Heretics of Dune (preorder)

(preorder—to be published in October/November)

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Chris McGrath.

Introduction by Nancy Kress.

Published by Centipede Press.

Five thousand years after the events of Dune, humanity has scattered to the edges of the known universe. The Golden Path laid out by the late Leto II Atreides has led to freedom and prosperity. Sandworms again thrive, producing the all-important spice melange. The future seems as bright as the recent past until the arrival of a horrifying new threaten all.

The Honored Matres: an extraordinarily violent, power-obsessed matriarchal cult, they are one of the great dark inventions of science fiction. Extraordinarily skilled in fighting, they’ll kill for any reason, or none. To be seduced by one is nearly as bad as to be killed: such bliss can they bring you that, having been lured to one’s bed, you’ll forever remain in her power, your will enslaved to hers.

Even as the Matres proceed with their dark plans, Mother Superior Taraza, leader of the Bene Gesserit, constructs a plan of her own. She means to protect, and attract to her cause, Duncan Idaho’s latest ghola, one in a chain of human-like beings constructed millennia ago from the dead man’s cells. Meanwhile, Sheeana, a young orphan, has been discovered; it seems she can control the sandworms, a power that will doubtless draw worshippers to her, further destabilizing an already destabilized society.

Unwilling to reduce his story to one of good versus evil, Herbert instead embraced complexity. Opposing interests shape human destiny, just as in our own world; but here, they’re aided and afflicted by hugely powerful technologies and powers as marvelous as any in the history of the genre. Over the course of the novel, a gift—or a burden—from 1500 years before will be discovered; attacks will be attempted, sometimes successfully; seductions will occur while others will be thwarted; plans will succeed and fail; and secrets will be revealed. Much will be destroyed. But something of great value will remain.

The penultimate Dune novel to be written by Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune is suffused with his endless imagination, great gifts for intrigue and suspense, and visionary quality. It as a page-turner as well as an examination of power through the lenses of politics and religion. To read it is to read not fiction but history: the history of another universe, with all the grandeur and strangeness that would entail.

In Brian Herbert’s afterword, he provides a touching window into his father’s creation of this novel; of Chapterhouse: Dune, the novel that followed; and of those novels that his father left for other hands to write. Four decades after his death, we no longer have Frank Herbert, but the worlds he brought into being are still there, beckoning.

Edition Information:

• Signed by Nancy Kress and Chris McGrath with a family approved facsimile signature by Frank Herbert.
• 500 signed copies.
• Fully cloth bound, with dustjacket, spine stamping, and inset image on front board.
• Over a dozen interior full color illustrations by Chris McGrath.
• Printed on Mohawk Superfine.
• Printed endpapers.
• Capped, stamped slipcase.
• Book size 7¼ × 11 inches.