I have read all of the Frank Hebert novels several times and adore them. Even God Emperor of Dune. I have never read any of the Brian novels because I hear they are such trash. But now 40 years after first reading Dune I am starting to question that decision. Should I?
Yes, though the level is very varying, Houses and Great Schools trilogies being quite good imo while the Heroes trilogy is, mildly speaking, bad.
There’s also the Butlerian Jihad trilogy which flatten the forming event of entire setting from complicated philosophical and military conflict in which bad guys won and crippled humanity for possibly forever into an ordinary survival war against Skynet.
Or the Caladan trilogy which is honestly quite good but while it ends when the orginal Dune starts, somehow it ends up with political situation being 180 from what it should be for the original plot to happen.
And finally, there is of course the two book ending of the original cycle, which i read many times and now i’m convinced Brian didn’t lie about finding the Frank stash, the books are way more similar to the original Dune books 5-6 than to rest of Brian’s books (this isn’t much of a compliment btw, i consider Heretics and Chapterhouse the weakest parts of original).
I only went to Wikipedia after I posed this question. I honestly did not know that he had done prequels and side stories. I thought they were all followups. Also he was pushing out one a year? That can’t be good. I might start with the last ones assuming he’s found his stride by then. So library it is.
eta: I also consider the last two books to be the weakest. He could have ended it after GEoD and it would have been a solid series.