“Entertaining” story, that conveys a version of the Dune world albeit characters are often thin and the plot isn’t as compelling. I think it is a fun piece anyhow… ( )

Meh. It was interesting to see how some things from [b:Dune|234225|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1434908555s/234225.jpg|3634639] began. But overall, the book felt too long for too little narrative progress. And (as I had suspected would be the case) it just didn't have that special something that made Dune an instant classic. I don't think I'll be following up with any of the books in this series. ( )

This is more 3.5 stars but I am rounding it to four.

This was a book I had my eye on for a long, long time. Due to the very present critique of this series I was postponing actual start on it until few days back and I have to say, considering what the book is, it is not bad one. But does it match up with Herbert's original works? I have to say no, but then again Herbert, after Children of Dune in my opinion, could never match up with his own earlier works.

So what is this book about......

Book is about the beginning of the Dune society (as we know it from original Dune novel) - we are given world where lines are drawn between humans (League) and thinking machines (Synchronized Worlds). These two are in constant struggle with each other, humans fighting to survive and machines exercising their muscles to eradicate the humans using Cymeks, cybernetic organisms (basically various combat vehicles and armor to which [human] operator's brain is attached to so they can do switcheroo whenever required - Cyberpunk folks' wet dream) at the forefront of their legions. First amongst the Cymeks are Titans, group of humans who took control of old human empire (thousands of years before this story begins) but were such an a**hole group in general that AI they inadvertently created crossed them and took power itself, making Titans its servants, basically conquering generals.

One of the comments I usually hear is why would robots and AIs behave the way they behave? Well.... considering they were created by humans with all the biases but also very rational thought process (I mean this is why AI is created, right, not for discussing weather channel) is it surprising that machines would determine at some point that humans are just sort of a ballast for further progress? I mean, do we need to doubt that machines would think like that when even today you have so many anti-humanists amongst humans that are all very "rational" but ready to see couple of billion under ground for the betterment of all? So, no, I do not think that machines would be any better than their makers when it comes to coping with conflict with biological forms. Very soon they would develop equivalent of emotions and with it all nasty things like aggression and violence. I mean it is all part of the nature (and one reason I cannot figure out why are we speeding uncontrollably to create AI without any idea why (except why not)..... it is like breeding new biological species that can outsmart us, outpace us and generally wipe us out just to have us say hey, we did it! Wait, biological weapons are that something - right? Hmm....) and to expect that any living organism (biological or not) would act differently is wishful thinking.

So, to say that is a fantastic part here ...... nope, pretty normal and expected.

Then we get to Titans and Cymeks. These guys and gals are borderline psychopaths and few comments are there saying they are so off chart they seem like cackling bad guys from every cartoon or low budget SF. So lets put this into perspective - these are people that took over power from the old empire, subjugated everyone, for all means and purposes became immortal (went through the life longevity extension process), later found out they can extract themselves (brains) and basically use any combat vehicle- ground, air or space - to roam around and destroy things with impunity, become synonym with divinity and basically answer to no-one and start considering the ordinary humans as livestock? So, basically, minus the immortality and cybernetic bodies we are talking about all these Metuselah's that run the world politics nowadays? And treat the rest of us like unwashed masses?

This part of the story is very realistic, if not the most realistic part of the book. If it weren't for the last few years I would be wondering, but now.... oh, no, no doubt at all. And they do not even need to be Metuselah level old, just look at all the righteous amongst us (they would shame Inquisition). So, in short, very believable.

On the other hand you have Humanity, split across the League of Nobles and Unaligned worlds. Here we have a more nuanced view of this future society. While they no longer use highly capable machines (for reasons apparent) thy do have some technology available and can build ground mechanization and airplanes and space ships, armor etc. But at the core they are feudal - reason being that without machines they need to use biological machines (people) for same production results (I especially enjoyed the mathematical calculation pipeline). Because of this (and lets be honest no ruling body wants to pay if they do not need to) population is stratified into ruling class and worker class, but depending on the level of enlightenment mentioned worker classes can be wither actual worker classes or out of the box slaves (as they keep saying in the book, necessary evil). And although feudal, this society, interestingly, seems to be more or less without the large religious structure and influence (so unlike Dune as we know it). Nobody cites the equivalent of Orange Bible, even witches from Rossak are more practical psykers then religiously oriented people. Only ones with very strong religious feeling are people everybody is hunting down for the conceived act of treason and cowardice - Zensunni's and Zenshiite's.

Here we have some very interesting element that is unfortunately present in our times again and again - dehumanization. You see, to have slaves you need to have reason for their existence. In this society reason is punishment of the above mentioned Zensunni's and Zenshiite's because they did not confront Titans when these took over control (because, you know peace loving is always dangerous). So, as it usually goes (hmmm, again those last few years) they went from cowards to slaves, because that is where they belong because they betrayed the humanity (man, again those last few years).

And when this happens, when one part of humanity is ostracized, new work positions open - for people to hunt them and sell them and unfortunately use them for some other sick purposes (enter the Tleilaxu).

All in all book does give a very interesting overview of human society with all its shortcomings. It is much more vivid and, well, interesting to read about. Parts about Arakis and nomads (Zensunni's) that will become a blood thirsty legions of Paul Atreides, are great, especially taking into account that they start as peace loving and violence avoiding people.

All taken into account, very interesting world building takes place.

But the Achilles' heel of the book is scope. It is humongous because author's try to put everything in, thinking machines, Titans, League of Nobles, initial creation of Benne Gesserit (witches from Rossak) initial dealings with the Arrakis' melange, initial development of Fremen movement, origins of Atreides, origins of Harkonnen, how Butlerian Jihad got triggered (Iblis is such a good character) with major battles in between, conflicts and insights into both thinking machine and human civilization (Erazmus the crazy robot, Tio Holtzman and Norma Cenva) to name just the few.

There is materiel here for at least 10 books with average length of maybe 300 pages.

I guess author's decided that would be too long and too much so they compressed this and as a result we are given hundreds of pages of short, very to the point, chapters but no space to properly put everything into words. This is why everything ends up rather clumsy (especially when compared to Frank Herbert's books [again ending with Children of the Dune, those after it feel like reading a phone book]). Thankfully we do not end up with constant mumbo-jumbo that marked the Dune books after the Children of the Dune, but we end up with extreme, very short, almost news-reporter-like chapters where even epic scenes like battle of Earth are given in some weird what-ah?-ummmm-taddaaaa-done approach.

So for those looking for meaning of life and high philosophy from SF setting - look elsewhere. You will definitely not like this series.

For those who look for interesting story and characters and can handle a bit clumsy approach to the story telling I would recommend the book, it is fun and interesting ride. ( )

I've read scattershot through some of the Dune books, including those by Frank Herbert, but I decided to start chronologically and read through. I hadn't read The Butlerian Jihad though it's often discussed in the other books, and I'm sorry I didn't read it sooner, as it's a primer on the Dune universe.
The book offers various POVs, including Serena Butler, a leader in the non-machine-controlled worlds and the fiancee of Xavier Harkonnen, their military leader. Vorian Atriedes is a son of Agamemnon, a Cymek (one of the Titans and a thousand-year-old brain set in a canister that serves the machine Ominus). Other progenitors of the houses seen in Dune and founders of various guilds and races have their origins in this story. It's a fascinating view of what comes later in the saga and how it all started.
This really is a must-read for those who love this universe. ( )

I can see why people (Dune fans especially) can hate this book. The writing is flimsy and the characters flat.

Still I endured because I enjoyed reading about the mythological Butlerian Jihad of the Dune Universe. There were whiffs of some wonderful stories and conflicts ... Erasumus curiosity to understanding human, Norma Cenva struggling to become more than an accident, the legend of Selim Wormrider .... any of them alone and focused on could have been a tremendous story.

A lot of the book is tedious and I approached many a time reading this book as a chore. Not recommended.

I think you would be better served by just reading the Wikipedia entries of the Dune mythos and letting your imagination fill in the blanks. ( )