Frank Herbert's Dune Series Tier List

Denis Villeneuve is clearly a talented director whose masterful camera and visual work really captured the beauty and magic of Arrakis. It was these movies that encouraged me to start reading "Dune" and, in no small part it was these books that started to reignite my love of reading, even if they are hard books to get through and a lot of the philosophical discussions go over my silly head.

I have currently only read the original six by Frank himself, but I intend to read the others, even if I am reliably informed they do not live up to scratch. Either way, below is my Tier List for these six books, and the reasoning. There may be spoilers below.

Heretics of Dune is good, fight me.

Spice Tier - Dune: I don't think this is controversial, looking online this appears to be everyone's favourite in the series, and for good reason. It introduces to an incredible world, one that would go on to inspire so many works of science fiction in the future. Out of all the books it is the most self-contained with a story that starts and finishes. The message Frank Herbert was trying to push was to be wary of the charismatic leader, is as relevant today as it was then. While I do love the films, I think they were flawed in not including Alia Atreides as a child going around and stabbing Harkonnen soldiers, I found imagining that scene rather humorous. It is this scene where I started to realise that Dune was weird, and I think you have a choice to either embrace the weirdness, or reject it. I clearly chose to embrace it.

A Tier - Heretics of Dune: Looking at a few reddit posts will suggest this is a controversial opinion, but it was my second favourite book in the series. Now don't get me wrong, it's strange, and weirdly horny. Normally I don't enjoy long time skips (Not that this series doesn't have a lot of them), but I thought the jump after the death of the wormy Leto II added a new freshness to the series. It gave us new protagonists (And a new Duncan, obviously) and new threat. I'm not 100% sure why I put this one above the others. I liked the character of Sheena and how she navigated the politics of those who wanted to use her power, and I enjoyed the idea of someone with the power to control the powerful Sandworms.

B Tier - Chapterhouse Dune: The Conclusion to the series, or at least a partial conclusion. This one is pretty wild, and therefore I enjoyed it. I enjoy slow books, but at points Dune is a bit too slow, with large swathes of the book devoted to internal monologue, which I suspect could be cut. Heretics and Chapterhouse I feel have the most going on in them, which I think placed them higher than the books at the beginning and the end.

Children of Dune: I wasn't a massive fan of this to start with, but once Leto goes of his adventure the story really picks up. Leto combining his DNA with that of the Sandworms leads to the greatest Emperor sci-fi has ever known, and is something I sorely wish that Denis Villeneuve will put on film (Though I doubt he will be brave enough). I like the concept of a person giving up their humanity, and inevitably dooming themselves to live thousands of year alone in an attempt to ensure the survival of all people (40k Emperor would never be so selfless).

C Tier - God Emperor of Dune: I really wanted to like this one better. It had a giant future seeing worm ruling a space empire, but like a lot of these books, I just found it a bit slow. I thought the romance subplot was a bit forced and didn't add much, just a convenient excuse for Leto to lose focus. Saying this, there were many parts of the story I liked, I liked the Fish Speakers ( I play Sisters of Battle in 40k), I liked the idea of keeping humans stagnated to keep us from killing each other, it makes sense but raises the obvious ethical questions. It is clear why Paul diverted from the Golden Path. Overall, I felt nothing really happened till the end. Just like Messiah below, I really just wanted the plot to move on at points.

D Tier - Messiah of Dune: This book generally felt just a bit annoying, despite being so small it felt very long, and it was only in the last bit that things happened. I also felt resentment towards the book because it skips the massive Jihad. I am not sure why Frank Herbert thought people wouldn't want to read about an interplanetary war involving the Freeman and the other noble houses.

Overall I did like the Dune Series, at points I felt it was slow, at other points I felt it was excruciatingly slow, but I am glad I forced myself through those sections. These opinions are mine, and I am sure lots of people will disagree with me. I may well reapproach this list and change it if I ever do a re-read or get around to reading the rest of the series not written by Frank Herbert. I am also very excited to see what the Dune Messiah film turns out like, if Denis sticks true to the source material or goes off piste.

If you have any thoughts about how you'd order the books, or just want to call me an idiot, feel free to comment below.