david weber (a mighty fortress safehold book 4)

[dragon]

So was wondering what people thought of the new safe hold novel.

[Bladed_Crescent]

Overall? I liked it. But then I am a Weber fanboy, so make of that what you will.

It could have done with some trimming, particularly the parts where the Charisian engineers and craftsmen discuss new improvements to their technology - although the flip side to that is you can see where their new tricks come from rather than the Honorverse/Starfireverse's 'yeah this new super-tech just came out of nowhere. and so did this. and this. and this' treatment of technology.

Myself, though I much preferred the parts of the book that didn't focus on Cayleb/Sharelyan. My favourites were actually the Temple scenes, with Clyntahn's machinations and Robhair's increasing spine. Personally, Robhair Duchairn is one of my favourite characters - and his arc is why I enjoy the series so much. As the late Archbishop Dynnys was described: "He's not a bad man. A corrupt one, but not a bad man." So watching Duchairn's struggle for redemption (with Clyntahn's increasing paranoia and suspicion) are my favourite scenes and his scathing retort to Trynair after Clyntahn's little 'Winter Surprise' is my favourite passage in this book:
Spoiler

"What is it, precisely, I'm not doing, Zahmysn?" he asked. "Tell me. Am I failing to participate in the judicial murder of my fellow vicars? Failing to applaud the torture of women, wives who probably didn't even know what their husbands were doing... assuming their husbands were actually doing anything at all? Failing to lend the seal of my approval to the decision to have sixteen-year-old girls burned to death because their fathers pissed Zhasphar off? Is that what I'm failing to do, Zahmysn?"

The Earl of Thirsk is another favourite character of mine and I'm glad to see him come back to prominence: Spoiler

Unlike the rest of the world's navy's, Thirsk has turned the Dohlar Navy into a genuine threat to Charis; though his galleons and crews aren't as capable and experienced as Charisian forces, Thirsk's reforms are proving to be difficult for the Charisian Navy to handle: five Dohlaran galleons mix it up with three Charisian ships - despite the Charisians' superior size, training, maneuverability and firepower, they're unable to achieve a decisive win and though the Dohlarans are hammered, they give as good as they get, proving that Charisians aren't invulnerable and providing valuable experience for the future, which Thirsk's captains and crews put to good use.

Later on, a third of the Charisian Navy is launched against Harchong and Dohlar to attack their shipping and construction - although the Harchongese are badly hammered, the Charisians achieve fuck-all against Dohlar's shipyards and their own fleet is mauled when Thirsk's forces come out after them. He becomes so much of a problem that Cayleb considers having him assassinated, though chooses not to.

The Good:

-not all of Charis's enemies are drooling religious zealots or overbred aristocratic pomps; in the climactic battle, Cayleb and his inner circle lament that things would be so much easier if those were the commanders that were being sent against them
-Nahrman Baytz, Earl of Emerald. Always awesome.
-political machinations - I find these more interesting then the battles (probably because with the exception of Thirsk and his reformed Dohlaran Navy, no one has a chance against Charis on the seas)
-the divide between what Merlin wants and will do - first mentioned in the first book - is put to the forefront when Spoiler

on his own initiative, Merlin sets the Corisandian police on a terrorist leader he and Cayleb's inner circle originally planned to use to lead them to other insurrectionists

-the cast is a manageable, despite its size. One of my biggest problems with Storm from the Shadows was that it had a huge cast and kept jumping from area to area so fast and so abruptly that I got lost more than once, wondering who was doing what where. Maybe the style of the Safehold series (with discrete headers for each section) makes it more conducive to understanding the setting, but I had no trouble following the story.

The Bad:
-we don't need the infodumps on rigging and sailing. Yes, I'm pleased you researched the age of sail for this series. Now you can stop. Please.

Other:
-I was hoping to see more of Irynys, Hektor's daughter - after By Heresies Distressed closed with her threatening to destroy Cayleb's empire and everyone else who'd use her and her brother for their own ends, the few scenes we got of her were a disappointment. True, at sixteen she's a bit young to be burning the world from one end to the other, but still. Hopefully that's foreshadowing rather than a dangling plot thread.
-the divide between Merlin and the Charisians. Someone on... SpaceBattles, I think, mentioned that if Merlin wanted to spur more technological growth, he'd leak the secrets of shells to the Church, causing an arms race and forcing innovation as each side now has to develop armour, better metallurgy, etc. Regardless, I would like to see more of a disconnect between what Nimue needs, what Merlin wants and what the Empire of Charis would like.
-anyone who doesn't think Siddarmark will willingly join the Empire of Charis at some point, slap yourself.

I'm probably missing a few others from each category, but there's a quick-and-dirty overview of the book. Take from it what you will.

[Simon_Jester]

The one thing that really turns me off about that series, aside from Weberian infodumps, is something very petty:

The names. They don't scan well. They're obvious mutations of perfectly normal English names, by and large... but why bother? Why replace all those "S"-es with "ZH"-es? What actual purpose is served aside from making unreadable fantasy names that sound like bastardizations done by someone who got kicked out of Hooked on Phonics as a child?

Again, I know it's petty.

[Kingmaker]

They're obvious mutations of perfectly normal English names, by and large... but why bother?

This bothered me as well, although it wasn't a deal breaker. It was just distracting, especially since I would usually stop and try to figure out what the real name was.

What I'd say about the series is that it is very Weber-ish. If you like David Weber and don't mind his foibles (infodumps, awkward banter, small supertech nation vs the primitive horde, etc...), you'll like it. If his issues bother you, you won't. At least it looks like the Charisians have a competent opponent, and no character shielded superadmiral, unlike the Manties. Of course, they also have an absolutely grotesque tech advantage. Exploding shells vs early galleons? Yeah, I think I know how this ends

[Slacker]

The one thing that really turns me off about that series, aside from Weberian infodumps, is something very petty:

The names. They don't scan well. They're obvious mutations of perfectly normal English names, by and large... but why bother? Why replace all those "S"-es with "ZH"-es? What actual purpose is served aside from making unreadable fantasy names that sound like bastardizations done by someone who got kicked out of Hooked on Phonics as a child?

Again, I know it's petty.

He was being clever, and I think a part of it was done intentionally for tongue-in-cheek purposes. He was a bit surprised when I pointed out the strange similarities between his favorite Charisian baseball team and the 1995 Atlanta Braves, I think he thought it was a bit more subtle than that. He sort of sheepishly admitted he was going to work in as many references to that team as he could, given it was the only year they'd won the World Series.

I'm enjoying them, but I really want the series to come to a natural conclusion at some point and be done. Not drag on with new enemies and shenanigans. I don't want an army of Church zombies to spring up during the Industrial Revolution Merlin will inevitably kick Safehold into. When the war is over and the world is saved, I want one chapter of the human fleet paying their respects at the murdered motherworld, Nimue leading them, before going and glassing the alien menace once and for all. And then I want the series to *end*.

[Simon_Jester]

He was being clever, and I think a part of it was done intentionally for tongue-in-cheek purposes.

Well, it makes me want to bludgeon the author, because it trips my "WARNING! MISSPELLED WORD!" detector. Which in turn makes me a fair bit less willing to pay for the books, because every time I read them I can count on that detector going off a couple of times a page.

What he's doing isn't clever and it certainly isn't impressive, any more than parents are when they name their poor child something like Brit'nee because they want her name to be "special." Especially not when it's obvious that he wants us to pronounce the names more or less normally; would it actually hurt anything if he had a kingdoms ruled by guys named Caleb and Norman and antagonists named Jasper, instead of playing alphabet soup with them?

And yes, that's a nitpick. But since it's a nitpick that smacks me in the nose every time I crack open the books and is present on every page where any character is named, I think I have a right to complain.
_______

Slacker, your point is much more important: I, too, would like to see this story have a well-defined ending at which point Weber gets on with his life and writes something else. The Honor Harrington series has suffered badly from the lack of a clearly defined ending in sight, as the volume of backstory grew and the individual novels got both bulkier and less standalone. The plot is getting stretched increasingly thin as, to keep the story running, Weber has introduced more and more contrivances to create a "real" backstory behind what was originally a perfectly satisfactory motivation for two interstellar powers to go to war.

The idea that the People's Republic of Haven had devolved into a fiscally insolvent "bread and circuses" state that started waging wars of conquest to fuel the homeworld's economy is... if not all that likely, at least within the realm of sanity. It was a strong enough backstory to carry the series through several books, to motivate Pierre's coup and the eventual resistance to that coup. Granted it was revolutionary France recycled in space, but you could do worse than that.

The idea that this whole 'rise and fall of the Havenite Empire' thing is tied to a multicentury subversion plot on the part of someone we hadn't even heard of until about eight books into the series is... well, the best I can call it is 'inferior' as a premise.

EDIT: While I'm on the subject of mass-market SF&F novels by less-than-amazing but adequate and entertaining writers, Weber suffers in comparison to a lot of other writers in the field when we look at him in these terms. Someone like Harry Turtledove writes series with well defined beginnings, middles, and ends; he may pick up the setting where he left off, but at least you know he's not going to spend the next ten years doing nothing but writing more books in one setting, with the same cast of characters gradually dying from accumulated power creep.