'Those who long to return to the world of desert, spice and sandworms will be amply satisfied' --The Times

'Frank Herbert would surely be delighted and proud of this continuation of his vision.' --Dean Koontz

'[Herbert and Anderson] do a great job in investing the plot with heft and complexity and the narrative with pace and momentum, and conveying the sheer ferocity of the betrayals and duplicities . . . a rare, rattling page-turner that no Dune adherent will pass up.' --Kirkus Reviews

'Those who long to return to the world of desert, spice and sandworms will be amply satisfied'

'For those of us who grew up with the world of spice and sand - how gratifying to revisit characters who felt like old friends, now brought to a satisfying conclusion.'

'[Herbert and Anderson] do a great job in investing the plot with heft and complexity and the narrative with pace and momentum, and conveying the sheer ferocity of the betrayals and duplicities . . . a rare, rattling page-turner that no Dune adherent will pass up.'

Using Frank Herbert's final outline hidden in a bank safe deposit box for eleven years Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson now tell the grand climax of the story left unfinished in CHAPTER HOUSE: DUNE, and continued in HUNTERS OF DUNE.

Frank Herbert's last novel, CHAPTER HOUSE: DUNE ends on a cliffhanger. SANDWORMS OF DUNE will answer the questions that all fans have been asking since his death.

At last, the awe-inspiring grand climax of Frank Herbert's epic DUNE chronicles.

When Frank Herbert died in 1986, the epic he began with DUNE and continued to CHAPTERHOUSE: DUNE remained unfinished. For twenty years, millions of fans were left with a cliffhanger - until now. Working from his last outline, Frank Herbert's son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson have at last completed the chronological grand finale to the saga. SANDWORMS OF DUNE is the conclusion to the epic, finishing the story as the original author intended.

The foe that humanity believed to be long defeated has reappeared from the edge of the universe - and mankind's last defenders fear that nothing can stop it now.

Slaughtering whole planets with biological plagues, the terrible Enemy accidentally reawakened by the Honored Matres approaches ever closer to Chapterhouse, where Mother Commander Murbella and her combined force of Bene Gesserit and Honored Matres desperately gather their every defence to stop its advance. Meanwhile, Sheanna's no-ship flees from both Murbella and the Enemy, carrying the last surviving sandworms from Arrakis and the reborn heroes of past ages, including Paul Atreides himself.

One of them is the ultimate Kwisach Haderach - the messiah who will change the world in ways that no-one can predict. But far away on a horribly altered Caladan, the Enemy seeks to create a Kwisach Haderach of its own.

Frank Herbert (1920-1986), who created Dune, spent his early life in the Pacific Northwest of America. He was a journalist, photographer, political speech-writer and radio news commentator. Though he is best known for Dune, he was also the author of several other important science fiction novels including The Green Brain, The Dragon in the Sea, The White Plague, Destination: Void and The Dosadi Experiment.
When Frank Herbert died in 1986 his saga remained uncompleted but he left thousands of pages of notes including historical backgrounds and plot ideas. Some of this material has now been published in The Road to Dune. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson told the story of the years immediately before Dune began in Prelude to Dune and Legends of Dune and in stories published in The Road to Dune.

Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's son, is a widely-published New York Times bestselling science fiction author in his own right. As well as being the co-author of the Prelude to Dune sequence, he has created his own worlds, including the highly acclaimed novels Sudanna, Sudanna, The Race for God and Prisoners of Arionn. He has also written Dreamer of Dune, a comprehensive biography of Frank Herbert.

Kevin J. Anderson, his co-author, has written an ambitious space-opera series, The Saga of Seven Suns, as well as numerous world-wide bestselling novels based on the universes of Star Wars and The X-Files. He has been a Sunday Times number one bestseller and in 1998 established the Guinness World Record for 'Largest Single-Author Book Signing'. His critically acclaimed original novels have been nominated for science fiction's highest awards.

Frank Herbert, one of the greatest science fiction authors, died in 1986. His son Brian Herbert is a widely-published science fiction novelist in his own right. Kevin J. Anderson's novels include bestsellers based on the universes of Star Wars and The X Files. Together they created PRELUDE TO DUNE, LEGENDS OF DUNE and THE ROAD TO DUNE, all bestsellers set in the universe created by Frank Herbert.

2008-07-31 Just awful

Most people would agree that the quality of Frank Herbert's Dune series declined after the first volume, which is understandable as that is one of the classics of Science Fiction literature.

Finishing the saga based on Herbert's notes was always going to be difficult and the result was never going to be as good as genuine Frank Herbert, but I was bittery disappointed by this book. Sandworms of Dune should have been a great deal better than this. The three 'House' prequels and Hunters of Dune were good works. Not fantastic, but entertaining.

Maybe this final book was rushed, but it is hard to tolerate the gibberish filling the pages of this book. The characters are braindead, even the Bene Gesserit characters run around like headless chickens with IQs barely higher than room temperature. The book lumbers around boringly for a few hundred pages and then lurches to an embarrassingly trite ending.

I stuck with this book just to get some idea of where Frank Herbert intended to go with the sequence, but to be honest it wasn't worth it. The Dune sequence deservs far better than this for a conclusion.