Chapterhouse: Dune picks up directly after Heretics of Dune. The desert planet Arrakis has been destroyed by the Honored Matres, a violent matriarchal order sweeping in from the Scattering to conquer the Old Empire and exterminate the Bene Gesserit. Under Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, the Sisterhood has secretly begun transforming their own hidden world, Chapterhouse, into a new desert capable of sustaining sandworms — and with them, the spice.
Odrade's plans depend on a handful of closely guarded assets: Sheeana, who can command the worms; a restored ghola of the military strategist Miles Teg; a new incarnation of the swordmaster Duncan Idaho; and Murbella, a captured Honored Matre whose loyalties remain in question even as the Bene Gesserit try to make her one of their own. As the Honored Matres close in, Odrade gambles everything on a plan to merge the two orders before the Sisterhood is wiped out.
This is the sixth Dune novel and the last Frank Herbert completed before his death in 1986. It closes the saga he began with Dune on an unresolved cliffhanger, continuing the series' meditations on power, survival, and the long consequences of control.
