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I highly recommend Butlerian Jihad. I was impressed enough to get them in hardcover. The ending /is/ forced though. Ugly forced. Like we've written ourselves into a box and have to cheap our way out forced. But there's a tie-in to House Atreides, which is a nice bonus.

I view it as the worst of the originals... find reading it even more of a chore than book 1 reading a detailed description of a desert

Yes distancing from "it may be supernatural" to "It almost certainly is"

I vaguely a (windsurfing?) scene in the /other/ books and recall thinking to myself how little I could imagine the original cast having a relaxing windsurf. Really stood out to me - can't even remember which book it was but it stood out that much.

Vaguely recalls of Star Wars where we take 15 minutes off the action to show Anakin riding buffalo-like creatures while he falls in love, and I was thinking aw geez, Luke never got a vacation amounting to 10% of the show time to ride a buffalo

Q: Do you /have/ to kill 3 cardinals?

I mean, could it be one cardinal, then a high-speed chase complete with Fast-and-Furious vehicular stunts, then a 2nd cardinal? Why specifically cardinals?

I mean, if it  were say 1 bishop, 5 lay-betheren, 1 poor altar boy and a cheerleader, maybe all of Rome doesn't have to know because there's a holy day coming up and the church is fighting media speculation that the Vatican is unsafe. By choosing so high up the ladder, have you built yourself a bed of nail to sleep on?

Reminds me that it's been so long since I last read it cover-to-cover that I don't remember why the Emperor even brought Irulan with him (allowing her to get claimed as spoil)

What Mlle Gacèlle said above. Narrator must establish himself as subjective. The earlier the better.

Adding. CJ's story can get away with this easier than yours because your genre requires your narrator to stay objective. Imagine a CSI: NY story:

Right here, even if Mary is not guilty of the crime at hand, she is assuredly guilty of something because the narrator asserts certainity. This is extremely important because if we find out Mary is not guilty (not even of cheating on her taxes or double-dipping at last night's work party), the writer has cheated us. I dare say, it is required of the writer to reveal at some point "Mary is innocent of the crime at hand, but here's why she was acting guilty" -OR- work really hard on a judgemental-subjective narrator who the reader is convinced may be wrong on several points. In so doing, Mary's innocence causes the reader to go "aha, I knew the narrator was wrong"

Again, my example with Mary is significant in a crime story where tiny clues are meant to help the reader ascertain fact. In another genre, it would probably matter less.

Absolutely can be made to work, but not every narrator can pull it off. You'll want to use a highly subjective one to achieve this without getting called on for animate/conscious smiles.

Height difference doesn't rule it out (Connor from the future grew 10cm). Gender difference doesn't rule it out (Campanella's real form is a male). Being dead (run over while fleeing an ex-lover) doesn't rule it out. There is no proof of anything yet.

Means your computer is a Mac

"Brian Herbert has completely misunderstood his fathers work- I have to assume that he's actually read it. Unfortunately , as there are several prequels and side stories of equal incompetence" yowza

I own hunters in hard cover. They were on sale for $4 in a bin in Coles. Haven't read ... was lost by chapter 3 not enjoyable at all

Plus many of the characters in Hunters I was emotionally done with. Actually not "many"... "all".

The prequels were abit rough, but I did like Butlerian Jihad. The book 3 "twist that everyone saw coming because otherwise the later books would never have occurred" was kinda contrived/forced but there's only so much material a prequel can invent. I felt Darth Vader's crossover was equally forced in the SW prequels.