Fitting finale to `Dune'

Chapterhouse: Dune, by Frank Herbert. New York: Berkley Science Fiction. 464 pp. $7.95. The sixth volume in the late Frank Herbert's ``Dune'' saga is the last one, and this attractive oversized paperback makes an ideal gift for fans of the austere and the compelling desert world called Arrakis, with its tribes and tribulations, giant sandworms and political machinations, life-preserving spice and death-dealing leaders. ``Chapterhouse'' is a fitting finale of action and reaction, a manual of psychological warfare detailing the multidimensional spiderfine wiles of the Bene Gesserit ``witches'' who have been wielding world power for generations.

The traditional mistresses of overt and covert political manipulation are challenged by warrior women of their own mental stamp, who have added some deadly touches all their own in a war for control of the future.

Those who have become attuned to the ``Dune'' mystique over the years will miss Herbert's immense intellectual vision and deeply compassionate imagination.