Just finished listening to the first three books in the Dune

God Emperor is an absurd work, the last two books are decent but fate cucked us out of a satisfactory conclusion to that story.

Everything not written by Frank Herbert is to Dune what the Disney canon is to Star Wars. They get some of the aesthetic details right (actually they are worse at this than Disney) but there is no longer any meaningful underlying message.

>>8397645
The 7th book would have been so good.
Daniel and Marty...

>>8397645
>God Emperor is an absurd work
Does it jump the shark big-time or something?

>>8398732
I finished it two days ago. For me the ending was poignant but underwhelming action-wise, even though things are destroyed and shit. In Dune and Children you have Muad'Dib and Leto respectively laying the good dick down and wrecking everybody, whereas Messiah and God Emperor just don't have that kind of satisfaction.

I don't think it's absurd or jumps the shark, everything is explained.

>>8397614
God Emperor is meh. You'll like if you enjoy the other memory thing. I'm personally not a huge fan of it, so reading God Emperor was rather tedious, although it picked up a better pace at the end.
The last two are good despite some absurd elements, and if you don't have a hard-on for the Bene Gesserit you'll be annoyed by how over-powered Frank makes them, but they're definitely still worth reading.
Keep in mind that, as >>8397645
said, you'll get cucked hard by the lack of proper closure.
The books written by his son are absolute garbage, do NOT bother with them.

Irulan had a hard life.

Just finished the first book myself, holy shit what a ride.

>>8400342
I felt that God Emperor was absurd because of how radical of a departure it was from what we get in the first books, though I suppose that may not be the correct word. Perhaps jarring.

Anyways, the first books, if you have to derive a unitary message from them, I suppose tell the story of why you ought not to trust heroes. The chosen ones will lead you straight to hell, horrible suffering came to the world at the hands of Paul, even though Paul, who was himself a good and certainly heroic person, could not stop it. Instead he had to try to guide the storm but even failed in that in the end. Few would argue that Paul leaves the galaxy a better place than he found it.

Leto II is an amplification of this. He actively does horrible, tyrannical things, things which Paul did only with extreme reluctance. For four thousand years he is the worst tyrant in human history. But this is just part of a plan, the golden path. He does all of this to inspire in humans their best impulse, that for exploration, that for discovery and escape from what is real. While doing this he is breeding prescience invisibility into the line of his sister, so that no tyrant could ever again do what he has done. He creates a dark age so that humans can know light again. And we see this in the books too, technology in Leto's time has advanced slightly but it is not alien from what we see in the first book. By book 5 which IIRC is only 1,000 years after 4, there is a seismic shift. Synthetic spice, the futars, the noship, ect.

I won't go any deeper to prevent major spoilers, but his plan coming together at the end was just so beautiful, even when his prescience fails him, he still predicts what will unfold. I cannot think of a stronger example of the Ubermensch in literature. He has so thoroughly overcome resentment, he embraces fate and does what he must do to not simply breed a new human race, but a new human condition.

>>8398153
you mean

Erasmus and Omnius? :^)

btw buy our prequel books those explain everything ;^)

>>8397614

God Emperor is the second best after the first.

Two and Three were like a blur, like a single book.

Everything after God Emperor is like fan fiction. The natural end point of the series is God Emperor.

>>8401072
no way, I refuse to read those

>>8401216
the natural end point is the 7th book where everything would come full circle

>>8397614
God Emperor is not up there with the other three.

Just think about the fatal flaw: the main character is a God Emperor. That means you have to write a god emperor character without actually being one yourself. He just winds up sounding like a blowhard and so does the author.

The other two are of mixed quality, but have the virtue of being reckless with an established franchise. I'd give them a shot if you've made it this far with your enthusiasm intact.

>>8400857
She got away with plotting to murder her husband. She's probably satisfied with that.

(Incidentally, how the fuck did she manage that ...)

>>8401216
>Two and Three were like a blur, like a single book.

Two and Three are completely self-contained. Messiah, in particular, is tightly-plotted and everything ties up at the end.

>The natural end point of the series is God Emperor.

The purpose of God Emperor is to set up Heretics and Chapter House. It's the beginning of a new trilogy.