At the end of Chapterhouse: Dune--Frank Herbert's final novel--a ship carrying the ghola of Duncan Idaho, Sheeana (a young woman who can control sandworms), and a crew of various refugees escapes into the uncharted galaxy, fleeing from the monstrous Honored Matres, dark counterparts to the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood. The nearly invincible Honored Matres have swarmed into the known universe, driven from their home by a terrifying, mysterious Enemy. Liptak, Andrew (September 13, 2016). "The authors of Navigators of Dune on building an epic, lasting world". The Verge . Retrieved July 24, 2019. Aboard their sophisticated no-ship, they have used long-stored cells to resurrect heroes and villains from the past including Paul Muad'dib and his love Chani, Lady Jessica, Thufir Hawat, even the traitor Doctor Yueh, all in preparation for a final confrontation with a mysterious outside Enemy so great it can destroy even the terrible Honored Matres. Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty. The spice began to work within her. Closing her eyes, she dove inward, following the taste of melange. She could see the sweeping landscape of Bene Gesserit memories extending to an infinite horizon of human history. She seemed to be running down a kaleidoscopic corridor of mirrors, mother to mother to mother. Fear threatened to overwhelm her, but the Sisters within parted and drew her into their midst, absorbing her consciousness.

Nudging the intuitive finger controls, he called up the images yet again. It felt odd to be an outside observer, knowing that he himself had been down there fighting and dying when these images were recorded. . . . I tried getting through the House trilogy about 15 years ago and lost interest even though there’s a lot of interesting world building there. That something is a return for Omnius and Erasmus, and it’s as a capstone to the epic that began with The Butlerian Jihad that Hunters of Dune succeeds most. It may sit somewhat awkwardly alongside Frank Herbert’s classics, but the Anderson/Herbert prequels and expansions remain my favourite part of this universe, and to it finally tied together is satisfying. Again though, there is a problem. The scope of Omnius’s plans are grand, being as they are, a plot for universal domination. But the only planets we really know are Dune (now destroyed), Caladan (now simply Dan), and Chapterhouse. Expansive though it may be thematically, the Dune universe actually feels quite limited in geography. When you don’t know anything about the wider Galaxy, it’s hard to be interested as lists of planets are reeled off as targets for destruction.

Hunters of Dune is the first of two breathtaking journeys into the world of Dune as it remakes itself in a new form after its greatest crisis. Fleeing from the monstrous Honored Matres -- dark counterparts of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood -- Duncan Idaho, a woman named Sheeana who can talk to sandworms, the military genius Bashar Miles Teg, and a group of desperate refugees explore the boundaries of the universe. Sheeana's generous lips held an elusive smile. "Studying battles again, Miles? It's a bad thing for a military commander to be so predictable." Sheeana did not seem convinced. "So many unknowns trouble me, where are we, who is chasing us . . ." Her voice trailed off, and then she said, "I will leave you to your studies. We are about to have another meeting to discuss our situation."

Murbella, now in complete control of the Honored Matres and Bene Gesserit, prepares a defense against the forces of the great enemy, now identified by Other Memory to be thinking machines of Omnius, the machine overlord destroyed in the ancient Butlerian Jihad. The Oracle of Time is revealed to be the living consciousness of Norma Cenva, somehow also still in existence millennia after the Jihad. No, Miles. And I expect the same arguments over and over again." She shrugged. "The other Sisters seem to insist on it." With a quiet rustle of robes, she exited the archives chamber, leaving him with the humming silence of the great invisible ship. At the end of Chapterhouse Dune, Duncan Idaho, sensing the trap of an unknown enemy tightening around him, destroyed the navigation computers of the ship that he and the Bene Gesserit refugees were fleeing the new unified sisterhood in, sending them out of control into the vast, unknown reaches of unexplored space.Though the Honored Matres had destroyed all Bene Tleilax worlds, their descendants (the Lost Tleilaxu) have returned from the Scattering. They use the shape-stealing Face Dancers for espionage, until the Face Dancers kill the Tleilaxu Elder Burah and replace him with a duplicate. It is revealed that they have replaced all the Lost Tleilaxu Elders, as well as countless humans on various planets in the Old Empire. Their leader Khrone sends the scribe Uxtal to serve the rebel Honored Matre leader Hellica, who has proclaimed herself Matre Superior and now rules the conquered Bene Tleilax homeworld, Tleilax. HUNTERS OF DUNE and the concluding volume, SANDWORMS OF DUNE, bring together the great story lines and beloved characters in Frank Herbert’s classic Dune universe, ranging from the time of the Butlerian Jihad to the original Dune series and beyond. Based directly on Frank Herbert’s final outline, which lay hidden in a safe-deposit box for a decade, these two volumes will finally answer the urgent questions Dune fans have been debating for two decades.