It's less like his Dune series and more like his SHiP trilogy (the one with Brian Ransom) in terms of writing. Yeah, the plot is exceptionally complex for the genre, and the prose is fuckin' dense. However, the magic system is clever as fuck (gnostic versus anagogic) when compared to, say, Dragonlance, the battles are epic, and the characters are all kinds of fucked up.