The Legends Of Dune - Volume 1: The Butlerian Jihad

axis-techno-geek writes "This is the tenth Dune novel, and the fourth co-authored by Brian Herbert (the son of Frank Herbert) and acclaimed sci-fi writer Kevin J. Anderson. The story in this Dune novel takes place 10,000 years before the original Dune novel and gives the reader more foundation on how the empire we know from the previous 9 book came to be." Read on for the complete review.

The Legends Of Dune - Volume 1: The Butlerian Jihad
author	Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
pages	624 hardcover/3041 Palm eBook
publisher	Tor Books/Palm Digital Media
rating	7.5 out of 10
reviewer	axis-techno-geek
ISBN	0765301571/eISBN: 0-312-70808-4
summary	A historical account of the “Dune” universe 10,000 years before Muad’Dib

The book starts out by giving a history of how the Titans took over the "Old Empire" after humanity had lost its drive and had relegated intelligent machines to handle the everyday tasks. The Titans used this lack of drive and the intelligent machine to quickly take over the Old Empire and conquered most of the known galaxy. Free humans rose up at the fringes of the galaxy to resist and push the Titans back, forming "The League of Nobels".

The Titans governed their planets with a increasingly sophisticated AI network and increasing brutality towards their human "slaves". In a bid to rule for centuries, and for possible immortality, the Titans underwent the transfiguration to "cymeks", robots with a human brain. After a century of Titan rule, one of the Titans, in a quest for more free time to indulge in hedonistic activity, relinquished too much control to his intelligent AI network. Eventually the sentient AI network computer evermind, which took the name Ominus, took control of all the Titan controlled planets and formed the "Synchronized Worlds".

After a thousand years of conflict and stalemate between the Synchronized Worlds and the League of Nobels the machines, with coaxing from the Titans, have determined that it is time to "corral" the wild humans and strike out, the logical target, Salusa Secundus, the center of government for the League of Nobels . Being so "unpredictable" to Ominus, the humans, taking huge losses, again resist the machine attacks. In part due to the AI scrambler shield invention of one Tio Holtzman that stops robots, but in an oversight, allowed the Titan cymeks, with their human brains, through.

Reconsidering their tactics, the machines instead move on one of the less vehemently defended planets, an industrial world with an abundance of resources, Giedi Prime. This time the machines manage to knockout the shield generator and take the planet. Once the league hears of this, the endless debates start within their government, as with any democracy, nothing gets done because all the politicians are afraid to commit. All except Serena Butler, she instead organizes a small band to sneak onto Geidi Prime and complete the secondary shield generator. This leads to Serena's capture and eventual transfer to the primary Synchronized World, Earth.

We get to see the first "friction" here between the Atreides and Harkonnen, the Sorceresses of Rossak with their telepathic and telekinetic powers are the beginnings of the Bene Gesserit. The foundation is laid for the Suk doctors, and the cover blurb that I read mentioned the Swordmasters of Ginaz, but I found only a slight mention of the planet Ginaz. Another cover blurb I read mentioned the Mentat school, but there was nothing in this book, one could see the use for them as the League of Nobels did not use any computers.

The book flows very well and I found myself drawn to read more and more. The book does not have the intricate plot within plot layout as the other Dune works, but then this book is being narrated from a historical perspective. Given this, I found most of the characters actions predictable, but I have read all other 9 books, so this being a "historical" narrative, this keeps the characters close to their roles that were hinted at/layed out in the previous novels.

I give credit to Brian Herbert for the foresight of enlisting the help of Kevin J. Anderson in the creation of the Dune "prequels" as he openly admitted that he did not possess all of the "tools" required to under take this project, kudos.

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You can purchase The Legends Of Dune - Volume 1 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

"Acclaimed" writer Kevin J. Anderson?

[Mendax Veritas]

This must be based on some definition of "acclaimed" that I'm not familiar with. Kevin J. Anderson is a hack who mostly writes TV novelizations (X-Files, etc.) or helps people polish books they aren't capable of writing on their own (as in this case). Who has "acclaimed" him? For what? Has he won any awards, been the guest of honor at a convention... anything?

As for the Dune books, only the first two were ever worth anything. Frank Herbert himself couldn't keep the series going at a high level of quality, and his son's work qualifies as nothing more than shameless exploitation of a franchise.

Don't click on slashdots book link

[RedWolves2]

bn.com has the book for $22.36. Amazon has it for $19.57 [amazon.com] [affiliate]

Save yourself some money.

Spoiler warning perhaps

[delphin42]

Much of what is described in this review appears to be plot details. Maybe next time we'll get more of a review and less of a book report. At some point it was mentioned that the book was hard to put down, which is more of what I was personally looking for. Can't wait to read the latest (earliest?) in the dune series.

I'm guessing this novel is just the first of many in the prequels to the prequels of Dune?

Re:Dune, meh

[derch]

Plus it seems like a lot of the ambience was stolen from Star Wars (Tatooine anyone?).

Read Dune's copyright. Dune was published twelve years before Star Wars was released.

Re:Don't click on slashdots book link

[WhiteDragon]

I hope you are all using isbn.nu [isbn.nu]. They automatically check most major online bookstores in real time. Dune: The Butlerian Jihad [isbn.nu] is available for as little as $15.09 (although that price is from a book club with membership required).

Oh great, RedWolves 2 is back

[Schlemphfer]

You can always count on him to pop up ten minutes after a book review is posted, where he posts a link to Amazon to cash in on commissions. It's be pretty cool for Cowboy Neil to write a little piece of code that would hijack parasitic posters' referral URL's and dump that money into a fund that pays for Slashdot's bandwidth. Ah, a guy can dream.

This is ridiculous nonsense.

[Pig Hogger]

According to the Dune Encyclopedia, the Butlerian Jihad was started after Jehanne Butler had her pregnancy aborted by an automated clinic, and was unable to get any reason for it from the condescending robot administrator of the clinic.

And the Jihad ended when cyborged Ibrahim Holzmann returned from his 400 year orbit, and was blow-up by some volunteer whose name escapes me.

Re:"Acclaimed" writer Kevin J. Anderson?

[merigold77]

Yes, acclaimed, at least, to your standards: he has won awards, been nominated, etc.

"Anderson's solo work has garnered wide critical acclaim: CLIMBING OLYMPUS (voted the best paperback SF novel of 1995 by Locus magazine), RESURRECTION, INC. (nominated for the Bram Stoker Award), and his novel BLINDFOLD (1996 preliminary Nebula nominee).... [X Files novels] GROUND ZERO was voted "Best Science Fiction Novel of 1995" by the readers of SFX magazine. RUINS hit the New York Times bestseller list, the first X-FILES novel ever to do so, and was voted "Best Science Fiction Novel of 1996. " (from his professional bio [wordfire.com])

Re:This is ridiculous nonsense.

[Dredd13]

The Dune Encyclopedia has never been "canon". Even when Frank was still alive he would occasionally reference it, but felt no burning need to stay true to it, as it wasn't something he'd written.

Re:"Acclaimed" writer Kevin J. Anderson?

[Flamerule]

I'm not really sure you've ever read anything by Kevin J. Anderson.

I've read most of his Star Wars books, and the 3 first Dune prequels.

He's one of the best science fiction authors out there today ...

Like another poster, I have to assume here that you just haven't read a lot of SF. Are you seriously going to compare Kevin J. Anderson to... I don't know, Ursula K. LeGuin, George R. R. Martin, Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, Vernor Vinge, Gene Wolfe... Much of their work is literature; Kevin Anderson doesn't write particularly bad stuff, but it sure as hell isn't very deep.

... including some of his work on the "TV novelization" Star Wars series (I'm assuming you think this genre is stupid or something).

It's not stupid, it's just an often-entertaining series of books to flesh out the Star Wars universe. It's not going to win any SF awards.

So will we have to chuck the Dune Encyclopedia?

[TimWeigel]

I must preface this by saying I've not read this new book, so apologies if I'm off-base here, or if we're not up to the exact time in the timeline. This really makes me wonder if they're going to follow what was listed in the Dune Encyclopedia regarding Jehanne Butler being the cause of it all. Dr. Willis E. McNelly, the author of the Encyclopedia, was a friend of Frank Herbert [futureprometheus.com], and Dr. McNelly was the only academic Frank Herbert trusted to do the work [futureprometheus.com]. Wish they'd put it back in print [duneworld.org]!

Andersen: seven more Dune books

[peter303]

I heard Kevin in late September talk at a Denver bookstore.
So far in the series:
(1-6) Frank Herberts six Dune books.
(7-9) The three book prequel.
(10) First book of the Butlerian trilogy.

Coming:
(11-12) Second book of Butlerian trilogy done; third book being written.
(13-15) A fill-in-the-gaps trilogy between the prequels and #2 (Dune Messiah) on how Atriedes got assigned to Dune; How Paul's jihad went, etc.
(16) A "Road to Dune" book consisting of unpublished notes and short stories found in Frank's estate papers. Both authors are strongly opposed to a Christopher Toklein series, i.e. where Chris published 12 books on every scrap of paper his father wrote.
(17) A sequel to Frank's sixth book based on full outline found in the estate papers and initial work by Frank. (The amount of this material is highly controversial and we may being hoodwinked here.) Supposedly we learn more where the last no-ship went, who the mysterious farmer couple were, and something more about the scattering culture.

Kevin also mentioned how the co-authorship works. Both authors completely rewrite everything up to ten times in alternating shifts. Both authors work on other projects in the meantime. Brian H. does not fly in airplanes (a scifi tradition), so he rarely makes it out of the west coast.

Re:Mildly Interesting

[tomzyk]

For example, you met a proto-Fremen and blam! He rides the first worm. You see a group of recluse women and BLAM!, they are the proto-Bene Gesserit.

No kidding! I'm only about 100 pages into it right now and it seems like they are trying to lay the foundations of the Bene Gesserit, the Guild, and the Mentats ALL into ONE FAMILY! (the mother, daughter and father respectively.) And the Sandrider stuff happening at the exact same time too. . . yeah. It just seems like it is all just too forcibly done.

Isn't this wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I gleaned from some of the books and the Dune Encyclopedia, the cause of the Butlerian Jihad was quite different. A planetary intelligence ordered the abortion of Jehanne Butler child, which was to be the Kwisatz Haderach. That's Jehanne, not Serena. And Holtzman tech was created by I.V. Holtzman, not Tio.

Maybe I'm being a bit to nitpicky and nerdy, but it sounds like they're changing history.

Re:10,000 Years

[nicospoul]

In Greek Atreides, means "The ancestors of the house of Atreus"... (My name is Nico, so in ancient Greek 'Niceides' would be my house name!) Atreus, in the Greek Mythology was a king that established a great lineage of heros. Two famous ancestors of Atreus were Menelaus and Agamemnon, the heroes of Homer's poem 'Iliad' So, indeed Atreides was an important house. From Homer to Herbert spanning thousands of years! The name Harkonnen is not Greek so I dont know its history...

Re:Simple view of history...

[kubrick]

For example, he made the Reverand Mother GHM the mother of Jessica. This seems like a nice tricky thing to do as a plot twist right?

I don't know how canonical the Dune Encyclopedia is supposed to be, but it was published in 1984 and contains the words "Complete and Authorized" on the cover. The entry for Mohiam confirms this as fact, and also talks about massacres of Bene Gesserit historians instigated by Leto II during his reign to cover this up (after they had attempted to blackmail him with it).

Frank Herbert has a short foreword saying it's all interesting and largely accurate, although he reserves the right to "illuminate matters further" in the books about to be published. So I'd say that, whether or not it's 'accurate' (i.e. historically true in the context of the Dune milieu), it's certainly what was supposed to be believed by people some 1800 years after Leto II's death.