Wait, how many Dune books are there?

[Stephen Palmer]

To answer the original question, there are six and only six Dune novels: Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God-Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune.

Everything else is grave-robbing fanfiction written for money and in a manner that was massively, intellctually dishonest, not to mention being utterly awful to read.

RESPECT!

 

[Werthead]

God Emperor of Dune is completely mental, but also unintentionally hilarious in places. It is the moment that Herbert disappeared up his own posterior a bit. He'd originally planned 3 books and had no plans for more than that until the publisher buried him under money. He wrote GEoD as a sort of mental exercise in the thematic point of the series, and where it might go next. It's a 500 page novel where 450 pages of it consists of Leto II chatting about various philosophical ideas and themes with a couple of other characters. About 50 pages contains important incident that actually pushes the overall series forward.

Heretics and Chapterhouse are much better. They lack the depth of the first three and are more action-adventure-based, but that's not such a bad thing. They're definitely more exciting and interesting than GEoD.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

^ got it in a nutshell!