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Title | The Butlerian Jihad
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Author | Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
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Cover Art | Stephen Youll
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Publisher | Tor - 2002
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First Printing | Tor - 2002
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Title | The Machine Crusade
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Author | Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
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Cover Art | Stephen Youll
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Publisher | Tor - 2003
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First Printing | Tor - 2003
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Title | The Battle of Corrin
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Author | Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
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Cover Art | Stephen Youll
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Publisher | Tor - 2004
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First Printing | Tor - 2004
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Title | Hunting Harkonnen
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Author | Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Tor - 2005
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First Printing | Tor - 2002
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Title | Whipping Mek
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Author | Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
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Cover Art | Stephen Youll
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Publisher | Tor - 2005
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First Printing | Tor - 2003
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Title | The Faces of a Martyr
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Author | Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson
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Cover Art | Stephen Youll
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Publisher | Tor - 2005
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First Printing | Tor - 2004
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Category | Science Fiction
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Xavier Harkonnen, Serena Butler, Vorian Atreides, Selim Wormrider, Norma Cenva, Aurelius Venport Omnius, Agamemnon, Erasmus, Tio Holztman, Iblis Ginjo, Jool Noret
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Main Elements | Artificial Intelligence, Empires
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Website | Brian Herbert
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The Butlerian Jihad
Throughout the Dune novels, Frank Herbert frequently referred to the long-ago war in which humans wrested their freedom from "thinking machines." Now, in Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson bring to life the story of that war, a tale previously seen only in tantalizing hints and clues. Finally, we see how Serena Butler's passionate grief ignites the war that will liberate humans from their machine masters. We learn the circumstances of the betrayal that made mortal enemies of House Atreides and House Harkonnen; and we experience the Battle of Corrin that created a galactic empire lasting until the reign of Emperor Shaddam IV.
Herein as the foundations of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood, the Suk Doctors, the Order of the Mentats, and the mysteriously altered Navigators of the Spacing Guild. Here is the amazing tale of the Zensunnin Wanderers, who escape bondage to flee to the desert world where they will declare themselves the Free Men of Dune. And here is the backward, nearly forgotten planet of Arrakis, where traders have discovered the remarkable properties of spice melange...
Ten thousand years before the events of Dune, humans have managed to battle the remorseless Machines to a standstill...but victory may be short-lived. Yet amid shortsighted squabbling between nobles, new leaders have begun to emerge. Among them are Xavier Harkonnen, millitary leader of the Planet of Salusa Secundus; Xavier's fiancee, Serena Butler, and activist who will become the unwilling leader of millions; and Tio Holztman, the scientist struggling to devise a weapon that will help the human cause.
Against the brute efficiency of their adversaries, these leaders and the human race have only imagination, compassion, and the capacity for love. It will have to be enough.
The Machine Crusade
The breathtaking vision and incomparable storytelling of Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson's Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, a prequel to Frank Herbert's classic Dune, propelled it to the ranks of speculative fiction's classics in its own right. Now, with all the color, scope, and fascination of the prior novel, comes...Dune: The Machine Crusade.
More than two decades have passed since the events chronicled in The Butlerian Jihad. The crusade against thinking robots has ground on for years, but the forces led by Serena Butler and Irbis Ginjo have made only slight gains; the human worlds grow weary of war, of the bloody, inconclusive swing from victory to defeat.
The fearsome cymeks, led by Agamemnon, hatch new plots to regain their lost power from Omnius--as their numbers dwindle and time begins to run out. The fighters of Ginaz, led by Jool Noret, forge themselves into an elite warrior class, a weapon against the machine-dominated worlds. Aurelius Venport and Norma Cenva are on the verge of the most important discovery in human history-a way to "fold" space and travel instantaneously to any place in the galaxy.
And on the faraway, nearly worthless planet of Arrakis, Selim Wormrider and his band of outlaws take the first steps to making themselves the feared fighters who will change the course of history: the Fremen.
Here is the unrivaled imaginative power that has put Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson on bestseller lists everywhere and earned them the high regard of readers around the globe. The fantastic saga of Dune continues in Dune: The Machine Crusade.
The Battle of Corrin
Following their internationally bestselling novels Dune: The Butlerian Jihad and Dune: The Machine Crusade, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson forge a final tumultuous finish to their prequels to Frank Herbert's Dune.
It has been fifty-six hard years since the events of The Machine Crusade. Following the death of Serena Butler, the bloodiest decades of the Jihad take place. Synchronized Worlds and Unallied Planets are liberated one by one, and at long last, after years of victory, the human worlds begin to hope that the end of the centuries-long conflict with the thinking machines is finally in sight.
Unfortunately, Omnius has one last, deadly card to play. In a last-ditch effort to destroy humankind, virulent plagues are let loose throughout the galaxy, decimating the populations of whole planets . . . and once again, the tide of the titanic struggle shifts against the warriors of the human race. At last, the war that has lasted many lifetimes will be decided in the apocalyptic Battle of Corrin.
In the greatest battle in science fiction history, human and machine face off one last time. . . . And on the desert planet of Arrakis, the legendary Fremen of Dune become the feared fighting force to be discovered by Paul Muad'Dib in Frank Herbert's classic, Dune.
I was excited to get into this trilogy. See, I've read all the "prequel" stuff in Tolkien's Middle Earth and felt that filling in the details of this major event that so reverberated through the Dune Universe would be interesting.
Except, it kind of wasn't. The first problem was, it was just too darn long. You have three books, at least the length f the original Dune novels if not longer, but it only covers a single event. In fact, it devolved into what I experienced reading Varney the Vampire, a penny-dreadful where author's got paid by the word, it got repetitive. While yes, we change point of views from chapter to chapter, I won't forget what happened a few chapters before so don't need a quick summary when I get back. I also won't forget character's motivations, even though there are way too many characters whose point of views we explore.
The second problem is just too much stuff gets stuffed into the three books. You have the machine war, fine. But somehow, in just this one 100 year time period, though there are at least 10000 more to go before we get to Dune, we get the genesis of, well, absolutely everything (so nothing new happen in 10,000 years, just the refinement of what started here...really?). We get the first Bene Gesserit. We get the first Navigator. We get the first Mentat. The first Suk doctor. The Fremen are settling Dune and, well, becoming Fremen. The effect of Spice are discovered. We get the schism that occurs between House Atreides and House Harkonnen...and yeah, to make that work, a beloved character had to do a full 180 personality change in the last few chapters, which I felt was a bit of a stretch, given that character was long-lived and had maintained a pretty steady personality, even when he did a kind of 180 change earlier, but that one was understandable. The flip at the end was just cruel.
I also don't like getting point of view chapters of characters that are being portrayed as pure evil, who wants to be in their head? And if you want them to be pure evil, they are going to come off as caricatures. Like the Titans, you get a scene where Agamemnon is miffed at something, so he goes and stomps on a few humans just to burn off some steam, or you get in Erasmus' head while he tortures his slaves. Evil characters are best seen through their action, inside their heads they turn into mustache twirling villains that laugh as they drown kittens, they become ridiculous rather than terrifying.
And finally, for me personally, since it was a brand new cast of a multitude of characters, I wasn't invested in anyone. It took three books for me to get interested in anyone at all, since so many characters get their chance at a point of view, no one character got much page time. It wasn't hard to keep them straight but somehow it was just too much. I guess that sums up most of my complaints - too many characters, too much repetitive sections, too much of the foundations of what comes later.
So...kind of lots of bad stuff there. I didn't hate the books, but they could have been so much better. I think the Tolkien prequels worked better since they were written as if they were legends (the language, the third-person perspectives, etc) and just a handful of books, mostly very short, covered epic periods of time. In Legends, we have too much covering a short period of time and since its all first-person, if you changed some terminology around, it wouldn't even have to be about Dune.
In the book The Road to Dune there are collected three short stories. The first takes place before the start of the first book, Hunting Harkonnen tells the tale of Xavier's older brother Piers who is shot down by the cymeks on what appears to be Caladan(?) and is hunted by them only to be rescued by a group of natives and he spends the rest of his life there. An exciting tale, but I didn't even remember Xavier had a brother so it didn't have as much interest as it could have had, though it tells how his parents died. The second takes place before the second book, Whipping Mek is about Vergyl, Xavier's adopted younger brother and his frustrations about being held back by his overprotective older brother and was a nice enough snippet about a character we didn't get to see too much of. The third, which takes place before the third book, The Faces of a Martyr felt a bit like the authors has some scenes they had to cut and just stuffed them into a short story, I didn't see the point of it, didn't feel it gave us anything much new (especially as I complained about the trilogy being overly long).
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