Finally! It’s taken me nine months to find the fourth sequel to Herbert’s spectacularly successful Dune and it was certainly worth the wait – I didn’t hesitate at its Kathmandu bookshop home, despite choking on the ludicrously expensive price-tag (four times Mansfield Park). I was bitterly disappointed in the preceding novel, God Emperor of Dune, a waffling wank, but Herbert has clearly taken the Dune books into sci-fi’s 1980s renaissance, with exciting and interweaved plotlines, characters I actually cared about and beautifully envisaged planetary settings (at last venturing beyond Arrakis). It still focused on the infighting of a few factional officials, as the rest do, but links them with a much wider world. 1500 years after the emperor has been ‘divided’ humanity has scattered throughout the universe, but Arrakis’ spice malange is still the currency of the old systems. A brilliant military commander; the recreated entity of Duncan Idaho; and a small girl who can control Dune’s giant worms all struggle for power in the new order.