I read fifteen pages of one of the Brian Herbert/Kevin J Anderson books and set it aside. After the quality of Chapterhouse, it was like listening to nails screeching on a blackboard. I knew Kevin J. Anderson was a hack already, but if the writing itself had been a little better I might have stuck in, just to read about the Butlerian Jihad. Nope. Garbage.
Reading Dune did make me want to re-read some of Herbert's non-Dune stuff, like the ConSentiency novels and White Plague.
But, moving on, I read This Immortal by Roger Zelazny, which received the Hugo the same year as Dune (in one of the rare Hugo ties). It was interesting, but not, I think, even close to being on the level of Dune. And, like a lot of Zelazny's stuff for me, there were sections where I was fever-gripped by the writing, followed by long passages where I wished everyone would shut up. An interesting idea -- Earth destroyed, humanity leaves, the old gods return -- but it probably suffered from coming on the heels of a masterpiece like Dune.
