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Date Posted: 01:11:33 11/26/03 Wed
Author: IDAHO
Subject: My Thoughts on the Machine Crusade (spoilers)

Hey folks,
Sorry I have been gone for so long. It seems I am not the only one as this board has pretty much ground to a halt. My thiniking is that there just wasn't too much Dune material to discuss and we are all pretty smart folks when it comes to Dune and already have a handle on the already published books. For myself I was trying to avoid spoilers in the case of the Machine Crusade, but now that I have read it, I thought I would comment.

Overall, I generally liked this book. I liked it better than the last book. While most people agree that these books aren't as cool as the original books (I am one of those as well), I didn't hate this book and would recommend it to those who want more of a backstory for Dune 7 (which will also be written by the same team of authors). I will first discuss my criticisms of the book and then discuss what I felt worked in the book.

The complaints to start with:

First, the title. I really didn't see the applicability of the title "The Machine Crusade". It makes you think that the machines will form some kind of Crusade against the Hrethgir or something. It was just kind of ambiguous. This Book felt more like it should be called The Butlerian Jihad Part Deux. I mean it was about the Jihad. The first books title made sense and the Battle of Corrin makes sense, The Machine Crusade makes less sense.

Second, Omnius is boring as hell. Throughout the novel the humans and cymeks and even Erasmus constantly talk about how Omnius is predicatable and never adapts. The Evermind is stagnant. I guess all that's going for them is sheer numbers. It makes you wonder though how Omnius took over in the first place if it is so easily tricked all the damn time. Basically Omnius is a stupid villain...literally. He seems almost no challenge to the clever humans.

I'll have to agree with other posters here now that Space travel in this book is retarded!!! First of all, they don't explain how it is that ships can travel between the stars in the relatively short time frame of a couple weeks or months. Supposedly they just go as fast as they can. Also, the characters zip around from place to place so much without mention that there is a long passage of time and it makes the reader forget that the space travel isn't efficient. I mean they make it seem like fold-space really isn't THAT revolutionary. Logistically I guess it would be, but still, having pretty good interstellar transport already in place with not even a good scientific explanation of how it works is not very satisfying.

It also makes it kind of weird that the Titans, since they are all smart humans never easily tricked Omnius and fought him with the same sort of cleverness that the Humans (particularly Vorian Atreides) do in this novel. It takes them 1000 years to figure out that they should rebel against Omnius and that he is vulnerable...come on.

Jool Noret. I loved the guy! I thought he was one of the most badass characters in the entire novel. But first the book doesn't spend enough time with him, focusing instead on Serena Butler, and Ishmael far more than I would like. And then his storyline goes frigging nowhere! He dies from a tidal wave!?! What the hell!? He doesn't even die in battle or grow as a character or anything! His storyline seemed to serve no purpose in the overall storyline other than to show that the Ginaz mercenaries followed Chirox's (jool's trainer) to eventually form the Swordmasters of ginaz. yeah well they didn't even call themselves Swordmasters at the end of the book. His whole storyline was a waste of my time. A great badass character...wasted.

Another character completely wasted and storyline that went nowhere: the Titan Hecate. She is thrown in as this wild card that seems like she will shake things up because she has a hidden agenda. And yet she only gets started and we never find out what her plans are because she is fried when Zufa Cenva toasts her! What the heck!?! This is another storyline and a potentially interesting character that ultimately went nowhere because she died. Now I understand that maybe that's realistic, but immensely unsatisfying to me as a reader. Why build her up only to use her as a deus ex machina to win the battle of Ix and then just trash her. Bad writing.

Iblis Ginjo. First of all, I never got a feel for what this character looked like in the last novel or this novel. when I have a hard time visualizing a character I find him far less interesting. In addition, he is rather simplistic in that he simply wants power for power's sake and he really doesn't do as much wheeling and dealing as characters like the Baron from Dune do to get it. I just found him a little boring, though I too was thinking he might turn out to be the first new Emperor. The other thing that bugged me was that they set him up as this telepath that can influence people. But as soon as they mention this, Iblis loses power when Serena recovers the reins of power. Iblis' telepathy does nothing and he is pretty much impotent. Also if his genes are really that desireable and will lead to something like the Kwisatz Haderach program, they blew it because we never even see an inkling of the importance of this skill in the novel.

Some more quick complaints: The sorceresses don't become a cohesive force in this novel, neither do the Swordmasters, Rajid Suk doesn't start anything, the Tlulaxa aren't really elaborated on (which I hoped they would be because they were a big mystery to me in the originals and I thought these books would explain them). Basically I felt that most things didn't move forward in this book. I thought we'd see the beginnings of the organizations that we see in the original novels start to emerge. we can see them sort of, for example the Guild, but ultimately the growth is minimal between the last book and by the end of this one.

That brings me to my next point...House Harkonnen!? What the hell? Xavier had all daughters and he dies at the end of the book. That means there is no male to take on the Harkonnen name? that seems like a problem since it is House Harkonnen's cowardice at the battle of Corrin that supposedly causes the kanly between the atreides and harkonnen. I mean, I am glad that Xavier was spared this fate (since I found him to be a noble, stand up guy), but doesn't this pose a problem? It bothers me that some punk in the next book is going to destroy the Harkonnens and make them evil for the next 10,000 years, and guess what...he is not even a HArkonnen since Xavier's grandchildren will have different names because he has all Daughters.

Agamemnon and Vorian Atreides' relationship never builds or climaxes in this novel. While every chapter Agamemnon is in discusses his desire to get back at Vorian, we never see anything happen to further a plot against his son or anything. I guess they are saving the showdown for the next novel. I just thought there would be some more escalation of the enmity other than the first little bit of the book where Emil Tantor is kidnapped.

Next, as I mentioned the book focuses a lot less on the characters that I cared about, including: Vorian Atreides, Xavier Harkonnen, Jool Noret, and Norma Cenva, and far more on characters that I didn't: Selim Wormrider, Ishmael, Marha, Iblis Ginjo, and Serena Butler.

That leads me to the fact that I found Ishmael and the wormriders' storylines to be boring. I mean I guess it's because not that much happens. Slaves excape Porirtrin and crash on Arrakis and become one with the wormriders. there I just saved you about 100 pages of the book.

A big problem with the book is that at the end Vorian Atreides is really the only hero left alive. All the other main charcters that have been in the first two books die off. I guess Norma is still around. But basically the authors now need to develop like 5 or 6 completely NEW characters to carry the next book. That's kind of stupid for the last book in a trilogy.

Also, I was really hoping to see the foundations of the Kwisatz Haderach program in this book and just more solid foundations for things like mentats and the Bene gesserit in general. I mean the whole thing that Frank herbert and then Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson set up in Dune and then the House books was that Paul Atreides was meant to come about even though the Bene Gesserit thought he wasn't...that there was in fact a hidden agenda that went further back than even the Kwisatz Program itself to make things happen the way they did...wheels within wheels etc. But we see nothing of that starting to develop in this book. I just feel that that these books should have threads that connect to the other books that would give us more insight into these things... some threads are there, but they are not as elucidating or as interesting as I was hoping for.

But now that I have bashed it, let me mention the things that did work in the book for me.

Erasmus, while it was pretty obvious that his independence from Omnius would eventually make him more human, I am more interested to see what is happening with Gilburtus Albans. I think watching this relationship in the next book will be interesting. Also my prediction is that Gilbertus Albans becomes the Emperor. I mean he is from Corrin so it would make sense that he is House Corrino.

Vorian atreides. I really started to enjoy his character and enjoy his friendship with Xavier. I liked that Vorian was the crafty one and Xavier the sort of brute force one. I cared a lot more for seeing Vorian and xavier in action this time around and was disappointed that the book didn't spend more time with them.

Norma cenva's transformation was awesome. Her bodily transformation was the one thing that was reminiscent of the original books. Like Paul taking the Water of Life, or Duncan Idaho and Miles teg going through the breaking and getting amazing powers, it appears that Norma Cenva is the first in a long line of Superhumans who develop Bene gesserit powers. This whole thing was really cool though it really did make her lose her love and interest for Aurelius I thought just because she could no longer divert time from her mission. The only couple of things that I thought she would discover were that NAvigators needed to be created with Spice gas and that she needs to set in motion the whole sisterhood and Kwisatz haderach program. I thought she'd realize this much sooner and in fact she never really does by the end of this book. It will be interesting to see what becomes of her son and her young sister who is Iblis Ginjo's daughter by Zufa Cenva. Hopefully something cool will happen.

Iblis Ginjo's plan with the Tlulaxa where they destroyed human colonies to harvest them for body parts for the Jihad. It was probably predictable and usually I have a sharp eye for predicting these things and not being suprised by them, but I liked this aspect of the book and I was suprised so I thought it was cool.

Jool Noret. Every good sci-fi action story needs a sort of ass kicking BAtman type character that just throws down through sheer force of will. What's cooler than kung fu and swords on robots. I just wish there were more glimpses of him in the book and that his storyline had gone somewhere. i really liked when he and Zufa cenva met and had their conversations about kicking the machines' asses. I was hoping she'd decide to get his genes into her breeding program to help spawn some more super people to be Bene Ninjas!

Basically though, this book made me want more Dune. I want to see how all these storylines get wrapped up. i want to see the showdown between Vorian and Agamemnon and the formation of the great Houses, the Guild, the swordmasters, the Mentats, the Bene Gesserit, and the Bene Tleilax, and how they plant the seeds for what happens in Dune. But most of all I want to read Dune 7 and find out who the enemy is and who is going to be around to kick it's ass. For some reason I have a feeling that we won't be seeing Sheeana, Murbella, Miles, and Duncan, but rather a whole new group of people. Brian and Kevin seem to like working with their own characters, but we'll see.

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