Like most people here, I enjoyed Dune. The second book I found OK, but somewhat confusing. The third book, I had trouble understanding why anybody was doing what they were doing. In the 4th book I was beyond confusion, but I plowed through.
I read about 3 pages of the 5th book, and stopped.
What was going on in the later books? It seemed like people were talking about things but nothing was happening and it was never clear why they were talking about these things. Was there something important that I just wasn't getting, or were they simply awful books?
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"the only thing worse than a freeper is a blue state freeper that doesn't realize they're a freeper." -dhex
hoisted by their own waterboard!
-dhex
Re: The Dune books after Dune
Even in the first one people were mostly motivated by being as much of a caricature of human hubris as possible. Except for whats-his-name the bodyguard, who's a caricature of Samwise Gamgee and Boromir's thoroughly boring lovechild.
"But if it makes you feel better, I would also enjoy a world in which there are men, women, transsexuals, genderqueer folk, etc. who all enjoy pelican role-play." - JD
"Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional powers."
Re: The Dune books after Dune
This writeup does a decent job of explaining what was going on in the later books, and also gives insights into motivations during the third book. When I finished the series and thought about it for a while, it became clear that the last three books were all about Leto's machinations. However, that's anything but clear when reading the books since all the focus is on characters and individual actions without much reference to the bigger picture. In essence, that's the failing of the later books: there's not a good connection between the characters and the big picture, whereas the first book was excellent at tying individual actions to larger consequences.
Re: The Dune books after Dune
I think that's exactly what Hebert was trying to do, just show how useless and futile most human political machinations/projects are, and that the only way to achieve them truly is to lose your humanity both physically and spiritually...as shown by Leto evolving into The Worm and becoming the greatest tyrant human history had ever known.
Leto II is the only one who truly knows what's going on, and if he told people, would they even believe him?
[Spoiler ahead]
In fact I'd say that if Leto II had told humanity about the approaching war with resurrected Omnius/Synchronized Empire, then all of his plans would go awry and groups like the Guild or Ix might try to make a deal with Omnius, causing the destruction of humanity before it had time to seed the universe with the necessary advancements in human evolution brought by the Honored Matres and the descendants of Atreides who can cloak against prescience...
I have a tank full of gentle cuttlefish.
Re: The Dune books after Dune
I love the first book, and regularly and strongly recommend it to my classes, while poo-pooing the movies (both the David Lynch and the Sci-Fi channel versions). (Favorite line: The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences.)
I thought that all the remaining books in the series were unnecessary and went nowhere, and I read all of them, re-reading whole sections to make sure I hadn't missed something. They were vaguely entertaining, but seemed to be going somewhere that they didn't actually ever reach. Could have been because:
1. Frank Herbert died before writing and publishing the book that was to follow Chapterhouse: Dune.
2. I seem to have ADD like a MF, and tend to skip long passages of text in favor of reading dialogue.
3. some combination of 1 and 2
Andrew's link was helpful, but I never would have gotten that out of reading the books.
I read the three prequels by F. Herbert's son and Kevin Anderson (House Atriedes, House Harkonnen, House Corrino), and they were entertaining and it was fun to read the detailed backstory, but the son is not a chip off the old block. Those books lacked the je ne sais quoi of Dune. I haven't had time to read the other three novels set even farther in the past yet (Butlerian Jihad, etc.).
I'm hoping that Herbert fils and Anderson will take the outline of Herbert pere for the novel following Chapterhouse: Dune, write something good, and then stop bastardizing the franchise.EDIT: apparently, I was unaware that Herbert the lesser and Anderson have indeed written two books set following Chapterhouse: Dune: Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune.
Has anyone read these? Are they any good? Or, like I suggested, should they just stop?