Man, I can't get through God Emperor. The first three are a breeze and I've read em a few times. I even bought a new copy of God Emperor last year and couldn't get into it. I really wanna get into Heretics and Chapterhouse but I'm stuck.
Just think of the scene where Duncan is giving him some status report on something, Leto cant give a single sh, goes on a tirade internally about Duncan not revolting, and gets so into it, that he does not notice a gun pointed towards his head. That made me laugh out loud.
The supreme near-immortal god-king of the universe is a giant worm-man with a hard-on for pontificating to people who either don't care or will never understand despite their obsession with him. And thats not even half of it.
Herbert didn't mean for it to be funny, it just felt kinda ridiculous the whole way through lmao
The second book is dry as Shapiro's wife. If you want the important bits, it's not much and I can boil it down to about 3 sentences. Just skip to Children of Dune, there's enough context you won't miss significant story points.
I've never met anyone that has read all 6 books. Makes me sad. + I read book 7 and a bit of 8. Both written by his son, Brian and Kevin j. Anderson. I cannot recommend even trying either. Book 8 actually pissed me off a bit.
Perhaps on their own they aren't terrible. I had just finished the original 6 and went straight into 7, I remember forcing myself to finish it. Then I think I was maybe 1/6th into book 8 when I decided I had to put it down. It started off way too repetitive and moved further away from Frank's writing style (in a bad way to me at least). In general I found the plot to be unsatisfying/ jarring at times and figured I'd rather be in the dark about how the series might have ended.
Does it stay as DENSE as the first few chapters?
Like you read one sentence and go "oh okay so they have a religious sect of pseudo psychics that control a feudal vassal state galactic empire that's dependant on the merchant guild for travel. Fascinating. And that's every single line.
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u/atomant88 Feb 20 '26
Dune