Saboteur Extraordinary McKie is back, in a much better sequel that focuses on a more interesting part of the ConSentiency universe. The planet of Dosadi has been locked away for generations, an experiment in applied social science that has gone tremendously wrong. McKei has been sent in to clean it up, though the ultimate motive behind his mission is a mystery.

Dosadi as a planet is like Dune on steroids, a punishingly deadly environment where simple survival has attuned its inhabitants to superhuman levels of competence. Keila Jedrik is the most Machiavellian of its inhabitants, and she leads an organization to break free and get revenge on whoever put her on Dosadi at any cost. Keila suborns McKie almost instantaneously, outplans her opponents with a mental facility which would put an Mentat to shame, and engineers an escape with McKie, who she merges egos with.

Then it's up to McKie to reveal the truth in a mortal courtroom drama. The toadlike Gowachins have an attitude of 'respectful disrespect' towards the law, and McKie is the only human ever admitted to their ranks of Legums. In the Gowachin court-arena, failure is punished with death, and the knife can be turned on defendant, plaintiff, witness, legum, and/or judge. The crime of Dosadi is not the intensive prison-planet environment, but that it serves as the raw material for a body-swapping immortality ring that is the real secret power in politics. The courtroom drama is quite tense, but the whole thing exists to make Herbert's points about power, and how it is too dangerous to put in the hands of mere humans, but also disastrous to hand over to any bureaucratic entity or superhuman. The whole thing feels like a cartoonish first draft of the ideas in God Emperor of Dune, and let's be real; if you're reading this book, you've already read all of the Dune books, and even some of the KJA ones.