Product Description

It began in the Time of Tyrants, when ambitious men and women used high-powered computers to seize control of the heart of the Old Empire including Earth itself. The tyrants translated their brains into mobile mechanical bodies and created a new race, the immortal man-machine hybrids called cymeks. Then the cymeks’ world-controlling planetary computers - each known as Omnius - seized control from their overlords and a thousand years of brutal rule by the thinking machines began.

But their world faces disaster. Impatient with human beings’ endless disobedience and the cymeks’ continual plotting to regain their power, Omnius has decided that it no longer needs them. Only victory can save the human race from extermination.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #66578 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Butlerian Jihad opens a new series of Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson's prequels to the classic Dune by Frank Herbert (Brian's father). Set more than 10,000 years before Dune, this covers the evil times when machine intelligence ruled the Old Empire of human worlds. The implacably efficient "Omnius" AI must be overthrown.

Many familiar names appear; Salusa Secundus now green and fertile, but fated to become a hellhole prison planet, is one of the free human enclaves on the fringes of Omnius's "Synchronized Worlds". So is Giedi Prime, later the evil Harkonnen HQ. Both are attacked by fearsome robot fleets and ex-human cyborg killers when Omnius makes a new expansionist push. Much space-operatic mayhem follows.

Major characters include Serena Butler, who will become the driving force of the jihad against computer dictatorship; her lover Xavier Harkonnen, heroic defender of Salusa Secundus; Vorian Atreides, son of Omnius's chief cyborg Agamemnon, convinced by slanted histories that the Synchronized Worlds are the good guys; Erasmus, an independent robot who plays devil's advocate to Omnius and conducts unspeakably gory experiments to determine the wayward nature of humanity; and Selim, a desert exile on planet Arrakis (Dune), who becomes the first man to master the dread sandworms.

Many other firsts are rather improbably crowded together here. This is the first serious export of Dune's life-prolonging spice; the first (perhaps) spice-induced prophetic vision; first forcefield body shield; and the first antigravity "suspensors" that are invented by a girl genius who may be the first Mentat--those super-gifted humans who will replace prohibited computers. She's also busy inventing the first interstellar jump-drive. Elsewhere, telepathic "Sorceresses" prefigure the Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit.

Despite a few nuances like the "good" society being flawed by its toleration of slavery, The Butlerian Jihad lacks the richness of Frank Herbert's work--his psychological intensity, the multi-layered subtlety of his characters' schemes and duel-like conversations. Instead, this is straightforwardly rousing space opera, with battle, counterstrikes, kidnapping, vows of vengeance, a fateful love triangle, and lashings of gratuitous violence and dismemberment. --David Langford

The Times
Those who long to return to the world of desert, spice and sandworms will be amply satisfied

Review
'House Harkonnen is compulsive reading. I certainly enjoyed meeting pardot Kynes and Liet, learning more about the Freman, as well as Gurney Halleck, Duncan Idaho and the Lady Jessica. Such vile villains...and such a fascinating description of splendid places.' (Anne McCaffrey on House Harkonnen )

'House Atreides is a terrific prequel, but it's also a first-rate adventure on its own. Frank Herbert would surely be delighted and proud of this continuation of his vision.' (Dean Koontz )

Those who long to return to the world of desert, spice and sandworms will be amply satisfied (The Times )

Customer Reviews

Great though not as 'deep' as the original Dune novels...
...I found it an enjoyable read, though it in no way is as deep as the original Dune novels. On the other hand, maybe we should stop compare these newer Dune novels to the older ones, and just view them as a new series altogether (especially in this book, few of the original story elements remain... Arrakis is only spoken of sporadically, Caladan is not spoken of, etc...)

The book is a quick read (though I was not as quick as the previous reviewer, reading 606 pages in three hours, is a fast 200 page average :)) - it's enjoyable all through... But that's it. Don't expect anything deeper than just enjoyable well-written english...

Hope this helps!

Dune? no Dune
I've read all the House prequels after being left with an unquenchable thirst for more Dune when I finished Chapterhouse.
I've read them, and enjoyed them, but with mixed feelings.
Unfortunately, these same mixed feelings assaulted me when reading Butlerian Jihad.

A problem with this book is that the word Dune written on its cover in such large letters, yet it is the only reason I've bought it.
Other reviews have correctly pointed out that the characters and the plot are not quite what you'd call award-winning achievements, but it is a Dune book, and one feels compelled to explore the Dune universe once more.
What annoys me most, is the incapability of Brian Herbert and Anderson to keep their hands of the work of father Frank.
Of course, the books exist within the universe his father created. But I get the feeling the writers of this book are intend on seizing every opportunity to grab a concept from the old books, and insert it in these new ones (the harkonnen no-ship from the house books springs to mind) which gives the impression that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson rather make an inconsistent, far-fetched and unnecessary reference than come up with some ideas of their own.

The legends of dune, even more so than the house books, should not be just one big build up to the original dune books. It is an opportunity to add a whole new dimension to the Dune universe, but instead the writers just stretch the original material to fill up these new series.
The effect of this is (not surprisingly) a barely average SF book and more an exploitation of Frank Herbert's Dune than a new addition to it.

Mills and Dune
I really enjoyed the original Dune series. Frank Herbert's creations were alive with with intriguingly half-familiar, semi-historical, references. Snippets of information introduced in early novels were often casually (and to the reader's delight) intelligently explained in later volumes. The characters were complex,his dark heroes clearly subscribed to the view that ends justified means. There was no room for sentiment.

How disappointing then to read the first of these new Dune novels by his son. Populated with clean cut swash-buckling aristocratic heroes, virginal but strong willed heroines, sassy but cute adolescents, monstrous robots and frankenstein cyborgs, the book is more reminiscent of a '50s formulaic drug store romance than modern SF.

In this vision of the future, computers unbelievably talk to one another using giant speakers! Messengers arrive breathlessly to inform of the latest victory or defeat presumably because in this particular technically advanced society the invention of the phone or radio or was somehow bypassed!

There is little original or intriguing in this book. Fights between cyborgs, robots and humans are strangely reminiscent of the 'Transformers' cartoons (but with out the subtlety) and Erasmus the robot keen to understand human emotion seems identical to the AI robot character in Gregory Benford's (far superior)Galactic centre novels.

Despite all this Dune addicts will no doubt read the remainder of the new series, ever hopeful that something new might turn up, but this is weak tea compared with Frank Herbert's melange.