Title: The Battle of Corrin
Author: Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 704
Rating: 3.5/5
This book is the last in the Butlerian Jihad trilogy which covers what happened during the fateful war between the humans and the machines. It was interesting to learn about that because it’s referenced so often in the other Dune books that it’s good to witness it first hand, as it were.
I suppose the only real downside here is that because it’s the final book in the series, there’s a kind of sense that the authors were so preoccupied with bringing all of the different loose ends to a close that they forgot to write a gripping story. The story is still there, it’s just nowhere near as action-packed and high octane as the other Herbert and Anderson novels.
With that said, the last 50 pages of this bad boy were excellent, in part because they perfectly set up the original Dune series by explaining things like the enmity between the Atreides and the Harkonnens, who’d been working together until this point. And to think that I’d only just grown used to them working together instead of against each other.
I also felt as though the final showdown with the machines was a bit of an anti-climax. It had been built up so well during the first two books, and then we arrive at a point here where we’re just waiting for the machines to finally give out. They’ve been trapped on a single planet with a bunch of hrethgir (human) ships forming a blockade. The evermind is in a lot of a trouble.
It possibly also didn’t help that a lot of the cool characters that were introduced in this trilogy were dead by this point, and so while it was still cool to read about Serena Butler, it wasn’t as though she was still actively participating in the plot. Worse, it got kind of annoying to read about people who were distorting her message and acting directly against what she herself would have wanted.
But even with those negatives in mind, it was still a decent read and a fitting end to the trilogy, and I’m definitely glad that I read it. I’ve also noticed that I’m now so invested in the Dune series by this point that I whizz straight through the books because I’m excited to find out what’s going to happen next. There was a sense of inevitability to a lot of the events of this one and so it wasn’t as though it kept on surprising me, but it was just like re-reading a mystery novel when you know who the culprit was.
Still, I’ve always found the war between man and machine to be one of the more interesting aspects of the Dune saga, and so it was still good to get up close and personal with the conflict and to learn more about what happened. And even though the ending felt a little lacklustre, I’m super glad that this trilogy exists in the first place because I think it adds a lot to the Dune mythos and also brings some of the fascinating historical characters to life.
It’s also boosted by the fact that Herbert Jr. and Anderson were working based on notes that Frank left behind, and so we’re actually getting an interesting hybrid between the original Dune series and the action/adventure that Anderson does so well. The result is a cracking not-so-little read that has a lot to offer to people who enjoy the Dune series.
And so despite the fact that there are both ups and downs to this one, my predominant experience was one of enjoyment. I think this trilogy started stronger than it ended, but I also think that it reached its peak in the middle, which is actually no bad thing. And in the meantime, there are plenty of twists and turns for readers to enjoy along the way, and I liked the way that it asks questions about what makes us human and whether our reliance on technology might eventually turn out to be our Achilles’ heel. That’s not good.
