Why I feel lost reading the later dune books

Spoilers for the series up to maybe 50% of god emperor of dune

Also remember that this is just my opinion. You are allowed to enjoy the books and there is nothing wrong with it. This is just my experience.

1. dune goes through many accepting periods throughout the series. There are events that take place that make you say “why????” But you just have to accept them if you want to enjoy the story that comes next. It happens with Paul dying, with Leto fusing with the sand trout, and Leto fusing with the worm. I sometimes fall into this camp. I just wonder, “from a writing perspective, when frank herbert sat down to write the book, what made him think turning the main character into a worm is a good idea?”

2. This is sort of similar to my previous point but anything after dune messiah is so unexpected that it just feels out of place. If the events that in any other story, I think most people would be fine, but because it happened in dune, it can be a little jarring. I gave a similar example in a previous post. I think it fits in terms of plot but just in the feel of it. I apologize for it being crude. Imagine you’re watching a movie about a bullfighter. The whole movie, you watch the bullfighter struggle against the bull. But he sucks at his job. Audiences are getting bored. So one day, the bullfighter decides he must undergo physical changes to fight the bull. But instead of taking steroids or something like that, he shoots bull sperm into his veins and turns into a bull human hybrid that the crowd loves. That is what it’s like essentially when jumping from dune messiah to children of dune and god emperor.

3. the stakes drastically decrease. Don’t get me wrong, the larger stakes in the context of the story are huge. But the moment to moment stakes feel so redundant. It goes from “our entire family is being attacked and we are stranded on a desert planet. How will we survive?” To “our worm god is getting attacked by random thugs so the best army in the world has to kill these very unskilled fighters. Will they accomplish it?”

4. Unnecessary plot threads. So many plot threads get dropped between books that you wonder why they were even included. Farad’n had no impact on the story. And him getting BG training is even more useless since he doesn’t even use it and isn’t in the next book. The whole thing with jacurutu existing. Why does this random outpost of bandits matter? What makes jacurutu specifically matter? When Leto goes through the spice trance, why is harum so important? Why is he even included if he’s only mentioned once or twice in throwaway lines but somehow has the importance of a possession? It feels irritating reading 500 pages and 200 of those are just unnecessary things you will never see again or had any impact on the story.

5. The characters make dumb decisions. Wensicia really thought in children of dune that she could kill the two children of the most revered emperor in mankind’s history, who also had the power to see the future, with two tigers. And that is what half of the book revolves around.

6. the dialogue just tanks in quality with each book. In book one, it was clunky at best. In messiah, it was an irritation. In children it was unintelligible. And it gets better in god emperor but it is still probably some of the stiffest dialogue out there.

Also the fact that there’s a long homophobic rant in god emperor about how if an army is composed of all men, they will turn gay then turn into rapists when they leave the military