I last read Dune as a teenager almost 40 years ago, so I decided to dust it off and read it again in preparation for the movie. Give me your opinions: how far into the series should I go?
I think that back then I made it through the original six books, but other than the original, I don’t remember much about them. I remember Dune Messiah being fine, and I remember liking some mystical ass-kicking powers in Children of Dune. The other three are a muddled mess in my memory, and I’m not sure I even made it through Chapterhouse: Dune before giving up.
I’m not opposed to reading the other books just because they aren’t by Frank Herbert, but I am opposed if they aren’t good.
I’m just going to follow along with this; I’m almost done reading the first (which I haven’t read in a decade or so) and I was thinking of reading the others. You must have read my mind.
I first came across Dune in the 1970s when I was eight years old. The cover art absolutely fascinated me, but the book was way beyond me at that age. Little did I know it would take me many tries over four decades to finally get through that first book just a few years ago.
I immediately started on the second book, but got bogged down pretty quickly. Maybe this new TV series will inspire me to finally get through the rest of the books.
The first book was amazing, albeit flawed in some ways. The second one, I got bored and abandoned halfway through. I’ve never even bothered trying any of the others.
I’m in the middle of rereading them too. Just finished Dune. One thing I did not expect, and did not remember from the last time I read it, was how the quality of the description and plot went downhill, around the time Paul becomes Muad’Dib. Basically my enjoyment of the book seemed to be in inverse proportion to the amount of Arabic that Herbert kept shoehorning into the book. It makes me dread picking up Messiah.
Also, I can excuse a lot in speculative fiction, but the logistics for the Fremen make no sense whatsoever. At least as far as growing their own food. The idea of little kids defeating elite grown men in knife fighting is LOLtastic too. I guess I could more easily suspend my disbelief, back in the day.
It depends on what you want to get out of Dune - in terms of stand alone, I find Dune works well by itself. If you read any of the sequels, you’re going to be in for a good bit of heartbreak for any characters you grow attached too. [ this is the spoiler free version of course]
If you love the grand, baroque nature of the universe, then read all of the classic books by Herbert (pere) and the prequel books by Herbert (fils) -which give you the backstory for the great houses and the butlerian jihad.
If you just want to know how it all ends, you can read the post chapterhouse novels by Herbert (fils) which I found predictable and unsatisfying, but they do a decent job of trying up all the threads.
In terms of story Dune > Dune Messiah > Children of Dune is pretty much one solid arc. God Emperor of Dune is stand-alone-ish, in that it is separated from what comes before and after by huge chunks of time, but is incomprehensible without what has come before, and keenly informs what comes after. Heretics and Chapterhouse dune are two parts of a single story.
Hope that helps. For what it’s worth, I recommend re-reading the classic books (although I normally skim Messiah and Children) and the prequels. I advise reading a summery of the sequels if you are curious, but reading them is . . . unneeded.
Just the first. They never get better. Dune Messiah is bad, Children is no better than a potboiler and God Emperor should be called God Awful. I didn’t bother wasting my time on anything else.
This may be a reflection of my age. I read the first three books back when they were the only books in the series. I later tried to read the subsequent books but I felt they weren’t up on the same level as the first three. But I’ll admit that I might not find the first three on the level I remember them as being.
Read the first three in 9th grade when they were still sold in a box set as “the Dune trilogy”. Enjoyed the whole thing, although felt each sequel declined in quality. Read God Emperor when it came out in 11th grade. It was so bad, I never bothered with anything after that. I reread the first one in college when the David Lynch movie came out, but didn’t feel any desire to reread the sequels.
I first read Dune when I was in my late 30s just 5-6 years ago and thought it was an excellent book. It’s the best in the series but I continued to read through all six books written by Frank Herbert. The sixth book got kind of weird, yeah, even for Dune, and I decided it was best to stop with Herbert’s books rather than travel with his son’s continuation.
I read the first book in high school and liked it a lot; read it again recently and it didn’t hold up all that well. Great worlds-building and nifty concepts, but very poor characterization and clunky dialogue. I tried reading the first sequel many years ago, not long after reading the first, and was very disappointed; didn’t finish it. Never tried any of the others.
I read Dune through Chapterhouse Dune. But that was about 25 years ago. I might go back and re read the series. Based on discussion of the son’s books (much of it on the SDMB) I recommend strongly that you avoid them.
I also recommend National Lampoon’s Doon. I find it far superior to Bored Of The Rings.
If you can find a copy, I recommend The Dune Encyclopedia. It’s not considered part of the canon and it falls outside of the narrative. It doesn’t even have a plot. It’s written as a series of pseudo-factual articles on the history of the universe the early novels were set in and characters from those books.
The downside is it’s long out of print and copies generally sell for outrageous sums. And because later books in the official series contradict things in this book, it’s unlikely to be reprinted.
I’ve read them all, both the ‘immediate’ prequels (Atreides, Harkonnen, Corrino) and the Legends (Butlerian Jihad, Machine Wars, Battle of Corrin). In my opinion, the further away they are from the core series, the better they are, as the authors have more flexibility to work with the story [ie Legends is better than the house books]. Both sets are much better than the sequels as well.
Largely though, they don’t ADD anything to the core Dune universe. They are good for those who like the moral ambiguity of the original, or want to know details about how it all came to be - or just enjoy the grand scale of it all. And they also add their own weird WTF ‘how did this happen moments’ that go utterly unexplained, which I found very strange in a set of books that was largely trying to explain the underpinning of the Dune universe. I would recommend reading the Legends books, but the House books are largely superfluous. They have good explanations of why Leto the First is a ‘just’ Duke, or why he’s so obsessive about not marrying Jessica, and similar tidbits for the other characters of the ‘classic’ novels. It is nice to know (and all theoretically based on Herbert’s own notes) but doesn’t really change anything about the way you react to Dune itself.
It’s still miles better than (for example) the Star Wars prequels, but has a similar feel: you know it’s going to all end in tears.
I acknowledge that this is a borderline useless comment, but what the hell…
I did a similar exploration back before I read Dune the first time, and the overwhelming consensus that I got at time was that Dune was worth your time, everything else was a waste. I read Dune, liked it but didn’t love it the way I loved more traditional high-fantasy classics. I did find that the second half of the book dragged as a little as Paul gets to Sietch Tabr and the talks of prophecy start getting heavy. As I’ve continued deeper into the genre, I can’t say I’ve ever felt a desire for more of the Dune universe.
So, that’s where I landed…but having not actually read the other books my opinion probably shouldn’t be worth much.
I may be in the minority, but I really, really liked God Emperor of Dune. It is so unlike any other book I’ve read before or since, and really brings full circle a lot of the themes that the original Dune scratched the surface of. Messiah and Children were just OK continuations, but necessary to get to the point of God Emperor. I remember almost nothing about Heretics and Chapterhouse, other than being left wanting a proper conclusion.
But the mostly poor reviews I heard about the prequels didn’t fill me with enough confidence to give the sequels (Hunters and Sandworms) a try, and at this point, if I wanted to risk it, I’d have to re-read at least Heretics and Chapterhouse first to refresh myself.
tl;dr: I feel like the 1st four books stand alone well as a quadrilogy, and it’s worth reading at least that far.
It’s weird how often I go to post some opinion, only to discover that you’ve already posted exactly what I was planning to say. And you’re from Cleveland. I’m beginning to think you’re my evil twin. Or maybe I’m yours. Hmm…
Anyway, I had exactly the same reaction, when I recently re-read the first book. Great world-building, interesting themes and ideas, clunky writing. (Much like Tolkien.) I’ve also been re-reading Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga and her World of Five Gods novels and stories, and her writing highlights the flaws in Herbert’s. Bujold is just as bold with her imagination, but her characters are more rounded, fully fleshed-out; and her writing is smoother, more technically professional.
Anyway, read Dune, liked it, but never enough to pick up any of the sequels.
Regarding the son’s books. There is one thing I’ve heard that convinces me he just doesn’t understand his father’s work.
A ghola Paul and ghola Chani live happily ever after. If you read the father’s books, Paul is NOT the hero of the saga, Duncan Idaho is. Further, Paul knows even in the first book that he won’t have a happy ending. IMO The son has managed to miss the point entirely
ETA
I’ve also read Frank Herbert’s Whipping Star, and Dosadi Experiment. I recommend both.