Books like Dune
What should you read after Frank Herbert’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Frank Herbert
- 1965
- 688 pages
- Science fiction
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Dune
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin
A world whose geology is actively trying to kill everyone, run by people who enslave the ones who can control it — Herbert's ecology-and-politics, rebuilt sharper.
- Ecology as plot
- A world you can live in
- Political scheming
- Part of it is second person
Best for a world you can live inHyperion
Dan Simmons
Seven pilgrims tell their stories on the way to a monster on a distant world, and the density and strangeness are exactly why people reread Dune.
- A world you can live in
- Dense, demanding prose
- A long series ahead
- Ends mid-story — book two required
Best for political schemingA Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin
Great houses, a failing throne, and heirs shoved around a board by their parents — Martin took the Dune succession problem and gave it a whole continent.
- Political scheming
- A long series ahead
- A world you can live in
- No ecology, no science
Great matchThe Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin's ice planet is Arrakis's cold twin: an envoy learning a culture from the inside, with the landscape doing most of the plot's heavy lifting.
- A world you can live in
- Desert atmosphere
- Dense, demanding prose
- No epic scale, no battles
Great matchRed Rising
Pierce Brown
Everything Dune does with dynasties and a young man being turned into a weapon, run at four times the speed and with none of the philosophy attached.
- Prophecy and its cost
- Political scheming
- A long series ahead
- Blunt prose, near-YA tone
Worth a look — with a warningThe Book of the New Sun
Gene Wolfe
If the density was the pleasure, Wolfe out-densities everyone: a torturer's memoir of a dying earth, narrated by a man who is certainly lying to you.
- Dense, demanding prose
- A world you can live in
- Prophecy and its cost
- Genuinely difficult going
What should you read after Dune?
Dune by Frank Herbert works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin — a world whose geology is actively trying to kill everyone, run by people who enslave the ones who can control it — Herbert's ecology-and-politics, rebuilt sharper.
If what stayed with you was a world you can live in, read Hyperion by Dan Simmons instead: seven pilgrims tell their stories on the way to a monster on a distant world, and the density and strangeness are exactly why people reread Dune. A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin is the other strong option — great houses, a failing throne, and heirs shoved around a board by their parents — Martin took the Dune succession problem and gave it a whole continent.
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