Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading just because it's part of the Dune universe
Review: Setting high expectations for any prequel to one of the legendary books of science fiction is a formula for dissapointment. Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson made an excellent attempt with the "House" prequels. While not filled with the same intrigue and depth of thought or character as the original Dune series, the "House" trilogy had a page-turning energy similar to a Michael Crichton book.The natural follow-up would be to go further into the past and see the beginnings of the Dune universe. As a stand-alone novel, The Butlerian Jihad is unimpressive. The human characters are driven my somewhat unbelievable ambitions, and the mechanical characters are sometimes downright silly. However this book is worth reading simply because it provides more storyline for those interested in the world of Dune. There are a few nice twists that show how history doesn't always provide an accurate record of what happened. I recommend this book simply because it is part of the Dune universe. As long as you don't expect to be blown away by the prose, it's a worthwhile read.
Rating:
Summary: Error: Offending Logic
Review: The premise of this book's "robot" portion is inherently flawed. The explanations provided within it do not reveal sufficiently why thinking machines would need to study humans in such a grotesque manner for so long. Omnius and Erasmus are creations of rather standard sci fi imaginings, and their motives do not extend beyond heavily trodden literary cliche's set by previous tales of old involving machine domination of mankind.
Sentient and intelligent A.I. in some far-flung scenario of the future would not be interested in something so mundane and pointless as slave making. The entire premise is, to put it simply, illogical. Why would machines need human slaves? Why would anyone in this future world need them, for that matter? Technology in this story has reached such a high pinnacle, making the idea seem foolish. The only instance in which human servitude would be required, in my opinion, would be for the entertainment of other living things. In a universe of starships, magnificent weaponry, spacefolding and highly sophisticated machines (both thinking and non-thinking), what benefit would involuntary human labor have? Why dig when you can blast or beam? Why have a cargo team when you can devise a sophisticated loader machine?
Further, why would the thinking machines need to spend so much time observing human behavior? And if they did, would they really do it in such a counterproductive way? Erasmus behaves like some future version of Dr. Mengele, claiming to not understand emotion, yet seeming to display sadism quite effortlessly when he paints walls red with blood. Why would such a creature ever be tolerated by "thinking machines?" Is this really what happens to you when you are left in a ravine for two decades alone with your thoughts?
In general, the book reads quickly, despite being 675 pages in breadth. We don't get mired in endless detail, and the action moves steadily, hooking us along effectively as we go. As a writer, I find it interesting how Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson fleshed out the body of this work. The book very much reads like a movie script. I found it interesting, if not fragmented feeling at times.
While this book stands well as a general science fiction novel, I'm not so certain it deserves to bear the Dune name. I say this with all due respect; both authors are very talented writers, but do not possess the otherworldly style and vision of Frank Herbert. To me, the most interesting interactions in this book concerned the dialog between Erasmus and Serena Bulter. Having said that, I will note that the characters in this book lack a certain depth overall. While we are interested in their actions, we are not so connected to them in an emotional sense.
If you expect to be filled with wonder and ambitious questions after reading a science fiction novel, this installment of Dune might not appeal to you. If you sway toward a more action-oriented story with clips of curious events, do have a read.
Rating:
Summary: Good story, bad writing
Review: This book is somewhat better than the authors' House trilogy. I think having freed themselves of the restraints of the original Dune universe, they were able to give free rein to their imaginations and put out a better product. However, the bad writing that characterized the House trilogy remains. It seems like the authors at some point in their lives took a really bad creative writing class where they were told to use lots of flowery prose with tons of unnecessary adjectives. For example, Norma never runs, she is carried by her legs. And they are never just legs, they are short legs. And it's diminutive Norma (because the reuse the same adjectives over and over and over again ad nauseaum). So "Norma ran" becomes "Norma's short legs carried her diminutive body." Rinse, rather, repeat for 675 pages. Just one more example. On page 593, a ship doesn't enter Jupiter's gravity well. Instead we are treated to the following monument to absurd prose: "The gas giant reached out to them, beckoning with a siren song of physics."
Even though the writing is no better, the story is. They did a relatively good job crafting the plot, and depicting the psychology of the struggle. Iblis Ginjo, Vorian Atreides, Serena Butler and Xavier Harkonnen are depicted realistically - if somewhat one-dimensionally. Other characters, e.g. Agamemnon, are less believable. Could he truly believe that "the barbarians didn't understand freedom or free will" even as they were revolting against the machines' rule? It is unlikely that he could be that oblivious to reality. (The whole "brain in a jar" concept is pretty 1930s.) On the other hand, the parallels between the cymeks and the human rulers of Poritrin (whose motivations do seem more plausible than the cymeks) is quite enlightening. It goes along the lines of the "good guys vs. bad guys" theme which I explored in my review of House Corrino. In that review I pointed out that the authors took a simplistic view of good vs. evil and did not consider valuable avenues of exploration in their writing. The fact that they do so here shows considerable growth in their writing.
The authors' complete ignorance of science is blatantly obvious in almost every chapter. The absence of even a hint of the science and mathematics behind the "inventions" of Tio Holtzman and Norma Cenva, despite "discussing" them at great length, is quite odd. The authors mention "arithmetic"; what meaningful science involves only arithmetic? What calculations could their solvers work on after only the most basic training? At one point, one of the solvers sabotages a result by "moving a decimal point" and claiming nobody would notice. If the authors knew ANYTHING about mathematics, they would understand that moving a decimal point is the mistake MOST LIKELY to be noticed. If I'm expecting an answer of 10, and you give me 5 or 20 I might not notice. But if you give me 1 or 100 I will definitely notice. Duh! The science-related quotes that start many chapters are meaningless as well.
Despite the derivativeness of the robot Erasmus, they nevertheless managed to make him fascinating in a macabre sort of way. What is unrealistic is that he would be so completely clueless about human behavior. Think Dr. Mengele meets the Terminator. If intelligence means the ability to learn, then Erasmus must not be particularly intelligent. The relationship between machines and humans at large is somehow odd. Things like robots serving as drivers of a horse-drawn carriage for a human are not realistic in light of the master-slave relationship. The resources dedicated to keeping the humans alive for slave labor are inconsistent with Omnius's oft-mentioned desire for efficiency. What do humans provide for the machines that they could not more quickly provide for themselves while consuming fewer resources. Surely a machine of some sort could do any required work faster than slave labor (which has long been known to lead low-quality results). The final chapters of the revolt and the surprise experienced by Erasmus and Omnius on the other hand could form a fascinating study of "AI psychology" if such a thing existed.
There are several gaps in the plot, a fact which I would be remiss in not mentioning. Without providing any spoilers, I can provide one example. The flaw in the defensive measures the humans used at Salusa Secundus and Giedi Prime was glaringly obvious. That the machines did not take advantage of it in their raid on Salusa Secundus AND that no human noticed the flaw either in the original design or when Xavier Harkonnen visited Giedi Prime for the specific purpose of evaluating their defenses simply defies belief.
One last disappointment in the book is that the authors clumsy attempts at foreshadowing gave me what I believe is conclusive proof of where they are headed in "Dune 7." On page 224 it says, "By the time humans expanded into those distant star systems, Omnius would already be there. Waiting." And in House Corrino, we were already treated to "ancient enemy ... future enemy" (when Navigator D'murr Pilru goes off course because of the amal). Other brief comments in House Corrino (regarding the unnamed planet that Tleilaxu Master Ajidica was setting up to take his BG axlotl tank) made me hopeful that they might head off in another direction. But now I have no doubt, the Honored Maitres and others returning from the scattering are fleeing thinking machines. This bothers me, as I am fairly certain that is NOT the path that Frank Herbert would have taken had he been alive to write Dune 7 himself.
My last thought, which really encompasses everything mentioned above, is that the story is not bad (you really want to keep reading to see what happens next), but the writing is bad, bad, bad. These guys need a good editor like nobody's business.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing: a prequel that I enjoyed more than the original!
Review: When I bought "The Butlerian Jihad", I was expecting something in the line of the trilogy "Dune: House [Atreides,Harkonnen,Corrino]", also by Brian Herberth and Kevin Anderson: a somewhat descriptive book, with mild action and weak plots, which only value was to show in detail places of the Dune Universe that you whished to see but were not in the original Frank Herberth's works. I was wrong. "The Buttlerian Jihad" has a strong, epic plot that draws all the attention of the reader - it is a book that will take away hours of sleep because you can't put it down. The characters at first sound bidimensional, but as the story grows you start feeling their emotions as you own, and by the end of the book some chapters even made me shed some tears, which is an effect that few books had in all my life. Not surprisingly in a book that obviously uses elements of Shakespearean and Greek tragedies, playing with archetypes - some of them kind of new, like the Man-Machine dicotomy - deeply rooted in most people's minds. The portrayal of a "pre-Dune" universe is brilliant, and relays heavily in vintage science fiction elements that give a delicious quaint, retro flavor to the story. And, most amazingly, the freedom to write a tale that Frank Herberth only mentioned in the vaguest terms made it possible to produce a book that can be read in a way completely independent from the original series, and still be enjoyed. In fact, the explanations of how some thing s of the Dune universe came to be are not the most interesting parts of the book: I would indeed *recomend* newbies to read it as a separate work.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting interpretation of Dune pre-history
Review: While I enjoyed reading the book, and learning about the history of the technology and people developments that I've read about in the Dune series, I couldn't really get a sense that the events of this book took place millenia before the Dune series (as I recall, according to the original series the Butlerian Jihad was supposed to have taken place several thousand years prior to Dune). The political structures were the same, politics were the same, characters were a little more 2D. And it seemed like all of the wondrous developments of the Dune world took place seemingly at the same time. Portable Holtzman shield generators, the beginnings of space-folding, discovery of spice on Arrakis by off-worlders, Tlaxian organ growing, etc.
The other thing that struck me while reading the book was it's similarity to God Emperor of Dune. Replace Omnius with Sandworm Leto, the intelligent robots with the Fedaykin, the outer worlds with Leto's rebels and you have pretty much the same story as in God Emperor.
Overall, a good book, enjoyable and easy to read, but just not as satisfying as some of the other books in the Anderson/Herbert Dune collection or the original Dune series.
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