Teg heard a sound at the door of the archives and saw Sheeana watching him from the corridor. Her face was lean and angular, her skin brown from a Rakian heritage. The unruly umber hair flashed with streaks of copper from a childhood spent under the desert sun. Her eyes were the total blue of lifelong melange consumption, as well as the Spice Agony that had turned her into a Reverend Mother. The youngest ever to survive, Teg had been told.

Power in the galaxy is a three-way balancing act between the Spacing Guild, who hold a monopoly on faster than light travel; the Padishah Emperor, who controls a fanatical army of Space Spartans (think 300, not Halo); and a system of alliances between hereditary noble Houses. Uxtal has been forced to use Tleilaxu axlotl tank technology to produce the adrenaline-enhancing drug used by Honored Matres. Khrone tasks Uxtal to make a ghola of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, which is as sociopathic as the original. Khrone obtains the blood of Paul Atreides and has Uxtal make a ghola of Paul; he intends to use the ghola of the Baron to twist Paul's ghola into a weapon for Daniel and Marty's conquest of the universe. Later, Guild Navigator Edrik comes to Tleilax seeking Uxtal's knowledge of axlotl tanks; the Navigator fears his kind's obsolescence when the Ixian navigation technology becomes available. He seeks a tank-based source of spice to break the Bene Gesserit monopoly, but everyone believes that technology died with the Tleilaxu Masters. Eventually he accesses the genetic material of deceased Master Waff, and creates several Waff gholas, hoping to recover the lost technology. These women are supposed to be the strongest, slyest, most intelligent creatures in the universe! This story depicts them as not being able to intuit things better than lower level non-BGs in the same room? I am offended. They also have the BGs showing emotions in front of strangers (would never happen) and being outsmarted by Tleilaxu?!!? I don't think so!! At least not in the elementary way they imagine.Mother Commander Murbella is preparing the New Sisterhood for war against an unknown foe from the far reaches of space. Mysterious hunters are chasing the escaped no-ship containing the prophet Sheeana and her allies. And in desperation to save his own skin, Scytale, last of the great Tleilaxu Masters of old, comes up with an impossible plan… If the other Dunebooks are dense, they seem like picture books in comparison to 1981’s God Emperor of Dune,a massive, highly philosophical acid trip. Without going into too much detail for fear of losing my sanity, Children of Duneessentially ends with Leto II becoming part man, part sandworm, part omnipotent being cursed to live as an eternal emperor in control of the entire galaxy. The book takes place many generations after the events of Children of Dune,and is much slower and more focused on ideas; the God Emperor spends a lot of time expositing about leadership, time, and reality. With enemies on every side, unsure how to continue onward, and a looming threat to all of humanity on the horizon the refugees aboard the now dubbed Ithaca, set a plan into motion that they hope will bring options to a vague and hopeless future. They begin resurrecting figures from the past, in hopes that together these minds will be able to see the path through to the future. Watching images of the final bombardment now, Miles Teg wondered at what point his original body had been obliterated. Did it really matter? Now that he was alive again, he had a second chance. The penultimate chronicle of Dune can be described in four words. The premise of the book, the setting, the whole storyline, the motivations and development of every single character; it all stems from this short sentence:

I like this installment better than Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune. I was pleasantly surprised with the direction this story took. Throughout the series, there is the ever-present idea of ancestors being a part of us. Very interesting ideas are explored. Up next, Book #8: Sandworms of Dune. Jako dugo sam ovo čekao, najave idu još davno prije objave knjiga kada je lansirana priča kako su pronađeni zapisi Franka Herberta u nekakvom sefu o kosturu i radnji finalnog dijela njegovog remek djela Dune Years earlier, Teg had been brought in to guard the young ghola of Duncan Idaho, after eleven previous Duncan gholas had been assassinated. The old Bashar succeeded in keeping the twelfth alive until adulthood and finally restored Duncan's memories, then helped him escape from Gammu. When one of the Honored Matres, Murbella, tried to sexually enslave Duncan, he instead trapped her with unsuspected abilities wired into him by his Tleilaxu creators. It turned out that Duncan was a living weapon specifically designed to thwart the Honored Matres. No wonder the enraged whores were so desperate to find and kill him. After that, Herbert skips forward many more years for 1984’s Heretics of Dune. We’re introduced to a new villainous organization: the Honored Matres, Bene Gesserit who left the known galaxy and returned much changed. These two matriarchal groups continue to battle it out in 1985’s Chapterhouse: Dune, which ends on a cliffhanger, one that Herbert could not resolve; the author died in 1986. On the no-ship, rebel Bene Gesserit attempt to murder the Leto II ghola, but are foiled when he transforms into a sandworm. The Paul ghola steals and consumes an overdose of spice in an attempt to remember his past, but instead has a vision of being stabbed by an evil version of himself. After being discovered by the Bene Gesserit, he concludes that he has regained prescience. Sheeana has visions that suggest the use of the gholas is dangerous, and halts the program until she knows more.

Hunters of Dune

I’m a huge Dune fan and just re-read Frank Herbert’s six books for the third time through. The franchise is one of my favourites, and reading Dune in high-school for the first time really resonated with me as it’s such a powerful coming of age story. Since 1986, millions of readers have longed to know the ending of the uncompleted story which began in Heretics of Dune and continued in Chapterhouse: Dune. Before his death, Frank Herbert wrote a detailed outline for his chronological grand finale, under the working title of Dune 7, and placed it along with additional material about Dune in a bank safe deposit box. There it remained hidden for ten years, and the great Dune chronicles remained unfinished. His son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have now completed this epic in two volumes, finally answering the questions Dune fans have been debating for almost two decades.