born in the early 20th century with strong opinions on topics they hadn't properly researched