Hunters of Dune is the first of two books that close out the main storyline for the series. Frank Herbert died before he could write it, but luckily, his son Brian found his notes and was able to complete the work with the help of Kevin Anderson. Chapterhouse ends with Duncan and Sheana escaping with the Jews, discontents from the Sisterhood, and Scytale in the No ship.
The action continues with the face dancers scheming something, the Sisterhood working to defeat the whores, and the No ship trying to escape the external enemy. Murbella works to unite the Honored Matres and the Bene Gesserit into one sisterhood.
The group on the No ship decides to make use of Scytale’s knowledge of making gholas to bring back Paul, Jessica, Thurfir Hawat, Leto II, Stilgar, and several others. Scytale is even allowed to make his own ghola to ensure his knowledge would not be lost.
One of the ideas that was brought up all through the series is the Butlerian Jihad where mankind freed itself from thinking machines. I hadn’t put much thought to it because I thought it explained why there were not many computers taking care of things. Yes, they had primitive machines that monitored simple things, but anything else was outlawed. This theme is brought to a head in this book where we find out that the external enemy is the thinking machines.
There’s a lot of action in this story and it’s all twisted together in a way that makes it hard to retell. Needless to say, I highly recommend this book if you’ve finished the original six in the series.
