A review by suzemo
The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert

adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

2.0

Jan 2025

I decided to revisit the Kevin Herbert (what I'm calling the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson books) Dune series because of the new HBO series (multiple, I'm sure, by the time I'm done), which, of course, came from the renewed interested in Dune after the Villanueve movies.

I'm not going to get heavy into a review, since I did it on my 2nd re-listen, so here are just a few things that drove me nuts this time around.   They are all (non exhaustive) quibbles, I don't care, it's my space:

  • Erasmus being shocked, shocked!, at Serena Butler's emotional attachment to her baby.   I get it, the Machines/Robots/Omnius (Omni-ii?) have been ruling a bunch of planets and humans have been slaves, but for a robot, who had access to a pretty robust amount of knowledge to be weirded out by a mother's attachment to her baby is just stupid.   I dunno, Erasmus, why IS Serena emotionally invested in her baby?  Since it's the first time ever infant care has ever happened(?)

  • The cogitor's ability to sense so many things without external inputs.   No, brains can't "see," "feel," or whatever without inputs.  Literally not how they work, this isn't some amazing phenomenon, it's known science.   And the book explicitly brings up inputs so it's just weird.

  • The ridiculous quotes at the beginning of ever chapter.  It felt like a weak-sauce way to say something profound.  Very 1998 usenet edgelord.*

  • The whole BuddIslamic thing ("BuddAllah" made me laugh/cringe every time Scott Brick had to say it)

  • I fail to understand the whole slavery thing, I am guessing that the authors were just too lazy to come up with a better way to create conflict; I guess

* Hilariously, I was looking something up and there was a thread for the dune usenet group from 1999 that reminded me I wasn't going insane.

Anyway, I'm sure there's more.  Off to self-flagellate my brain by listening to the next book.

***************************

So it looks like I initially read this book a long, long time ago and liked it quite a bit more than I did on the second reread, however, I'm not the same person I was 13 years ago, so that's not unexpected.

I love, love, love Herbert's Dune series, and I remember being excited over the prospect of prequels and started reading/listening to them as soon as I could (multiple formats). I believe I read the House (Harkonnen, Corrino, Atreides) before getting into these books. If I recall correctly (and I may re-read them, too), the three House series books were a bit better, but I had always been curious about what happened to create the O.C. Bible and the ban on thinking machines.

I found this particular trilogy (or the first two, anyway) on audio-tapes (back in the day), with the 20 (or whatever number) cassettes that I played in the F250 I was driving around at the time. Oh, the days.

I was also, let's say, less enlightened/younger/whatever back then and on this reread, I have to drop the rating to two stars (from four). The reason it is not getting just one star (which is what it deserves, probably), is that it's a bit of a guilty pleasure (even if a bad one), and for really shitty pulp sci-fi, it's not the worst, even if it's an awful "Dune" book (Herbert is probably still spinning in his grave, nearly a decade and a half after this came out). And it's a good book to listen to while doing projects. If you zone out on something else for a few minutes, you don't have to back up.

It's the first of the trilogy so it of course does not cover the entire Jihad, just the beginnings of the Jihad. It info-dumps most of the previous backstory: that there were geek-geniuses that found a way to create better and better robots & computers (also turning themselves into a kind of cyborg with a human brain canister) and how they inadvertently let the machines take over (the formation of Omnius, the big bad master machine mind), and the enslavement of the human race. It also covers the free human race and a bit of their government and sphere of influence. It ultimately ends with the battles between the two and the enslavement of Serena Butler and the eventual war/defeat of the Machine World of Earth and how the war/Jihad gets started (hint: nukes). I am mightily baffled at how the machines kill billions of humans, but they happen to kill one baby and the entire Jihad erupts, but I think they were going for a fortuitous blending of multiple events; it just fell flat and forced to me.

So that was good: Back story (again, iirc, supposedly from notes left behind by Herbert?); though not the backstory that I inferred from the novels.
 
Here's the bad:

‣ Hack writing. It's just straight up bad writing. Cheeseball sentences and conflicting descriptors are just the beginning. Add in a jumpy third-person omniscient view point that's just irritating to keep track of at times - the viewpoints jump mid-paragraph, it's not consistent at all. Lots of cliches and just flat out terrible writing. I listened to this in audiobook (narrated by the fantastic Scott Brick) while working on home improvement projects and I straight up started laughing at how terrible some of it is. 

‣ There's a complete lack of imagination. While I understand they're (theoretically) somewhat constrained by some of the world building presented in the original Dune books, they've defaulted to the boring patriarchal society you expect out of mediocre space operas written by all of the other mediocre authors out there. The only interesting things (like the different Buddislamic sects) actually came from the original Dune novels. Which is also to say: there is very little worldbuilding at all, and this would have been a great opportunity to continue to flesh out the Dune universe, and as far flung (10k years!!!) prequels, they can do nearly whatever they want, but they don't. There is no sophistication, there is no artistry. Just badness.

‣ There is no subtlety in this book. Herbert (and Anderson) are not great writers; they write anvils dropping all around. A veritable hurricane of friggin' anvils. Everything is exposition, infodump, or just stated. There is no showing, just telling. In fact, some of the characters tell you what they're going to do and then do it. FFS, really?

‣ Along with the lack of subtlety, the same plot points/background is explained repeatedly, and sometimes by the same character. While this is a long book, it's certainly not so long that you've forgotten what happened a hundred pages ago (unless, I suppose, you've put it down for years, which I could see) or who someone is. This book is far, far longer than necessary. Along with repetitive infodumps/backstory, they also write out the full name of the character nearly every time we are re-introduced to the character. I did not forget who Xavier Harkonnen is. If you call him Xavier *or* Harkonnen (he's an orphan) at a different point, I'm not going to mix the character up with someone else. 

‣ The characters are two dimensional (see: lack of subtlety). Because they are so poorly written, I really don't care what happens to them. I'm here for the plot, which is rather plodding thanks to the previously mentioned repeating of things, which is a damn shame, because compelling characters would have made this book far more enjoyable, even with the other faults. The lack of dimensionality runs through both the "good" guys (the League/scientists/whatever), neutrals (cogitors, zensunni and zenshiite refugees/slaves), and the bad (cymeks, Omnius, Erasmus, robots).

‣ At no point did I forget that this is written by white, male (dude-bros?), heterosexual authors. Thank you for telling me that some dude has a long braid or brown or grey hair, but going on and on about the ethereal beauty (in detail) or ugliness (again, in painful detail) of every female character (again, repeatedly, oy) for paragraphs. Add to that: there was very little diversity of characters, in any sense. 

So that about covers it. Pulpy, unimaginative book which is good to listen to while working on other stuff, but if I was actually spending time reading this book, I would have never finished. And because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'll make it through the rest of the trilogy (I can't remember reading the last in the trilogy, though Goodreads says I have.. huh... good thing I have a lot of house projects for the next few weeks!) and report in.