When robots attack

I was reading some other book reviews online, and I came across a review of a book I had recently read. The book was called "Dune: the Butlerian Jihad". This is a science fiction book which is actually a prequel to the dune series by Frank Herbert. The original Dune series was a classic in science fiction writing, and was popular among readers for years. The prequels are written by his son and another writer twenty years after his death.
Sometimes you read a book because you are bored, and that book entertains you. It is a good story, there's lots of action, pretty decent characters, and it keeps you distracted until its done. Then you talk to somebody about it, or read someones review, and you realize that the book wasn't all that great. Actually it was pretty bad. Oh well.
This book is based in some future time, when mankind is being brutally assaulted by thinking machines,which were created by people, but overthrew their masters and now seek human extinction. Sound familiar? (Terminator, The Matrix, and even Planet of the Apes if you switch robots with primates) So we get introduced to some human characters who desperately don't want to be made extinct. These characters are distantly related to people who live thousands of years later in Frank Herbert's Dune series. They have the same last names, and thats about it as far as comparisons go. Well the book chronicles the events which led to mankind's decision to declare a jihad (religiously based war) against the machines.
The chapters are so short, it seems like the writers were drinking and coming up with ideas for chapters, one drinks and talks while the other writes it down frantically. At the time I read this, I was working a lot and I was tired all the time, so the short chapters were cool. No long commitments right? Well now that I look back on it, it was not that well written. The writer of the review I read had some good points which made me think:
"But like so many enormous projects --- especially inherited ones --- THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD falls into some common traps. It tries to navigate too much territory between only two covers; one often craves more sustained focus and less repetitive clutter. Additionally, it lapses far too frequently into extreme blood-and-guts violence that rapidly loses its power to shock, but not to disgust."
All of the things I tried not to think about while I was reading this book.....
Well I can't really recommend reading this one, unless you are a diehard Dune fan in which case it's kind of worth it to hear about the origins of all the weird stuff we fell in love with when we read the originals. But these prequels all fall short of the kind of brilliance the Dune books possessed.
Next I'm reading another Dean Koontz thriller novel: "Hideaway"