Legends of Dune: The Butlerian Jihad
I thought I’d use some space in this blog to mention the books I read, new as well as old. I don’t have any real ambitions in literary criticism, but I still think it could be fun to share some thoughts, as well as keep a tally of what I’ve read and maybe enhance my reading experience by reflecting about the books.
Anyway, The Butlerian Jihad, by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson is set about ten thousand years before the events of Frank Herbert’s Dune, in a time when thinking machines are ruling over the Old Empire, including Earth. This period is the source of the technophobic aspects of the society in the original Dune novels. But humanity still clings to life, many as slaves under the machines, but some on free worlds such as Salusa Secundus. Here we find Serena Butler, the idealistic daughter of the planet’s viceroy, and Xavier Harkonnen, officer in the Salusan Armada – two people dedicated to standing up against the machines.
In the machine dominated worlds we find Vorian Atriedes, the son of Agamemnon, one of the original cymek Titans (disembodied human brains living as machines) who initiated the machine rule a millenium ago. Atriedes is a trustee human, at service on a ship delivering updates of Omnius, the ruling evermind distributed over the Synchonized Worlds. On earth we also find Iblis Ganjo, another trustee human in charge of building monuments in hohour of the Titans.
The story told is pretty straight-froward, I suppose that even people who havn’t read the original novels can figure out that it will eventually lead up to an all-out rebellion against the machines. But that the overall story is obvious doesn’t really matter, as the whole work is meant “history book”, giving background information to the societies and concepts in the original setting – on Arrakis a young Zensunni gets exiled to the desert, on Rossak Zufa Cenva is training Sorceresses, on Poiritin the Savant Tio Holtzman works on field generation technologies.
So, for some sort of conclusion: It’s in no way a masterwork, maybe a bit lacking in the sort of depth which in my opinion makes the good science fiction stand out from the rest. The storytelling has a quite good flow, the language is generally good (perhaps with too many grand adjectives making some descriptions sounding too pompous, though), with short chapters that make it a relaxing read. So, my verdict is that its not at all a bad read.
