How does it compare to audio works by the same author?
Poor
Advantages:
At least you know how it all began . . .
Disadvantages:
A TERRIBLE book .
Recommend to potential buyers:
no
Full review
For those new to the Dune series, the original Dune series was written by Frank Herbert, who sadly died without finishing the series.
Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's son, took it on himself to continue his father's vision, and co-wrote the Prelude to Dune series with Kevin J Anderson, a trilogy of prequels that takes place a generation before the events of the original Dune series.
This book is the first of what is presumably another series of prequels, this time taking place thousands of years before the events of either of the existing series, during the times of the Butlerian Jihad, a war against thinking machines. Anyone who has read the existing Dune books will know that this event, even though it is thosands of years ago, still has significant impact on humanity. I'm sure a lot of Dune fans have been dying to know what actually happened during this conflict.
Is it worth the wait? No. No, it isn't. Because not only is this book just a big filler for, presumably, more exciting events later on, it is also very, very, poorly written.
Without giving the story away, the book tells the story of Xavier Harkonnen, a heroic human freedom fighter (yes, the Harkonnens are good in this book), Vorian Atreides, a traitor serving the machines (yes, the Atreides are bad in this book, at the start anyway), and Serena Butler, whom the Jihad is named after. It also reveals how Fremen began riding sandworms, how Holtzman invented the personal shield, and how the machines enslaved the humanity.
As I said before, this book is very poor. The characters could not be more boring and lifeless if they were made of cardboard. All of the stereotypes are here - characters are either heroic and willing to do anything to save humanity, or narrow-minded and want personal gains. There is no space in between, except for maybe Serena Butler, who goes through the whole book with the self-preservation instinct of a lemming. If anything, the machines act more human than the humans do. That is to say, emotionally, illogically, and not like machines should behave at all.
The storyline is at best plodding, and at worst unimaginative and non-sensical. Again, i don't want to give the story away, but if you find yourself reading this book just because you expect it to build up to a spectacular ending, then do yourself a favour and stop.
The only reason you may want to read this book is if you really, really liked the original Dune series and want to find out the history behind the events, although I have to point out that I don't know how much of the storyline is based on Frank Herbert's original notes and how much has been created by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson. It also has to be said that I may have enjoyed it a lot more if the authors had saved themselves the trouble and just published a timeline of events, LotR Appendix style.
But hey, it could be that it is just me who didn't like this book. Maybe it is in fact a great work of literature that ranks alongside the other great classics. Maybe, but I really doubt it.
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