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I have read all of Frank Herbert's Dune books twice now, and was never all that interested in Brian Herbert's follow ups "House of..." and "Legends of...". Are these best read in publication order, or do they all occur along simultaneous timeline, just following the different houses after the main Dune chronicle?

That is my main question, and I know this part is subjective, but I'm also wondering what people think of Brian Herbert's style as compared to Frank Herbert?

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  • updated question to specifically include "legend of..."
    – benstraw
    Feb 6, 2011 at 2:26
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    The Dune follow up books should not be read.
    – David C.
    Feb 10, 2011 at 5:52
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    In some regards, they are shovelware, but if they hadn't been edited and published, there would be a huge amount of back-story that would have been lost. Neither you nor I would have been allowed to peruse the room full of filing cabinets and journals of notes about the Dune universe.
    – Tangurena
    Feb 10, 2011 at 5:52
  • that is kind of what I thought... but still interested in other opinions about them.
    – benstraw
    Feb 10, 2011 at 5:52
  • After reading the Dune books, find and read everything and anything else FH wrote. Even the non SF stuff.
    – JustJeff
    Apr 3, 2012 at 1:45

2 Answers 2

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Publication order for the "house of" series is fine. They add some details to the back-stories of the houses and characters involved in Dune. The "legends of dune" series is also worth reading, but I think they should have been edited to be much smaller books.

I've bought and read all the books put out by Brian, but having also read "The Road to Dune" which includes several early drafts of passages in Dune, I'm inclined to give some of the credit to Frank's editors for knowing when and where to cut details. I cannot believe that Frank would have ended "sandworms of dune" the way that book ends. With the vast quantities of notes left behind by Frank, there was a huge amount of details and back-story that was never available until Brian massaged it into the books. Much like when JRR Tolkien died, Chris edited and published lots of his father's notes and stories.

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Being a huge fan of Dune, main series and the rest, I have to say that I would recommend reading the main series first and then if you feel that you need some more information I would read "Legends of ..." and "Prelude to ..." . Recently "Heroes of ... " have been released although not all of them and some of them have been put on indefinite hold. "Heroes of ... " are fillers for what happened in between the main series books. I know I will read them.

Btw, here this website is a very good place to get more information about Dune Universe.

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