This was by far the best of this trilogy, and the first half of the book felt exceptionally good. The epidemic the machines released on the human empire felt like something machines would do, and the chapters seeing the planet infected fall apart were incredibly haunting, perhaps the passages that sand out most to me in all of Brian Herbet and Kevin J Anderson's collaborations. Like I said, this one was the best in my opinion. The machines acted more alien, the human jihad finally had the overt and all around anti-machine mentality that I had pictured when first reading dune and hearing about this thing that happened in the books distant past. Gangs of fanatics roving the streets and smashing calculators was exactly what I expected.The other passage that really stands out was when the three Omnious' were going mad and fighting for dominance, one declaring himself god and the others false god's.That being said I was pretty disappointed in the second half of the book. It felt like more of the same from the first two. I was ESPECIALLY disappointed in the apparent machine creation of mentats. My impression and assumption was that mentats had risen from the need of computer like computation skills without computers being around to do it. In general this series had very disappointed "creations" for the groups I knew from the original Dune series. The orginal series stands out so much because of how gradual things took, some times spanning thousands of years. In this sereis things were almost always created in one moment of magic discovery. Guild navigators? One lady figured it out over a few months. Bene Jesuite's? Again, one person figured out the basics in one night in one moment of discovery. On top of that basically all the major groups and characters are pretty much blood recitatives in some way to the original Atriedes, which not only flies in the face of credulity, makes a mockery of Herbert's original nuanced and complicated writing style and lacks of unimaginative writing. And what happened to Vorian? How could the single most influential human being, who seemed immortal, simply disappear from the history books easily forgotten? All of that was to much to take.And now having finished this and having seen the Titans and psi-mechs amount to didly squate as far as importance I still am left wondering why the hell they were ever included. They still felt un-neaded and didn't really ever feel like they did much for the plot that human's or thinking machines couldn't have done on their own, and add one more thing seemingly forgotten by history.
Buddy read with Athena!The distance between greatness and disaster can sometimes be so depressingly short.The second half of The Machine Crusade was good enough to force a five-star rating from me, but all in all, the Legends of Dune trilogy has been the least impressive part of the Dune universe so far. And this was arguably the worst book of the three. I’ll not call it a huge disappointment, for with the aforementioned exception, this trilogy has been more or less on a stable level throughout. But it was not good.Only two things made this book worth reading: first of all, the origins of the legendary feud between Houses Atreides and Harkonnen. I had anticipated it would turn out to be something like this, but in the end I was still horrified by it. And to be honest, the whole scenario behind the enmity seemed entirely forced. It took an Atreides and a Harkonnen to go completely out of character to provide us with a rather unsatisfactory explanation. But it still was worth reading this book just to actually get to know.And second, which is actually a positive point, that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, unlike the former’s father, actually realise the importance of opening and finishing up a book with spectacular, epic writing. In my review of The Butlerian Jihad, you can find the opening passage of the trilogy, and here is the last passage of it. Arguably the best way a Dune book has ended so far."The broad expanse of sand kept its own time. As tides of change and history swept from planet to planet across the galaxy, the endless desert on Arrakis scoured away all attempts to manipulate or tame it. The arid environment preserved artifacts, while ferocious sandstorms erased anything in their path. Spice prospectors came and went, and the worms destroyed many of the unprepared interlopers. But not all of them.The outsiders kept coming, drawn by the lure and legend of the spice melange.Even as empires rose and fell, Arrakis, the desert planet, would turn its face to the universe and endure."The only unfortunate thing is that those lines were better than the rest of the book combined.
What do You think about The Battle Of Corrin (2005)?
I appreciated the finale. It successfully goes back and forth from the personal (Vorien and his father, Vorien and his children) to the grand (The Battle of Corrin, the rise of the royal house). It does, unlikely as it may seem, manage to explain everything in the Dune universe neatly and all at one time. However, the uncertainties, the chances taken, the unlikely and lifelike directions (the cure of Vorien's daughter, the mad mindset of the plague survivors and the rise of their own Bible) of the characters easily drew me in. One of the other reviewers commented that the reasoning behind the Atreides feud seemed a stretch, and I have to agree. In that moment when the order to kill the hostages in order to finish the machines was made, the Harkonnen showed decency and humanity and the Atreides did not. It seems likely that with the war over and the machines gone the two friends would have found a way to make peace, to laugh about how tragic it all might have been, if only for the sake of their friend and relative (respectively) who had died a villain for the sake of humanity. In that singular way, I found the book disappointing.One note of comparison to Frank. No doubt the master could have written all three novels in 250 pages or less, but then it would have been nearly unreadable. As a rule, what he wrote would have required three times the length for any other writer to do justice to the subject matter.
—Cian Beirdd
Dune fans, please tell me if there are any Dune books after this one that are *must* read... because I don't see any reason to continue. The writing on this one was flimsy, the plot was full of holes and unrealistic scenarios. And when I say 'unrealistic,' I don't mean that in a "fantasy" way; I mean that the interactions between the human characters are not realistic, not human. And even the robots start acting inconsistent from previous books.I'm finding that Brian Herbert's novels are short on all the things I loved about Frank's. Frank's had such complex political conflicts, and he was able to inspire so much wonder, whereas Brian is trying to answer all the big questions from Frank's novels and adds nothing more to wonder about. The conflicts are too black&white, and the villains are over-the-top villainous. The characters are so one-note.So I think that's it for me & Dune, unless someone can give me a reason why I should read a newer one.
—Rick
Lavender eyes? Women with perfect bodies and blond hair always being slightly blown by a mysterious breeze which affects no one else? A man who worries about killing two million people after having killed over a billion? A cult of luddites out to remove the toaster from the households of all planets? A single, all-powerful, evil machine surrounded by a horde of evil minion machines--and two copies of itself (larry and larry?) A robot who likes to wear fancy bathrobes? People who want to be machines but don't like machines but behave like machines because they've lost what it means to be people? All could be forgiven if this were either a)an interesting story and not a group of index cards posing as one, b)were intentionally funny, or c) turned out to simply be the world's longest knock knock joke. Ah, Douglas Adams, you are sorely missed.
—Paul (formerly known as Current)
