You aren’t asking me, but I will take a shot: The world-building and the character arcs. It was better with a universe partially built, and with the emergence of Paul Muad’dib - our brains filled in the universe just fine, and that was a great Hero’s Journey ending. Regardless of how fascinating the sandworm cycle is, or where Paul must go as Messiah/God Emperor, the universe sags as it tries to accomplish more. IMHO.
The son’s stuff is b-movie space opera dreck, at best.
Has anyone read all of Brian Herbert’s books? Are any of them good? What about the two-part 7th book?
I read I think 2 of them, and as curious as I am about Franks 7th book I have zero interest in reading his sons take on it.
They are…young adult books might be the best description I can come up with. with a crap load of shoehorning things into places they shouldn’t be. It’s like they wanted to put every idea his Dad ever even hinted at someplace some time even if its 7943% irrelevant to the plot or situation they are in at the time.
I read *Dune *at an impressionable age (12 or so) and thought it was awesome. I then read *God Emperor of Dune *and found it awful. I played and loved Dune II as well.
Twenty years later I picked up one of the prequels on sale (I think it was The Machine Crusade) and found it even worse. Now I’m too scared to reread Dune itself in case it’s been ravaged by the suck fairy.
I’ve read all 6 of the original Dune books, and I’ve enjoyed all of them. That said, I think for nearly every one, I’ve had to back up and re-read the last 50 or so pages to try and figure out just what happened.
In my opinion, Dune was excellent, Messiah was a worthy follow-up, and Children kind of dragged but still went places.
God Emperor was kind of a mind-fuck, but once I adjusted to it I really got into its ideas, and it ranks just behind the first book for me. Heretics and Chapterhouse got steadily more bizarre, but were still worthwhile reads. The final ending is a true WTF moment, and I can certainly see how a reader could be pissed off by it.
God Emperor has a real mood-breaking ending, in my opinion:
Leto falls in love with a woman named Hwi Noree. As his procession is marching to their wedding, rebels destroy a bridge, plunging the two of them to their death. As he falls, Leto calls out to his bride, leaving me with the mental image of a giant worm flying through the air shouting “WHEEEEEEE!!!”
Pretty much what Wordman said. Whenever an author decides to “fill in” a universe, it always comes out dreck. The urge to return to the well is a strong one, and it very seldom pans out.
Yes, and when another author then tries to advance it…I give you the “Rama” series, which began with one of the best SF works (Rendevouz with Rama) by A.C. Clarke and went rapidly downhill from there with the collaboration of Gentry Lee.
Like most, I did enjoy the original “Dune” and found the next two readable but lacking, and haven’t even been tempted to pick up the son’s work.
IIRC Dune Messiah was written and published in installments in one of the sci-fi magazines of the time, so it is rather clunky as a novel and sequel to Dune. Children of Dune was more tightly written.
My favorite is the 4th book, God Emperor of Dune. I’ve read it at least a half-dozen times.
The after-books of Brian Herbert are genuinely mediocre-to-poor in a way that only young-adult fan-fiction can be. What pushes them to terrible is the bait-and-switch to readers that they are somehow authorized/legitimized by supposed notes and outlines of Frank like was done by Christopher Tolkien. They are no more researched or authoritative to any original author vision than a Star Wars EU novel, of which the Star Wars novels don’t attempt to make any claim to being more than simple pulp action romps.
I liked Dune very much - interesting characters, amazing world-building, byzantine and lethal politics, and hints at so much more going on behind the scenes. The later books puzzled and bored me, and I never tried any of the prequels, having seen them so universally blasted by longtime Herbert fans.
Actually, FWIW, Tolkien was quite emphatic in the foreword to LOTR that it was no allegory. He wrote, "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history - true or feigned – with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
Much of Dune itself appeared in pieces in Analog, so that’s not an excuse.
I read it in 1968. At that time it was seen as one of the first SF books in which ecology was very important. I’ve read the first sequel, but have never gotten around to the other ones.
Richard Lupoff as Ova Hamlet has a very funny parody of Dune, consisting of an analysis of a conversation between Lady Jessica and Duncan Idaho. Well, not quite a conversation.
God-Emperor is my favorite, which I have been told suggests something unsettling about me.
I have a Facebook friend who went on a tear and read all of the fake sequels - she sort of went down the rabbit hole and said “you know I’m so far into these things I think they’re just writing them for me at this point. I’m not sure anybody else read this far.”
Elendil’s Heir - we’re good, although I suspect there could be a different thread in this. I would make this point which seems obvious in your quote: Tolkien was defending himself agains assertions of having written an allegory. Whether he claimed he was or not, he was dealing in that currency.
IMHO if you got through books 2-3 and you enjoyed them (esp #2) you should read the rest. I found God Emperor to be fascinating and the last two are pretty fun.
The prequels are entirely readable but very fluffy, young adult fare. The tone is not at all in keeping with Frank Herbert’s work.
“readable” in the sense that all the words are spelled correctly, and there aren’t a lot of grammatical errors. In any other sense of the word, such as “enjoyable”, no, not even close.
I don’t know what it says about you, but I am with you. I think God-Emperor is the perfect finale to the Dune quartet.
I also think Dune Messiah is great, better than Children of Dune. So something is really wrong with me.
You’ve ruined it! 
I have to add that Herbert’s indifference/hostility to democracy bothered me. Every government, large and small, in the Duneverse is a tyranny of one flavor or another. It reflects a grim view of humanity’s future that didn’t and doesn’t sit well with me, much as I enjoyed the first book.
A love for kings and nobles runs deep in science fiction and even deeper in fantasy. Few political battles involve the people fighting against a tyrant. It’s usually a good noble fighting a bad noble.
Technically, the Empire under House Corrino was a constitutional monarchy with a parliament (the Landsraad) that could theoretically act against the Emperor’s will. That was pretty much the main impetus for the plot against the Atreides in the first book - Leto was becoming too popular in the Landsraad and he posed a threat to the Emperor’s ability to control the minor houses, so he had to be eliminated in a way that looked like good old-fashioned kanly rather than the Imperium trying to stifle the will of the nobles.
I imagine the Bene Gesserit would never have allowed a true democracy to become very powerful, though - their entire deal is manipulating things behind the scenes on a scale of millennia to produce a handful of Great People best suited to maintaining galactic stability, and it’s hard to mesh that with letting the people (who they see as distinct from the humans) decide who’s in charge.
I found Children of Dune to be pretty boring, honestly. I also preferred Dune Messiah. I expect a lot of people were disappointed in it just because it’s so different from Dune, and when you read that the only one you’ve read yet is Dune.