REVIEW: The Machine Crusade.

Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson

This book (on tape) is a mixed bag. On one hand, the writing is distractingly bad. On the other, the story is intriguing. But is the story intriguing of its own value, or is it because of the connections to the original that I keep looking for? Interestingly, these prequels nullify much of what was ‘officially’ published long ago, in the hard-to-find "Dune Encyclopedia". Nevertheless, it does create interesting back story for the many factions of the original Dune books.

It’s hard to pinpoint what is bad about the writing. The scope or focus is the main thing, and the hardest to define. The Big Ideas are mixed in with the minutiae. The wrong scope is used at the wrong time. There isn’t nearly enough detail in most of the descriptive passages. Some things are glossed over at inopportune times. This book could have been at least 100 pages smaller. The descriptives are almost TOO didactic - Primero, Secundo, Jyhad, Evermind, League of Nobels – it’s all too obvious. The Zenshiites – everything about them is simply a combination of Buddhist and Islamic terms – Buddislam, Buddahla, Zensuni, Zenshiite, the Koran Sutras……ridiculous. Descriptive naming should be more subtle, I think. There is no detailing of the amazing new technologies being developed. The idea of Folding Space has no specific theoretical background, no description, and no scientific basis. It just IS. This is a major missed opportunity. The Dialog is just god-awful. A character can be thinking of grand scale expansion, the political turmoil, or the extinction of mankind one moment, and the next moment spouting some inanity with anachronistic modern terminology. Conversations are inane, often pointless, and even narratively void. The narrative is poorly constructed at best, wince-inducing at worst. It is hard NOT to read this book with a critical eye. It just begs to be edited.

Details are lost to me, having finished more than a week ago, but there were parts that just made you say WTF. It seems ludicrous that mankind would follow this Jyhad and this Grand Patriarch so blindly for so many years. To sustain a Jyhad across so many worlds for such a long period would be impractical at best. It just doesn’t ring true. The declaration at the end by the settlers of Arrakis seems surfeit. “We are the Freemen of Arrakis.” There is never a satisfactory answer as to why the machines can’t understand human emotion. Maybe they can’t actually feel, but their massive gel circuitry can certainly program cause-and-effect equivalents, no?

Twice I almost gave up on this, but it is hard for me to not finish something I start. Nevertheless, I doubt that I will devote 2 more months to the 3rd volume, on tape, of this mish-mash of narrative and recycled ideas.