The Dune Saga

I read an interesting article recently about the Hugo Award winning novel Dune, by Frank Herbert. It was a reassessment of the book and rightly praised the novel for being a science fiction classic.
Amongst the many comments written in response to the article were people asking about the sequels, prequels and extensions to the Dune saga, whether they were any good or not, and an equal amount of people offering up their opinion on them.
Dune remains one of my favourite books and I thought I would offer some advice on those looking to read it and the rest of the Dune books.

The original is rightly acclaimed as a classic and is an immensely complex and enjoyable read. Herbert’s writing style is difficult to imitate effectively, he combines a very humanistic tale with a very cerebral setting and outlook.
The first two follow up novels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune form part of a trilogy of books which fit together well and tell an enclosed story – the story of Paul Artredies and his time on Dune. These books I would recommend to anybody and everybody.
The 4th book written by Herbert, God Emperor of Dune, exists in a time period of its own, many years after the original trilogy. Although it provides an interesting bridge in the series it isn’t the best book to read and changes the focus of the series to the character Duncan Idaho.
The 5th and 6th books written, Herectics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune, pick up the story long after the 4th book and exist as a pair. While not quite up to the standard of the original trilogy, they are well worth reading and tell an interesting story. Chapterhouse finishes on a cliffhanger of sorts and when Herbert died the Dune legacy was continued by his son Brian, a science fiction author in his own write, and Kevin Anderson.
The books they wrote are often universally derided, but the original trilogy of prequels, set just before the events of the original Dune, are actually worth reading. House Corrino, House Artredies and House Harkonnen follow the fortunes of the three great houses whose fates were linked to the event sin Dune and Herbert and Anderson are quite comfortable writing about characters that have direct relation to the original books and manage to imitate the original style quite effectively.
Following that success, another three books (The Butlerian Jihad, The Machine Crusade, the Battle of Corrin) were written set many years before the Dune events, recounting the wars with the machines that was spoken about as ancient history by the characters in the Dune books. This particular trilogy was to prove an epic failure in the eyes of the Dune fans and I am no exception. The writing style is botched and the characters we are introduced to, often great relations to the ones we know and love, are flat and not easy to like. These books I would avoid.
Brian and Kevin then turned their attention to finishing the series by providing a continuation to Chapterhouse and an answer to the cliffhanger. Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune were again heavily criticised by many fans but, while not being up to the standard of the ‘House’ prequels (let alone the original books) they are a passable read and do at least provide a satisfactory ending to the saga. The major criticism was that they brought in elements from their own machine wars prequels that were not felt to be congruent with the way the original books would have ended. This is partially true, but I would recommend a fan of the series read them all the same.
This would have been a good place to stop but already three more books are coming; Paul of Dune is a wholly unnecessary telling of the story between Dune and Dune Messiah, an area that Frank Herbert must have felt was unnecessary in the first place otherwise he would have written about it in these two books. The Winds of Dune and the Throne of Dune I have yet to read so I cannot comment, suffice to say that even many fans of the Dune world have stopped reading the newly produced books now and I can’t say I blame them!