sequel to Dune: The Butlerian Jihad and the forerunner of Dune: The Battle of Corrin, this volume extends the bloody tale of man versus machine in the famous universe created by Frank Herbert by another 50-some years of action. In form, the novel is composed of hundreds of jump cuts among dozens of characters, and so perhaps the best way to summarize it is to follow the threads of each major protagonist, acknowledging that these narrative threads cross and recross.
At the political and military heart of the League of human worlds stand Serena Butler, the mother of the Jihad against the thinking machines, and Iblis Ginjo, her minister. After a long retreat from the management of day-to-day affairs, Serena experiences a revelation that she should resume tighter control of the Jihad. This does not sit well with the treacherous and Machiavellian Iblis, who finds his free hand at manipulating events now constrained. But eventually, as the Jihad flags, Iblis finds a way both to rid himself of Serena and to reignite the crusade. But he does not reckon that his own doom will follow hard on the heels of hers.
The two young men who became the primary military geniuses of the Jihad—Vorian Atreides and Xavier Harkonnen—are now middle-aged friends and, ultimately, elderly commanders (although Vorian is aging more slowly than his counterpart, thanks to early treatments from his adoptive cymek father, Agamemnon). Vorian conceives of a way of transmitting a cybervirus to Omnius, the multiply embodied machine intelligence that rules the AI empire, and this tactic has a significant effect on the war. But of more importance to Vorian is his love affair with a peasant woman named Leronica Tergiet. Xavier meanwhile finds himself stumbling upon the deadly secrets of the Tlulaxa organ farms.
Norma Cenva, the crippled genius who created the Holtzman shields, has now extended her researches to the field of space drives, and is on the verge of developing a revolutionary new "space-folding" propulsion system. But her pompous mentor, Tio Holtzman, is poised to steal her ideas. Aurelius Venport, Norma's businessman patron, stands poised to rescue her from Holtzman—especially when he realizes he's in love with Norma. But a slave rebellion on Norma's world—reluctantly condoned by a slave leader named Ishmael—plunges the world into chaos before Aurelius can save the woman he loves. Yet a subsequent epiphany undergone by Norma will render her more than capable of taking care of herself.
One faction among the machine enemies of mankind, the cymeks are thousand-year-old brains-in-bottles who finally decide to play their own hand, against both Omnius and the humans. As Omnius become feebler, the cymeks become more of a threat, especially as they seek the secrets of the space-folding drive. Norma's mother, Zufa Cenva, continues to breed and train her "witches," whose mental powers offer a suicidal weapon against the machines. And ninja-style warrior Jool Noret, mourning the death of his father, Zon Noret, resolves to become the most deadly living weapon against the machines, recruiting a group of like-minded followers.
Finally, on the sandy, spice-drenched world called Arrakis, Selim Wormrider continues his purge of decadence, building a community of tough and fanatical desert dwellers who rely on the harsh blessings of Dune for their survival. Their ranks will soon be enlarged by the arrival of Ishmael, the fleeing slave and his compatriots.
Sweeping history scripted by individuals
Something funny happened in between the closing pages of Butlerian Jihad and the closing pages of Machine Crusade: This elaborate prequel to a prequel to a classic began to acquire some heft and resonance of its own, without relying exclusively on the crutch of Frank Herbert's original opus. Whether through sheer persistent accumulation of detail and incident, or through a gradual softening of this reviewer's resistance, it became possible to enjoy Herbert and Anderson's work on its own merits. The huge narrative with its scores of characters began to resonate within itself. It became possible to care about the characters and their problems and triumphs without constantly making analogies between them and their Frank Herbert originals. In short, Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson have finally stepped out of the shadow of Dune's creator.
Certainly the current authors do not lack for inventiveness of plotting. Their 700 pages of intricately braided and incident-filled narrative contain sufficient surprises and cross-connections to keep the reader guessing and flipping the pages. And despite being the middle volume of the trilogy, this book racks up significant developments, climaxing with the deaths of several pivotal characters and leaving the prospects for the next volume wide open. Sometimes the authors telegraph a revelation too broadly: If anyone other than Xavier Harkonnen is surprised by the true nature of the Tlulaxa organ farms, then that person must never have have read any thrillers. But generally Herbert and Anderson manage to dart and weave and jab enough to maintain readerly attention.
I still have a small problem with the affect of the book. At many junctures it is too clinical and declamatory and distanced to fully engage the reader. Consider this passage, when Vorian Atreides realizes he cannot have the woman he loves:
Part of him wanted to stay, to escape the horrors of the Jihad. But in a short time that pretense would have made him miserable, and Vor Atreides was not the sort of man who could live a lie. He had already done enough of that in his life. ... The only thing that made him regret his imminent departure was this remarkable woman.
Well, that's a concise enough summary of Vorian's emotions and quandary as seen from outside his skin. But there's no immediacy, and—despite some subsequent pillow talk—no scene full of objective correlatives to his emotions, for us to sink our teeth into. All too often this kind of novelist-as-historian tone comes in between the reader and the events of the book.
Nonetheless, as the grim and titanic events of this interstellar Darwinian struggle between wetware and hardware/software roll on, a certain majesty and weightiness not incongruent with Frank Herbert's brainchild is attained.
