I’ve had both, the Hyperion series, and The Expanse series sitting on my shelf for years now, and only ever read a little bit of the first books of both series.
I’m currently re-reading the Lord of The Rings trilogy, but after, I’m planning on reading The Expanse or Hyperion series.
Which should I read first?
Edit: Thank you all so much for your feedback!! The general consensus seems to lean towards reading The Expanse first, so I think I’ll read through Leviathan Wakes and then read Hyperion unless Leviathan Wakes provokes me to directly continue into the second book.
Man, I loved Dune so much. I haven’t picked up the sequels yet because I still have so much in my backlog, lol.
I feel like the only person on the planet who just couldn’t get into Dune. Tried reading the first book like three separate times but it never grabbed me. I found the Dune wiki to be interesting as hell, and I love Warhammer 40k which I know is pretty directly inspired by Dune, so its weird that I didn’t like it but something about the way it’s written just makes it difficult to follow for me.
Maybe I should try the movies… Sounds kind of blasphemous to me though, even if they are legitimately good movies.
I’ve read the book several times, and seen the movie twice. The film is excellent, and captures the “feel” very well. Don’t worry about blasphemy. You gave the book a fair, honest chance (and while the story is widely praised, the writing is not. You aren’t alone).
No need to deny yourself a great film! I’m excited for the sequel!
Messiah (next book) is pretty short and a good place to stop/pause if you have tons of other stuff to read. When you continue to Messiah, you at least get to see Frank Herbert’s message about the dangers of messianic figures realized.
Honestly, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t read the sequels. Dune, Messiah, and Children of Dune are phenomenal. The first two moreso. It gets real weird after that, and I don’t mean that lightly. Chapterhouse brings it back around a bit though. Kinda. I’m actually glad they’re stopping after the Dune Messiah movie. Don’t know how they’d make God Emperor interesting or if I’d even want to watch it.
I honestly think God Emperor is the best one in the series. But it’s completely different from the rest, and only works because of what comes before.
I don’t particularly like Children. But there is not God Emperor without Children of Dune.
There’s plans for a Dune Messiah movie?
The director recently said that should the 3rd one get greenlit it will be his last. So it’s not confirmed but its been pretty successful so far.
I really hope we get a third one. I’m a big enough fan that I would happily see the full series in movie form, but I get why they would stop at 2 or 3.
Honestly, I’m just incredibly happy that we got one good movie out of it. Even if it stopped there I’d’ve been happy.
I’d have been a little upset considering the first movie ended half way through the 1st book. Lol
True, but even that much was way more than I thought I’d see in my lifetime. Definitely happy we’re getting the second part, though!
I highly recommend going into the rest. I recently read a book called Introduction to Internal Family Systems and I’m having a deeper look into my psyche, reading Dune’s sequels has really helped me understand what it means to have so many different parts of myself that I’m not quite familiar with, or at all really.
Each book really made me feel like Herbert did a lot of introspection, and made me feel better about conflicting emotions that made me feel like a hypocrite before, but accepting each one is the goal now.
The first Dune really explores him taking control of his own mind by “knowing,” the future, but the sequels really take that idea and breaks it down to what all the different parts of him are and how they respond to a single emotion of action, the “jihad.”
I didn’t care for the Dune sequels at all. The first book is a masterpiece, but the rest to me felt like a waste of time.
I recommend introduction to internal family systems by Richard Schwartz, not quite science fiction but it’s completely altered my consumption of fiction, and I’d love to be able to share that.