Prequel Dune Books

Between the end of Frank Herbert's Dune and his next novel, Dune Messiah, lies an intriguing mystery: how a hero adored by a planet became a tyrant hated by a universe. Paul Atreides is the man who overthrew a corrupt empire and then launched a terrible jihad across the galaxy, shedding the blood of trillions. The now-hated tyrant, the blind emperor Paul Muad'Dib, has walked off into the endless desert of the planet Arrakis, known as Dune, leaving his turbulent empire without guidance. It is up to his mother Jessica, with her daughter Alia, the brave troubadour-warrior Gurney Halleck, the resurrected Duncan Idaho, the Fremen leader Stilgar, as well as Paul's wife-in-name and biographer, Princess Irulan, to try and hold an empire together even as it tears itself apart from within and without.

Between the end of Frank Herbert’s Dune and his next novel Dune Messiah lies a mystery: how a hero adored by a planet became a tyrant hated by a universe.

Paul of Dune begins the story of those twelve fateful years and the wars of the jihad of Paul Muad’Dib.

It is an epic of battle and betrayal; of love and idealism; of ambition and intrigue. Above all, it is the story of how Paul Atreides – who achieved absolute power when scarcely more than a boy – changes from an idealist into a dictator who is the prisoner of the bureaucrats and fanatics who surround him.

It has been fifty-six hard years since the events of 'The Machine Crusade'. Following the death of Serena Butler, the bloodiest decades of the Jihad take place. Synchronized Worlds and Unallied Planets are liberated one by one, and at long last, after years of struggle, the human worlds begin to hope that the end of the centuries-long conflict with the thinking machines is finally in sight. Unfortunately, Omnius has one last, deadly card to play. In a last-ditch effort to destroy humankind, virulent plagues are let loose throughout the galaxy, decimating the populations of whole planets . . . and once again, the tide of the titanic struggle shifts against the warriors of the human race. At last, the war that has lasted many lifetimes will be decided in the apocalyptic Battle of Corrin.

Ten thousand years before the events of Dune, humans have managed to battle the remorseless Machines to a standstill . . . but victory may be short-lived. Yet amid shortsighted squabbling between nobles, new leaders have begun to emerge. Among them are Xavier Harkonnen, military leader of the Planet of Salusa Secundus; Xavier's fiancée, Serena Butler, an activist who will become the unwilling leader of millions; and Tio Holtzman, the scientist struggling to devise a weapon that will help the human cause. Against the brute efficiency of their adversaries, these leaders and the human race have only imagination, compassion, and the capacity for love. It will have to be enough.

More than two decades have passed since the events chronicled in The Butlerian Jihad. The crusade against thinking robots has ground on for years, but the forces led by Serena Butler and Irbis Ginjo have made only slight gains; the human worlds grow weary of war, of the bloody, inconclusive swing from victory to defeat.

The fearsome cymeks, led by Agamemnon, hatch new plots to regain their lost power from Omnius--as their numbers dwindle and time begins to run out. The fighters of Ginaz, led by Jool Noret, forge themselves into an elite warrior class, a weapon against the machine-dominated worlds. Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva are on the verge of the most important discovery in human history-a way to "fold" space and travel instantaneously to any place in the galaxy.

And on the faraway, nearly worthless planet of Arrakis, Selim Wormrider and his band of outlaws take the first steps to making themselves the feared fighters who will change the course of history: the Fremen.

House Atreides chronicles the early life of Leto Atreides, prince of a minor House in the galactic Imperium.

Meanwhile House Harkonnen schemes to bring Leto into conflict with the Tleilax, and the Bene Gesserit manipulate Baron Harkonnen as part of a plan stretching back 100 generations. In the Imperial palace treason is afoot, and on Dune itself, planetologist Pardot Kynes embarks on a secret project to transform the desert world into a paradise.

House Atreides is available on audio from Listening Library, visit Random House Audio Publishing Group for more information.

House Harkonnen is available on audio from Listening Library, visit Random House Audio Publishing Group for more information.

House Corrino is available on audio from Listening Library, visit Random House Audio Publishing Group for more information.