The universe of DUNE is thriving. Almost 40 years after Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic of scheming interstellar feudal lords, giant sandworms, prescient messiahs and a spice that controls the universe was published, there are DUNE mini-series, video games and a series of prequel novels written by Herbert's son Brian and accomplished novelist Kevin J. Anderson. Herbert and Anderson's prequel trilogy was set two decades before the start of the first DUNE novel and gave fans the chance to see the people and places that led to the birth of Paul Atreides. The books were instantly a huge success and showed that there was a tremendous appetite for new DUNE stories. Subsequently, the two writers announced plans to go even further back into DUNE's history, into a time ten millennia before the first novel and show us the great war that led to humans forever barring the use of thinking machines: the Butlerian Jihad.

Frank Herbert never chose to go into detail as to why humans cast off the use of greater technology, save to mention that it was a dire situation, the effects of which encompassed all of humanity. This led to the development of the mind and body by the use of melange, the near-magical spice found only on Dune, which in turn led to the creation of nearly all of DUNE's great powers: the Spacing Guild, the mentats, the Bene Gesserit and so on. In THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD we are given Herbert and Anderson's explanations for the rise of the thinking machines that nearly enslaved all of humanity, and of the moment in time where a mother's tragedy was the turning point for the course of history.

Unfortunately, Herbert and Anderson's first novel in their new trilogy fails to live up to the standard set by the elder Herbert. While both men have taken their share of barbs over their more straightforward and less complicated writing style employed in the prequels, the failings of THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD lie in the weak plot, the threadbare portrayal of the thinking machines and the ability to try and cram as many significant historical events into one slice of time.

When you consider that the DUNE books play out over thousands of years of time, it's hard to imagine that all of the great historical events that shaped Paul Atreides' world all took place within a span of 20 years. In JIHAD, we're shown that significant scientific discoveries, like the folding of space and shield technology, took place at nearly the same moment that people started riding worms on Arrakis/Dune and when they started figuring out that the spice may be good for something else except in coffee. Even the origins of the blood feud between House Atreides and House Harkonnen have to be explained here in JIHAD. It's all too much. In fact, the brief moments that we're shown Arrakis and the discovery of wormriding and spice could all have been left to another novel, one where more time could have been spent developing the story and making us care about these characters. These significant events feels forced together, like George Lucas trying so far to tie together the origins of C-3PO and Darth Vader in his STAR WARS prequels. Not everything has to be explained, or if it does, surely it all can't be happening at the same moment in time. Rome wasn't built in a day, remember?

However, by far the biggest stumbling block is the portrayal of the thinking machines, clearly one of the big reasons fans are reading these books. In the past couple of decades films such as THE TERMINATOR trilogy or STAR TREK's Borg have given us many different silicon villains that want to wipe out humanity. The thinking machines in JIHAD, from the controlling overmind Omnius to the cymek tyrant Titans with their human brains surrounded by metal and wires, come across as one-dimensional bad guys out to stomp out humanity, a far cry from the political machinations of the Great Houses or Emperor of the Known Universe which showed readers plans within plans within plans. When Herbert and Anderson do dive into the thought processes of these artificial creatures, it's just not all that interesting nor believable. Some of it has to do with our familiarity with Skynets, Terminators and Borg Queens, but if that's the case the writers should have come up with more interesting villains than threats we've seen done before. Heck, other SF writers have to work hard to come up with new twists on bad AIs; just look at the way Vernor Vinge wrote his versions of evil artificial consciousness in A FIRE UPON THE DEEP, or Dan Simmons different classes of AI in his HYPERION books. It can still be done.

On top of these failures there are logical irregularities that aren't consistent with the universe already established by the original DUNE books. One such example is the presentation of space travel in this book and what we were told it was like in the original DUNE novels. According to the latter, interstellar flights took such long periods of time that humans couldn't trade or visit neighboring star systems within their lifetimes. Now we're shown that fleets of warships can arrive at distant planets after only travelling months. It may be a minor point to make but to readers already familiar with the rules established in the DUNE books, it's a big enough error that the authors should have avoided this problem in the first place. Anderson and Herbert may be playing it loose to incorporate more action in their story, which there is plenty of, just as long as you don't stop and think about it too much something no one could ever say of Frank's DUNE novels.

Herbert and Anderson have been turning out a new DUNE prequel book every year. Perhaps instead of trying to appease the appetite of readers who want more from this rich universe, the duo should have put their first draft aside, paused, and spent another year making sure that this was the story that needed to be told. Maybe the thinking machines are better depicted in the second volume, THE MACHINE CRUSADE, now out in hardcover. Unfortunately for THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD, the story fall short.