# Are the Dune sequels worth reading?



## Psionicist (Dec 30, 2009)

So over christmas I finally got the time to read Dune. It's, of course, an epic  masterpiece, and I fully enjoyed reading every single page of it.

I wonder if you think the sequels in the original Frank Herbert series are worth reading? The second book is, apperantly, "Dune Messiah".

Cheers,


----------



## SkidAce (Dec 30, 2009)

I feel the first four are worth reading.

_Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune_

After that it began to feel a little stretched out.  And too weird.

_Heritics of Dune
Chapterhouse Dune_

...meh.


----------



## Mallus (Dec 30, 2009)

SkidAce said:


> I feel the first four are worth reading.



Absolutely.

(Also, the 2nd SyFy --oh how it hurts to type that-- miniseries, which combines Dune Messiah with Children, is really good. Far better than their Dune).


----------



## SSquirrel (Dec 30, 2009)

Maybe one of these days I'll have to give it another try.  I got 100 pages into the first book and couldn't take it.  My understanding is that if you mix the David Lynch version with the Sci Fi version you get most of the book of Dune covered pretty well.  The 2nd mini series did feel very well done.  

A buddy of mine who was a Dune fanboy whined at the first one saying "Dune. Arakis. Fashion planet.".  That and calling Sci Fi the Bowflex Channel, which it really was back then


----------



## Pbartender (Dec 30, 2009)

SkidAce said:


> I feel the first four are worth reading.
> 
> _Dune
> Dune Messiah
> ...




And while we're at it...

At all costs, avoid any of the pastiches co-written by Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert.

Stinky.  Winky.


----------



## SSquirrel (Dec 30, 2009)

Or just any novel by Kevin J Anderson, regardless of series heh.  His were some of the worst Star Wars novels too.  Crystal Star and some of the New Jedi Order were the only ones worse


----------



## Plane Sailing (Dec 30, 2009)

I still think the first one is great.

I still find all the subsequent ones unsatisfying in terms of story, plot and characterisation, personally. That might just be down to the different viewpoints taken up in the other books though.

For me, it jumped the shark (jumped the sandworm?) with God emperor of Dune.


----------



## Baron Opal (Dec 30, 2009)

SkidAce said:


> I feel the first four are worth reading.
> 
> _Dune
> Dune Messiah
> ...




Yeah, the first one is fascinating but you have to be into political struggles. I struggled through Dune Messiah and bored to tears with Children of Dune. I've read Chapterhouse Dune but it feels incomplete. Which is appropriate since the story was going to be finished, or at least continued, in the next book. Having the author die complicated that situation.

The prequels? I enjoyed the presentation of the Machine Times, but I kept thinking "No, that's not how it goes. No, that's not right." The presentation didn't hold up to the expectations that I had from the hints in Herbert's work.


----------



## Remus Lupin (Dec 31, 2009)

I would rank them thusly:

MUST READ:
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune

WORTH READING
God Emperor of Dune

NOT NECESSARY, BUT HARMLESS
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse Dune

INTERESTING, BUT WORTHLESS
House Atreides
House Harkonin
House Corino

AVOID AT ALL COSTS:
Everything else.


----------



## El Mahdi (Dec 31, 2009)

deleted


----------



## Darth Shoju (Dec 31, 2009)

Remus Lupin said:


> AVOID AT ALL COSTS:
> Everything else.




Crikey, there's more? How many of these books have they done?

I picked up the first four a few months ago. This thread is re-affirming my decision to stop there.


----------



## El Mahdi (Dec 31, 2009)

deleted


----------



## SkidAce (Dec 31, 2009)

Remus Lupin said:


> I would rank them thusly:
> 
> MUST READ:
> Dune
> ...




Well ordered. I concur.

If you wish to digress from the Dune series try _The Dosadi Experiment_ and after that _Whipping Star_.  The slaad like creatures (Gowachin) are fascinating, as are the implications to a closed world.


----------



## Felon (Jan 5, 2010)

I'm gettin' old. The only thing I can recall about this series with any trace of clarity is 



Spoiler



the nonstop stream of Duncan Idaho clones inevitably trying to kill Emperor Atredes and inevitably failing to do so because of little stumbling blocks like omniscience


. I was too young to really appreciate them, but I was one of the few who thought Lynch's movie was fun.


----------



## mattcolville (Jan 8, 2010)

Dune Messiah is a kind of Coda to Dune. It was written to show the consequences of a charismatic leader like Paul, and Herbert was really not that Heinlien-sque political storyteller. He thought the arrival of Paul on the scene was a huge catastrophe for the Fremen specifically and the Imperium in general.

So Dune Messiah feels a little weird. The scope is a lot smaller, the plot is more pedestrian, concerning primarily a conspiracy to kill Paul. Herbert talks about the Jihad and the billions and billions killed by Paul's followers, but those things all happen on planets we never visit and to people we don't know so the point is remote. 

Children of Dune picks things up a bit, then God Emperor goes completely off the deep end. Herbert had a huge hit with Dune and rather than write other novels, he decided to work and rework the themes of the first book like a rondo. And God Emperor is the logical conclusion of that. It's long and esoteric and if you're into that, it's awesome.

But obviously not everyone was into that, and so Heretics was a deliberate return to form. Heretics and its sequel, Chapterhouse, contain a lot of action, political intrigue and are a lot lighter on the predestination philosophy.

For my money, most of the best characters in the series are in those last two books.


----------



## Bedrockgames (Jan 14, 2010)

Books 1-3 were all good in my opinion. After that the series started to lose my interest. It also felt pretty complete to me by the end of the third book.


----------



## Orius (Jan 18, 2010)

I just got into the Dune books myself.  The first book was pretty good.  The second one was a bit weird, like Herbert was hitting the spice a bit heavy.  Children was pretty good too.  I have God Emperor on hold at the local library, so I'll probably be picking it up tomorrow.  I didn't see Heretics or Chapterhouse anywhere in the catalog, so I'll probably stop at God Emperor.



SkidAce said:


> After that it began to feel a little stretched out.  And too weird.




Too weird?  Even the first one has wierdness, though it gets weirder in the next two books.  I'm not sure I want to know just how wierd it gets.  

Then again, some writers are easier for me to follow than others.  I think it's something along the lines of how similar they writer thinks/thought compared to me.  Herbert is mildly difficult to follow for me, still readable, but with some degree of backtracking; he uses a lot of foreshadowing I either miss or don't understand the symbolism or whatever.  Maybe it doesn't help that the big religious angle doesn't really resonate with me, and the most I'm getting out of the series is that sandworms are cool. 



Pbartender said:


> And while we're at it...
> 
> At all costs, avoid any of the pastiches co-written by Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert.




I wasn't planning on doing that myself.  I know how hacktastic Anderson can be from the Star Wars EU, and I've also seen Penny Arcade's rather grandma-unfriendly opinion of the books.  

Annoyingly though, the local library's Sci-Fi section is somewhat lacking.  They have a nice collection of the pastiches, but not a single copy of the original book at the main library.  I had to put a copy from one of the library system's other locations on hold.  That's pretty much how their entire Sci-Fi catalog is.  Many of the classics aren't in the stacks, and what they do have is recent stuff that maybe was on the NY Times bestsellers or something.  An even worse case is with Asimov's Foundation series, which I also recently started reading.  There's no copy of the second book anywhere in the catalog that I can find, just an audiobook.  Yuck.  I want *read* books, not listen to them.  A book is a set of pages with printed texts on them between two covers, not a bunch of tapes or discs, or something being read on Kindle.


----------



## Kobold Avenger (Jan 19, 2010)

I certainly don't think that Frank Herbert intended for the Old Couple behind the mysterious Enemy at the end of Chapterhouse Dune to end up being who they were in the last book.

I felt that even though Frank Herbert did actually describe the Nullentropy capsule that Scytale had back in Chapterhouse Dune, I don't think it was ever intended that all those Gholas would created.  That felt too much like a bad fanfic there.

If those last two novels just focused on Murbella, Duncan, Scytale and Sheeana, then it would have felt more like something that Frank Herbert intended.

As for the minseries, I felt that one of the most effective scenes in Children of Dune, was one where they showed the Jihad at the beginning, in a scene that was never written in the novels.

I think that it will be really difficult to make a movie or miniseries off of God Emperor of Dune, without taking a lot of creative licenses.  As I seem to remember most of the novel about Leto II and Moneo just talking, which would not make a good screenplay.


----------



## Orius (Feb 6, 2010)

Well, I finished God Emperor, and the first four as a whole weren't too bad.  The first was the bast of the lot, after that, Herbert starts getting more and more into his philosophy stuff, and some of it is way out there.  A good example is Leto's explaination for his all-female army in God Emperor which got a major "WTF?!" reaction from me. Messiah was my least favorite of the 4, because it just didn't have the same pacing as the other books.


----------



## Welverin (Feb 12, 2010)

God Emperor threw me because it didn't follow what was set up in the previous book, which was odd since it was the prescient main character who said how things were going to go.

Heretics I'd say is Frank's weakest book, and the catalyst for one of the best lines in Y the Last Man: 'I haven't been this confused since I read Heretics of Dune.'



El Mahdi said:


> Although, I am still interested in reading Paul of Dune. That one seems like it may have some promise (unless there's others here who have read it and think they should warn me off from it?).




well if this: 







> I found the Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert sequels to not be too bad, - definitely not as good as the first four, or even Heretics and Chapterhouse - but not too bad - at least until the last book.



is how you feel, then I'd say give Paul of Dune a try.


----------



## Darth K'Trava (Feb 17, 2010)

Felon said:


> I'm gettin' old. The only thing I can recall about this series with any trace of clarity is
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I noticed a lot of that too. I read them back in high school, over and over. Beat out all the teen chick books that were out. 

I rather enjoyed Paul of Dune.


----------

