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Review of 'Dune: The Butlerian Jihad'

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Kevin J. Anderson, and Brian Herbert
1st book in the 'Legends of Dune' series

At long last the tale of the famed Butlerian Jihad is brought into print. Ten thousand years before the birth of Paul Atreides in the story of Dune the universe is dominated by the intelligent machines personified in the evermind Omnius. A few surviving Titans – Former human, now cymek (machines with human minds) carry out brutal attacks against the humans that infest the worlds Omnius controls though they remember the days before Omnius where their efforts allowed the machines to take over world after world. Serena Butler is the daughter of a reknown politician who seeks to remove the machine threat. Vorian Atreides is the son of one of the Titans who ferries between machine planets with a robot counterpart delivering updates to the various planet's copies of Omnius while Xavier Harkonnen is a rising young star in the military of the League Worlds who is promised to Serena. The story unfolds with other characters such as the sadistic robot Erasmus who is seeking to figure out what makes humans tick – by taking them apart, it seems, in new and imaginative ways. The action is thick and fast with short chapters taking the reader from place to place quickly. The scope is vast and fills in the details any reader of the original Dune novels would be eager to hear. Another great installment to the masterpiece that is Dune.

Rating: “Nearly perfect, but not quite”

Review Date: 2004-10-21

Genre: Science Fiction

Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton

Publication Date: 2002

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