The Battle of Corin

Dune addicts will happily devour Herbert and Anderson's spicy conclusion (after 2003's Dune: The Machine Crusade) to their second prequel trilogy, Legends of Dune. A fearsome robot-engineered plague opens the tumultuous Battle of Corrin, climaxing the century-long galactic war between humans and the computer Omnius's robotic Synchronized Empire. Varian Atreides, supreme commander of the human Army of the Jihad, initiates the no-holds-barred feud between House Atreides and House Harkonnen by exiling Abulurd Harkonnen for cowardice, while Varian's granddaughter Raquella molds the Sorceress survivors into a biochemically based sisterhood and Ishmael leads his people into Arrakis's sandwormy desert to become Fremen of Dune. All the Dune themes-religion and politics, fanaticism, ecology, opportunism, totalitarianism, the power of myth-exhaustively prepare the way for Frank Herbert's sweeping classic of corruptibility and survival.