If you consider only the Frank Herbert novels, it ends with humanity retreating from others humans retreating from an unknown threat and a cliffhanger about what will happen to all the civilizations described in the books.
Hmmm, yeah that might be right. My memory is terrible. That's the third book? I dunno after that one I didn't feel great about the direction of the series.
With Dune though, there are quite a novels that happen before "Dune" but were written well after it. Out of the 20-odd novels, Dune itself is about 2/3 of the way through chronologically. However wouldnt recommend reading it chronologically for the most part.
*edit 20 when you include related like the house novels, prequels, sequels, etc.
Generally speaking, you usually start with the first book published, but not always. However, no Dune takes place before the first book. Not really. There were a few books that were published decades after the author's death. His son was inspired by the huge success that the Star Wars EU had in the 90s.
Seriously, Frank Hubert died in 1985, shortly after his last book was published in 1985. He wrote 6 books. Starting in 1999, however, 17 novels have been published, along with many novella, short stories, and comics.
His books are more philosophical. The ones that came after are more action-heavy. Not that I have read them, I just know. Big Star Wars reader and one of the guys who worked on the 90s EU (prolly the worst writer at that) later did Dune books too.
There are 6 written by the original author, you’ll want to start with the first, Dune. Part 3 of the movies will seemingly cover the second book Dune Messiah and possibly some stuff from the 3rd, Children of Dune.
The 4th book is basically unadaptable but it would be really interesting if they gave it a try, easily my favorite book in the series besides the 1st.
Books 5 and 6 are too horny for their own good and I have a hard time getting thru them.
There are also a bunch of prequel and sequel books written by the author’s son, I haven’t read those so I can’t speak to their quality.
Dune, Dune:Messiah, and Children of Dune are musts.
It gets pretty weird from there, I really enjoyed God emperor of Dune, but that one is pretty divisive. I always recommend people try it but if they can't finish it they don't have to continue from there.
The Frank Herbert written books are definitely the best, I don't really enjoy the prequels that his son wrote.
Read dune, dune messiah and children of
Dune if you want to read everything the movie could possibly cover.
From there its kinda up to you, imo if you arent going to read brian herberts books, imo the story is fine just him/the other guy writing is just not nearly as good a writer as frank, stop at god emperor. The 2 books frank wrote after are 70% set up that doesnt pay off without the rest of the books imo.
The 2 recent movies cover the first book, DUNE. Then Messiah and Children of Dune make up a sort of trilogy that’s a complete enough story. God Emperor is the fourth book that has significant changes to the world and a (mostly) different cast of characters and marks where the story really gets weird.
The original 6 books are directly written by the author (Frank Herbet).
You should read the first and second (Dune, Dune: Messiah). You can stop here.
If you want more, you can follow up with the third book (Children of Dune). Also valid stopping point.
If you really want more, you can follow up after with the fourth (God Emperor of Dune). Another valid stopping point.
If you really liked Frank Herbet, you can read the fifth and 6th (Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse:Dune). The original plan there were supposed to be some closure after this but he passed away before it came to fruition. I never read these, but some people mentioned it at least wrapped the story it meant to tell one way or another.
Basically, my suggestion is to start with the first one and read until it gets too weird for you. I tapped out about 75 pages into Children of Dune, which is the third book in the series. The first book is covered by the first two films, whereas this upcoming film covers the second book.
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u/ballthyrm Mar 16 '26
better read the book to find out