Why do the FH Dune sequels get no respect outside of us?

[Serkanner]

as I've mentioned before, the overarching structure was meant to be two trilogies, with GEoD as the centerpiece, punctuated by time-skips.

Do you have a source for this claim?

it may have been explicitly stated somewhere, but I'd have to go digging. moreover, it's apparent in the narrative structure. Dune, Messiah, & Children follow sequentially, as do Heretics, Chapterhouse, and presumably Dune 7. It's stated that there are large time-skips bookending God Emperor, 3500 years and 1500 years iirc.

My issue is that it was not meant to be two trilogies. Frank had the first trilogy in mind as a trilogy indeed. But after that he didn't had a "plan"to create a structure like two trilogies with GEOD as the centerpiece. There are sources, from memory I recall the BH biography, in which it was stated the last two books were "only" written because Frank needed the money, especially to pay the medical bills of Beverly.

In hindsight it seems there is this, not completed even, overarching structure but it was not meant to be one.

[xcalibur]

as I've mentioned before, the overarching structure was meant to be two trilogies, with GEoD as the centerpiece, punctuated by time-skips.

Do you have a source for this claim?

it may have been explicitly stated somewhere, but I'd have to go digging. moreover, it's apparent in the narrative structure. Dune, Messiah, & Children follow sequentially, as do Heretics, Chapterhouse, and presumably Dune 7. It's stated that there are large time-skips bookending God Emperor, 3500 years and 1500 years iirc.

My issue is that it was not meant to be two trilogies. Frank had the first trilogy in mind as a trilogy indeed. But after that he didn't had a "plan"to create a structure like two trilogies with GEOD as the centerpiece. There are sources, from memory I recall the BH biography, in which it was stated the last two books were "only" written because Frank needed the money, especially to pay the medical bills of Beverly.

In hindsight it seems there is this, not completed even, overarching structure but it was not meant to be one.

I see, you may be right about that. there can be a difference between original intention and the final product. I just assumed FH designed it that way, since it seems to fit, and when it comes to these books, I always assume FH knew exactly what he was doing. for the series to end with GEoD would've been interesting. I suppose that would've been a decent conclusion, with the knowledge that the Golden Path continues, but it would've left the future of the universe as a wide open question, with tantalizing clues (Famine Times, Scattering, Church of the Divided God, etc).

[georgiedenbro]

I definitely think books 2-6 are harder reads than Dune. I first read Dune when I was 15 and had no problem blowing through it. When I read the later books, especially 4-6 I often re-read chapters to make it clearer to myself what had literally happened. The characters move at their own mental speed and don't slow down for the reader, so when I was younger it was challenging to keep up. Messiah is not so much hard to read as it is hard to understand why you're reading what you're reading. I love that book, but some of the scenes are tonally quite weird (anything with Bijaz, even some of Hayt's scenes). CoD isn't that hard to read other than that it does what I mentioned in another thread, of constantly referring to a set of reasoning that is never actually stated until later in the book. This is easy to grok on a re-read but for a first read-through hides much of the book behind a wall. I'm not surprised that Dune is the popular favorite. Structurally it's probably the best also.

As a side point, I also think that the incredible prevalence of misreading Dune is part of the reason for its success. Your average reading is going to read it as a hero story of total triumph, and the narrative *seems* to fit that interpretation quite well. In fact that's not the point of the book, but if the actual point was made clearer it probably wouldn't be as popular! It's probably better FH left it slightly more subtle, so that people could take from it what they put in.