Are the Dune sequels worth reading?

[Darth Shoju]

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]

deleted

 

[SkidAce]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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.

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]

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]

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]

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.'

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.