Frank Herbert's Dune

Atomkilla

Atomkilla

Hazel Hegemon oTO
Orderite
So several months ago I (finally) got all six books of Dune series written by Frank Herbert. Suffice to say I've been looking for these books for years, and was really excited when I got them.

But I am in an awkward position.


In several weeks my freshman year starts, and that will leave me with little or no time for reading books non-essential to my education, which, obviously, includes Dune.
However, I'm very keen on reading the series, but due to the constraints I will soon be facing, I am afraid I won't be able to read the whole series before the shitstorm starts.

So I am basically asking this - is it worth reading just the first book, or do I have to read the whole series in order to have a complete picture?

If the answer is "Yes, read the whole series", then another question follows - do I need to read sequels written by Herbert's son?
(I've read somewhere that final Frank's book in the series ends with a cliffhanger - I don't know the details, and I do not want to know them - but does this mean I will need further reading?).

In short:

Should I read the first book, and ditch the rest for later (something I hate doing), or is just fine, since the first book is more or less stand-alone? Or just skip the whole series for now and read it in few years (this actually seems like a best option, but I wanted to check).





NO SPOILERS, PLEASE


Thank you.
 
I have only read the first book... Not sure if I'll ever pick up the other books because frankly, the book is kinda boring as fuck. Don't get me wrong, the world is incredibly interesting, the story is exciting and all... But Herbert is kinda like Tolkien in my eyes, he forgot that he's writing a novel and not a roleplaying guidebook. It just doesn't feel well-written.
Still, it's worth reading. I think you should read the first book and then decide if you want to continue, the first book works pretty well on its own.
Oh, and don't worry too much about freshman year. You'll have a lot of work to do (well, depending on what you do), but you definitely should make the time to read something besides study-related stuff. Just go to bed half an hour earlier than you would usually and read a bit. It really helps with the stress.
 
The first Dune book is complete worthwhile as a standalone piece of fiction.
 
The first three are worth every penny, maybe four if you want an epilogue with God Emperor.

But if you have to choose just one, burn through Dune. Worth it.
 
The first book works just fine as a standalone. The following books decline in quality as they progress, and the latter two are really, really uneven.
 
The first book is fine to read alone, as already stated. You'll have no problem picking up Messiah years after finishing Dune, I suspect, if you should be forced to put it off.

Stay the hell away from anything with Brian Herbert on it. Especially the sequels. The prequels (House Harkonnen, Atreides, Corrino) are more like adventure novels or something afaik. There's nothing remotely as memorable in them as in the good parts of the main series though. The machine prequels are stupid, and the cliff hanger that Chapterhouse ends with is better left alone to be honest.

It's not really a cliff hanger as much as a what the fuck just happened, am I smoking crack kind of thing.
 
Full on Orderite response, eh?



I thank you all for your suggestions and recommendations, it's appreciated. I will proceed to read the first novel.


Hassknecht said:
Oh, and don't worry too much about freshman year. You'll have a lot of work to do (well, depending on what you do), but you definitely should make the time to read something besides study-related stuff. Just go to bed half an hour earlier than you would usually and read a bit. It really helps with the stress.
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Yeah, I read before going to sleep regularly, actually, but I've found out that if I'm under stress for a period of time, I tend to lose interest in very long novels, or worse, book series (and I'm going to med uni, so, yeah, it will be quite stressful in the beginning). They just stop keeping my attention and I need something fresh (that is not the case if the book is really good, of course, but eh, most longer series get stale and slow from time to time).
Thanks for the advice nonetheless.



Again, thank you all.
 
Atomkilla said:
Full on Orderite response, eh?
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We have to remind NMAers sometimes whos actually ruining I mean running the show :p

If NMA would be the a conservative party, then the order would be the tea party.
 
Crni Vuk said:
We have to remind NMAers sometimes whos actually ruining I mean running the show :p
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No doubt about it.

Parading military power and prowess around a la North Korea style.
 
The only book of Herbert's I've read is Dune, and I appreciated it for the fact that it made David Lynch's awesome Dune movie comprehensible.
 
Speaking as someone who's read the Dune books quite some time apart each, I'd say - it's well worth reading the first one, and you won't have to worry about it failing to catch your attention. The first Dune is a book you could read several times over. The subsequent books are good as sequels go, but don't worry too much if you miss out on those. I could not stomach God Emperor in one go, though, it's well removed (in setting and in writing) from the first book, IMO.
 
Dune, and the next three as others have said, I think thats the furthest I got originally without adding the Paul of Dune that takes place between two and three.

I for one enjoyed the prequels, then again, I like adventure as well. Also enjoyed the machine novels but I digress.

But yeah, stick with the original, then the next two.
 
I'll add a +1 to the common consensus. The first book is by far the most worthwhile outing in the entire extended canon (as Hassknecht points out, it is the longest of the original trilogy and paced like a game of Chess, but to many those are selling points), and the second two are definitely worth your time. Book two reads almost like an addendum to the first, and book three neatly wraps up the first arc of the series. They're both pretty short compared to the first, if I recall (especially Dune Messiah), so they shouldn't be too hard to fit in if you finish the first and find yourself wanting.

Four isn't bad, and it does flesh a few things out, but you can tell it's setting the stage for a new arc very different from the first (and incredibly weird, even by comparison), and the series' integrity won't suffer if you read the latter three books later on.

As to the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson stuff, I can't personally vouch. I've read a few chapters here and there, but it's never grabbed me like the original. I suppose it's not bad for fanfiction. I've got friends that swear by it.
 
Well, I got 50+ pages last night, and it seems to fare very well. The translation I got is weird at moments, but good enough, and yeah, I've checked the book lengths, Messiah is basically a third of the original (my books come in 3 tomes - together aptly named Chronicles of Dune by the local publisher - which contain all six books, so I need to go through the books themselves, finding blank pages, to actually differentiate one from another).

Anyway, to book is interesting so far. so I will see how it goes. It might just happen that I "burn through" several of them, to quote Tagz, but let's finish the original first.



Again, danke for your responses.
 
I really think it's best to read the first two. I thought the third was really bad, bad enough to stop me from reading the rest of the titles.

You can treat the first book as it's own story, which it is, but there is a lot of foreshadowing of events that occur in Messiah. Messiah also introduces a lot of factions/houses you encounter in the games, so it was nice to get a lot more context behind them.

Edit: I'll also add that I think the series is pretty dated, it's incredibly influential and absolutely worth reading, but the female characters are pretty one-sided and not really interesting at all in their own right, which gets progressively more annyoing throughout the first book.
 
Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
Edit: I'll also add that I think the series is pretty dated, it's incredibly influential and absolutely worth reading, but the female characters are pretty one-sided and not really interesting at all in their own right, which gets progressively more annyoing throughout the first book.
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Are they? I found the females just as interesting as males.
 
Tagaziel said:
Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
Edit: I'll also add that I think the series is pretty dated, it's incredibly influential and absolutely worth reading, but the female characters are pretty one-sided and not really interesting at all in their own right, which gets progressively more annyoing throughout the first book.
Click to expand...

Are they? I found the females just as interesting as males.
Click to expand...

Obviously just my opinion, I just felt that the woment that received most of the attention in the first book had pretty shallow motivations that centered around taking care of Paul, which is somewhat understandable being that it is his story. I would have liked a lot more depth in the Bene Gesserit, as they still seem like one of the most interesting houses from the first book.

The best thing the sci-fi channel mini-series did was add a lot more depth to Princess Irulan, as I found her narrations to be really good.
 
I have only read the first book and it worked pretty well as a conclusive piece of story. It introduces and explains the basis of a very interesting universe, although I didn't like the pacing and writing too much.
 
Dead Guy said:
Stay the hell away from anything with Brian Herbert on it. Especially the sequels. The prequels (House Harkonnen, Atreides, Corrino) are more like adventure novels or something afaik. There's nothing remotely as memorable in them as in the good parts of the main series though. The machine prequels are stupid, and the cliff hanger that Chapterhouse ends with is better left alone to be honest.
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I dunno, I quite liked House Harkonnen though the name didn't make much sense as half of it was about Atreides and a fair amount on that group that gets of on genetic experiments, Tleilax or something.
Then again I did read most of it while having a very serious case of flu so it may be less interesting than I remember.
 
Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
Obviously just my opinion, I just felt that the woment that received most of the attention in the first book had pretty shallow motivations that centered around taking care of Paul, which is somewhat understandable being that it is his story. I would have liked a lot more depth in the Bene Gesserit, as they still seem like one of the most interesting houses from the first book.

The best thing the sci-fi channel mini-series did was add a lot more depth to Princess Irulan, as I found her narrations to be really good.
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Given that Paul and his transformation into the Messiah is the focal point of the book, I'd be surprised to see characters not revolving around him. I enjoyed Jessica because of the conflict she experiences, torn between her loyalty to the Bene Gesserit and to her husband and son.
 
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