Book 4, A Mighty Fortress: Safehold Series

The Kindle edition was a joke with the typesetting done in India or China but clearly not by anyone who knows English.
Does DW believe that someone is reading this book without having read the first three? Please in the next one no more repeating what went on before we all know who Nimue is by now. excuse me but I always thought that good writing was more than simply telling a series of events but there was supposed to be some sort of character development. tension expressed etc. comeon DW.

I've really enjoyed this series, and like David Weber's other writings as well.

While not as fantastic as the first two books in the series, I think I actually enjoyed this one better than book 3, By Heresies Distressed. I was at first reluctant to get into this one because of some of the other negative reviews. I quickly discovered though that instead of not liking it for the lack of action and too much politics, as others have said, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Books that are all action....quickly bore me....it's the same stuff just rehashed with new names and circumstances. But these books mix action, politics, intrigue, espionage, etc..... so keep me interested.

Definitely not for the faint of heart however. This book is big at almost 1100 pages. The cast of characters is like a Cecil B. Demille movie on steroids....with probably a hundred plus primary characters to try and keep track of....and a slew of minor ones. Especially the nobles with names like Black Rock, White Pine, Blue Mountain, Orange River, Yellow Stars, Green Clovers, and Pink Diamonds....where's the leprechaun? :) Probably the only thing bad I have to say about it. But when there's an entire world of nations and leaders, battles and geopolitics to cover, I'm not sure how you could tell this story without the vast number of characters.

I'd give it 5 stars except for that. If you love Weber and Safehold.... and aren't an "action only" nut. You should really enjoy this book.

Looking forward to the next in the series!!! :)

Matt

There are many reviews here which basically say the same thing...this book is incredibly slow.
I am repeating that message in the hope that adding one more voice will add some weight to the possibility that the author changes his writing style to what it was in the first book in this series.

I loved the first book. Second was ok..still good. The third was ok..bearable.
The fourth is torture. I found myself skipping whole chapters of pointless conversation. It is still worth reading just because the basic premise of the series is gripping...but ...please,Mr Weber...more action less conversation..

As some have said, the book sometimes bogs down in detail. Some plot choices--Merlin Athrawes' "mission" to Zion stands out--border on inexplicably, urm, less than useful in advancing the story. What did he do there? Weather reports. *sigh* What a waste of time. A few continuing infelicitous word choices mar the narrative as well. For example, "Lords temporal and secular" referring to a gathering of church and secular dignitaries is just silly, as "temporal" in the context of referring to persons of authority as "temporal authorities" _means_ "secular" but Weber continues to do so in this book as well as all the other Safehold books, and his editors have yet to call him on it. Sad. Other similar lapses mar an otherwise good read. Still, _despite_ 22 or so pages of dramatis personae (seriously, the list is in the back of the book!) to keep up with, the inexcusably cumbersome name spellings to slow down the flow of reading and the relentless hammering of the same theological/social issues over and over and over again until one can almost simply note, "Ah, THAT discussion again" and "read" the next few pages blindfolded, it's _still_ a good read. And I'll buy the next one in the series, too.

I have been reading other reviews, and I felt the need to submit my own review.
True, these books are not all action, but then not everything needs to be a Salvatore book with fighting every 10 pages (and I have read everyone of his books, too)
This book does not have a lot of fighting action, but what I find just as compelling is the thought BEHIND the action that does happen.
I am not normally into simple conversation and political dialogue, but David Weber has produced a truly outstanding series of books that includes just enough dialogue and action to make it all believeable. His insights into human frailities, human weaknesses, and especially human strengths, are phenomenal. How people react to bad or good news, and to life events. Its amazing. I find myself thinking "How can someone justify that action, ever?" and yet it happens all the time!

Compare this series with SM Stirling's "The General" with less action, more intrigue and thought behind every action sequence.

I highly recomend this book, and this series. Everyone needs to get off the action high horse and actually think once on awhile. After all, even Drizzt is a thinker, at least most of the time. And for those of us that have been there, we know that combat is 99% thinking and 1% fighting, and this series just examines the 99% with just enough detail.

A lot of other reviews have complained this book is long and tedious. My advice is to stick with it.
This is a series with a huge scope and lots of plot left to play out. You can afford a book like this that builds lots of parts of the plot without nail biting action every page. There is plenty of intrigue and action, just not on the scale of the previous books.
Some of the chief protagonists develop into more capable adversaries. The Earl of Thirsk is obviously going to be a key player. Even the group of four, develop from industrious idiots into industrious and clever adversaries with enourmous resources behind them.
On the Charis side, their allies increase and their industrial and research base are rapidly accelerating.
I think this book is the calm before the storm.
You may not feel compelled to stay up until dawn to finish it but an enjoyable read from start to finish.

I have enjoyed this series immensely and looked forward to this episode in the ongoing saga.

I enjoyed it but I couldn't help but feel that it was essentially a gap filling exercise to gather the author's thoughts together before moving on the the climax. There is a lot of explanation and commentary rather than action, which detracts from the overall effect of the book.

As such it makes no sense whatsoever as a stand-alone novel and can only be read in order after its predecessors.

David Weber is showing just how difficult it is to stretch a story out over , a projected, ten volumes. This volume in particular is an evident filler, as nothing really happens to take the story to the next stage. It however, does set the stage for another step. Having heard that the series does not end with a return to space and a confrontation with the "bad guys," I find myself losing interest in the series. The comments on there being a lot of "what the person is thinking" content, rather ignore the fact that this is David Weber's style, at least in this series.

If Macmillan really believes that we should be paying hardcover prices for their e-books (which have none of the distribution costs of hardcovers), then they can at least make damn sure that ther e-book is of a similar quality. It's quite obvious that nobody even looked at it once they did the conversion, since the software they used replaced all the soft hyphens with spaces, resulting in the book being almost unreadable. They also replaced the hard hyphens with hyphen-space, which is also ugly and not good e-book practice.

If you want to read par a graphs writ ten like this, instead of a de pend able ex cell ent e- book con ver sion, then buy this book and allow them to think it's okay to be med iocre.

This is a logical continuation of Book three, with virtually no break and minimal review of the previous books. It is, as usual with David Weber, very well written, with good flow, fairly fast paced and constantly building to a climax.... which we will have to wait for the next book to read. Sometimes I think I'll just wait until all the books in a series are out before I read the first one, but I can't. He's very addictive.

Nimue from the crystal cave of Mort De Arthur fame who awakens to a world of medieval technology must surly appear to be a magical being. An android construct that appears to be a fully functioning human, with apologies to Gene Roddenbury's Data but with the ability to morph into any configuration how can you go wrong. Merlin, AKA Nimue is zipping about in a stealthy space shuttle while mere mortals are moving at 6 or 8 knots in their state of the art wooden ships-of-the-line and battling hand to hand with cutlass and knife. The daring-do of midnight riders coupled with bugged rooms and instant communications all controlled by an AI computer, in said cave and becomming aware, called OWL and acting as a familiar, what's not to like. But most of all true love and soulmates struggling with Goddly men against a corrupt and debased priesthood for the souls and future of the last remaninate of humanity, give me more.

Keep it up David and thank you for your efforts.

Not yet thirty years old, many believe that Cayleb Ahrmahk is the greatest naval officer in history. His victories are legendary as he defeated handily the combined forces of five princedoms. On a personal level, his success at sea enabled him to meet, court, and marry Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm. On Safehold, the pair forge the Charisian Empire built on his naval prowess.

However, their most powerful adversary on Safehold, Church of God Awaiting, has declared the regime's rulers heretics and must be destroyed. Their first endeavor failed as the Church faithful failed to use the technology of the Charisian Empire. The second assault is an armada unlike anything in the history of Safehold. However, their foes do not have warrior-monk named Merlin Athrawes on their side. Merlin is the cybernetic avatar of a long dead female Nimue Alban, who died while watching the Terran Federation on numerous planets destroyed; Safehold is the last human stronghold and inadvertently the Church is leading the final extinction.

The latest Safehold science fiction thriller (see By Heresies Distressed) is a great continuation of the struggle for First Amendment type rights and freedoms from a church controlling society. The world of Safehold is incredibly developed as readers obtain a deep look at a culture run by a religious dominated caste system that compares unfavorably to the freedom of the relatively small Charisian Empire. With a strong cast (though the hero feels like a Harrington clone) fans will relish David Weber's powerful condemnation of church equals state; or for that matter any oligopoly controlling all aspects of society by oppressing freedom.

Harriet Klausner

As a reader who has eagerly followed the Safehold series, I pre-ordered "A Mighty Fortress" in early April. When the book arrived, I proceeded to sit down and tear through the 690 (story only) pages of alternative transplanted religious history in three evenings.

(One quick note: I do enjoy most of Weber picturesque descriptive passages, but the ever-expanding page counts on his books have me trembling about the next Honor Harrington tome. I'm guessing each book will have to be delivered in its own moving van.)

At any rate, Weber continues the story of humanity's last colony, composed of the descendents of the brainwashed "Adams" and "Eves" who were planted on Safehold to escape the genocidal Gbaba. Plus one cybernetic avatar of a Terran Navy officer, who is attempting to get the last humans back on a path toward the stars and a rematch with the alien world-killers.

Some reviewers have complained about the endless conferences and meetings that Weber describes in detail as a weakness in the writing, and I have to admit it did frequently slow down the storyline. It was, however, fun to see what the one group of characters were thinking about the chess moves being played out on the other side of the political situation.

I also like that he did not simply have Merlin solve every problem the Charisian Empire ran into over the course of the plot. One physical being simply could not do that, and we get to see the consequences of his being unable to do so in this book with the gruesome death of a character.

The descriptions of the naval combat and the various nations' preparation for the same were entertaining to me; but I always like a little background with my blood and thunder. Weber did seem to cut the endgame of the three significant naval engagments short. Apparently, this was to give the characters in the subsequent scenes some meaningful exposition to impart to the reader, but I for one would rather have had a first-person narrative.

One problem is that Weber is recreating the Protestant reformation as something it most definately was NOT: a struggle of basically peaceful religious reformers, forced to fight courageously against a completely corrupt church hierarchy. Now, it's his world; he can do what he wants with it, but the political struggles in the actual history were a lot more complex and messy than the simple morality tale Weber is presenting here.

I wish he would spend a little time showing us some of the Temple Loyalists as more than a few pages worth of exposition of essentially unthinking religious zealots, crass political calculators or the occasional duped well-meaning spear-carrier. It is only a few pages of these, of course, because they are always quickly and justly arrested and executed or, if they are lucky, given a clean(?) death in combat.

What I am also getting a little tired of in this series is the almost absurdly "Good" main characters with whom Weber is completely and blindly in love. Caleb, Sharleyn, Mikel Stainair and a half-dozen or so other members of his usual "Band of Brothers (and Sisters)" who may do some ruthless things, but they are always doing them because the consequences of NOT doing them are so obviously terrible for so many other innocent people.

The only human failings these people (like Saint Honor of Manticore) are shown to experience are their guilt feelings over not being able to save everyone depending on them in the middle of a FRIGGIN' MAJOR WAR(!) and their righteous anger at the evil tactics of their dastardly foes. Conversely, Weber allows these people to, incidently of course, be shown indulging in the same lavish lifestyles as the villians, but always inserts a line or two about their charitable actions and feelings toward the less fortunate, to distinquish themselves from the greedy, unthinking villians. A little of that kind of self-justification goes a long way with me; I don't need it repeated every few chapters by dozens of protagonists, great and small. Just let them eat well, sleep well and sit in a damn comfortable chair without giving the reader a mental trip to the confessional every once in a while!

I'm going to keep reading this series since I really like the premise, the battle scenes and the occasional bursts of humor that shine through, I just hope for a little faith from Weber that we would still like his favored characters even if on rare occasions, they did something selfish or ethically questionable.

The Safehold Series has a fascinating premise:

Even with access to space age technology, how can one 'man' single handedly sow the seeds of change to modernize/democratize a 1600 century culture/world steeped in the dogmatic teachings of a corrupt and all powerful Inquisition/Church determined to halt any Reformation/Renaissance?

Plus an evil alien empire (which has already wiped out the Terran Empire & the rest of humanity save for this one hidden away colony) lurking in the background potentially ready to pounce on any sign of emerging advanced civilization.

Actually a prequel on this conflict would be nice tho challenging to write a story with downer end already known. So.... for a decent plot with some suspense, Weber could create other escaped colonies or orphan military fleets (which found allies? hidden stock piles of ancient weapons from prior civilizations? Cloaking technology? wormholes to another part of the galaxy? explaining how they survived when main battle fleets didn't?) that are other wise occupying the aliens also adding to the reasons why this colony has yet to be found and wiped out (current reason: its technology is too backward to attract attention).

Also wondering if Weber ever intends to advance the Safehold series sufficiently so that searching out & taking on and defeating/exacting revenge on the aliens become a possibility. He is soooo dragging out the series that it does not seem likely; at the rate it is going both he and his readers will be ensconced six foot under before the story advances to that point!

David Weber is EXCELLENT in battle/combat sequences. Unfortunately, in between, he waxes on and on, long & exceedingly boring, taking waaaay too long to set up/resolve conflicts.

Massive skimming is the only way to 'read' this book. There are good parts, they are just few and far between. The book is 700 pages, it could've easily been 275 and a LOT better book,

I really need to read these in quicker succession. There are a ton of characters, most of which have more than one name and the two opposing nations have similar names, Chisholm and Charis. Which one is the good guys? Ugh. I had the same problem with Sauron and Saruman in The Lord of the Rings.

Minor quibbles aside, this is an awesome, epic series. Huge in scope, and probably the only author I’ve ever seen that figured out how to combine science fiction with good old fashioned wind powered naval battles. It’s super cool, and completely unique. This is the fourth book in the series and it is starting to make me nervous that it is taking so long for humanity to get it’s act together and accept the truth, I have a feeling those aliens from the first book are still searching for survivors. Well whatever David Weber decides to do, I am all for it. Hopefully this series can keep up this level of excellence, a very impressive work.

Weber's "A Mighty Fortress" was a very good read... which means it arrived and I lost a night's sleep finishing it.

Some complain about this book getting mired in the details and perhaps that is true, but Weber uses a brush to paint his stories and the colors are rich and intense. I can "see" Safehold in my mind's eye, smell the waterfronts, hear the sails and the wind vibrating thru the rigging of the ships. The characters are equally well developed.

If all you want is pure action, perhaps this is not for you, but if you want to continue your immersion into the Safehold Series... indulge!

I hate when I start getting into a series, particularly by an author I normally don't like, and then it lets me down. In this case its the Safeholdian series by David Weber (Off Armaggeddon Reef, By Schism Rent Asunder, A Mighty Fortress). The reason I am disappointed in this book is because-- frankly--- there just aren't any bad guys. I mean, yes, there are bad guys. But there's a sort of lack of direct conflict because Merlin's capabilities practically make him Godlike.

The setting seemed perfect for internal and social conflict, given that Merlin is a dead woman trapped inside the android body posing as a man to fit into the male-dominated heirarchy of the civilization-regressed population she's working with-- but nope. Everyone is amazingly non-racist in this book, and for being a male-dominated society the sexism is very inconsistent (in other words, women aren't in many roles in the book, but there's random women in some you wouldn't think they would be, and no surprise or degratory comments from people because of this, etc). The few times when a bad guy or someone on the fence in this series does show some sort of sexism it's in a very minor, token kind of way. And very few of the characters are completely irrational or biased. It feels like most of them come upon the "right answer" on their own.

And the biggest disappointment I have had is that, instead of Merlin having to deal with her loneliness in a male body, the author takes a total cop-out and now Nimue is discovering maybe she's bisexual (nice deux ex machina for Merlin not going insane, and the action itself was done without any introspection and was completely skipped in any kind of description until after the fact when Merlin barely has any self-introspection about it)??? Everything for the characters goes so well and so easily, there's no real conflict beyond "let's mope for a couple paragraphs because someone died in this battle we won. Ok, we feel better now. What other Shan Wei-damned technology can we play with that we're totally going to be OK with despite our backgrounds?"

Reading comments on the snippets, it seems that the situations and battles are basically copies of battles and situations in Earth's history which is what many of these people like in the book-- or guessing how it's going to turn out based on that. But copying history and condensing generations and generations of technological developments into 3 generations to bring the Safeholdians from pre-Renaissance to spaceships hardly seems like engaging writing without properly done human drama. Its just copying history with no story.

I'll probably keep reading it because despite my lack of history battle buff-ness its not a difficult read and I'll keep my fingers crossed praying something happens that actually makes it not seem like God is guiding and mind-controlled every single character to a flawless conclusion.

Weber's Safehold stories share a characteristic that all of his readers know, and that potential readers should prepare for. His books are more than just stories, they are extended ramblings. In addition to the primary story, readers will be treated to: (1) extended conversations between characters who are peripheral to the story (2) extended descriptions of the details of Safehold's emerging technologies, including how to make gunpowder, rifles, ..., (3) lots of other expansive descriptions of things. So these books are MUCH longer than their underlying stories require.

If you have not read the preceding books in the series, don't start here. If you have read the earlier books, and if you decided after the prior one that you were willing to make another substantial reading investment in Safehold, then this is for you. But if you were unsure after the earlier one about whether to undertake another such effort, be prepared. This one is not much different, and the pages in the book that push the story forward are few and far between.

One new thing - Weber has dramatically cut back on his use of the word "sardonically." In this book, Weber has discovered and become enamored with the word "snort." All of the characters snort, repeatedly. It gets funny quickly.

All that said, I have found these books good for listening when exercising. If I phase out for a bit, then suddenly recognize that I have not been listening carefully, I seldom find that I have missed much.

Almost 700 pages of information on things we don't want to or need to know about combined with absurdly spelled names which make it difficult to keep track of who is who. How many characters does one story need?! Here's a hint. Weber provides a list of characters at the back of this book which is TWENTY TWO PAGES LONG! And most of them have silly spellings that keep stopping you as you try to figure out how it's pronounced, not to mention - who is this again? As for the main characters, not much happens to them, and as for the story - was there a story - oh right, fighting the Church. Well, not much happens there, either. Like others, I believe Weber has gone the way of Jordan. You see it in his other series' as well. He's too big now to pay attention to mere editors, and just stuffs reams of dull, plodding talk into his books which he thinks is brilliant writing.

With this series being advertised as 8-10 novels, book 4 here clearly falls in the 2nd Act of the typical three act structure. But how can we tell for sure its the 2nd Act?
Its boring as all get out.
We have a book of hundreds of pages where almost nothing happens. Theres no driving narrative, virtually no plot. Everything is either a continuation of last book, where (barely) something happened, and promises of the NEXT book, where we hope something will happen. It is page after page of talk and talk.
Minor characters talk about stuff, which will happen in another book
Major characters talk about stuff with already happened, which would be nice if we didnt already know
Secondary characters we neither know nor care about talk
New characters who are introduced here only to drop back out talk
Exposition, exposition, exposition, and we're not given ONE reason to care. We already knew that the Church was building a new fleet. We already knew there was going to be another fight. We could already guess who was going to win. So when it happens here, why are we supposed to care? There's nothing new whatsoever. With no exaggeration, you can skim thru hundreds of pages at a time and not miss a thing.
Skim skim skim- OK Merlin is saying something
Skim skim skim- OK someone somewhere fired a bullet
SKim Skim Skim- Minor characters we have no reason to get involved about are planning devious plans which are never as interesting as they say

I have NEVER been outright disappointed in a Weber book before. But here we are. This book has no readability at all. Once the series is complete, this book will be passed over in its entirety in favor of later entries.

The worst part is, is boredom like this that's kept Weber from completing his OTHER series. No Harrington? No Multiverse? There's more adventure in any 50 pages of either one of them than in this entire novel. And I felt cheated reading it.

So, I love the concept of the overall series, Terran Federation gets thrown back to the preindustrial age and now has to climb its way back into space.

When I first began this series I thought that would be the central focus and plotline-- mankind getting back into space. Instead what we really have is a very carefully disguised mimmick of Eric Flint's 1632 but not as well done.

By now, its obvious that the Author's pace will never get us back into space. Don't get me wrong, the story is still decent but you have to reside yourself to the fact that what we really are reading is a quasi 1632 type story (Eric Flint). The bad news is that 1632 and 1633 are superior to this series, the good news is that 1634+ sucks really really bad and David Weber's Safehold series (this series) is better than the follow on books to 1632.

Back to this book. The pacing is a bit slow compared to the other books but it still held my interest. I don't have the burning need to grab the next book in the series though. The set up for the major pitch battle in this book was a bit long and of course we can see it coming a mile away which is always sorta anticlimatic since the writing is on the wall.

I'm going to start a different series and i'm not sure i'll get back to this one. Up to this point, we've probably read over 2000 pages worth of story and if you can't move things along significantly after that much time, then your readers are bound to move on to more action packed pastures.

Mr. Weber, if you are reading this I guess what I expected when I began this series was each "book" more or less representing the next generation or time period as we try to get back into space. I think that would have been a much better treatment not to say that I don't enjoy this persepective. But if I were going to go this direction, I think I would have defeated the church within 2300 pages, 3000 tops. And at this pace, That's not gonna happen. At this pace I think its gonna take a good 5000 words to defeat the church. Especially if we seesaw back and forth with key pieces of technology. Charis develops a new weapon, the Church catches up... Charis develops another new weapon, the Church catches up. At that rate and at the rate you are writing (i.e. each book is about 1 yr) this is going to take a lot of books to resolve. In any event, I did enjoy everything up to this point, thanks for the read

Almost 700 pages of information on things we don't want to or need to know about combined with absurdly spelled names which make it difficult to keep track of who is who. How many characters does one story need?! Here's a hint. Weber provides a list of characters at the back of this book which is TWENTY TWO PAGES LONG! And most of them have silly spellings that keep stopping you as you try to figure out how it's pronounced, not to mention - who is this again? As for the main characters, not much happens to them, and as for the story - was there a story - oh right, fighting the Church. Well, not much happens there, either. Like others, I believe Weber has gone the way of Jordan. You see it in his other series' as well. He's too big now to pay attention to mere editors, and just stuffs reams of dull, plodding talk into his books which he thinks is brilliant writing.

With this series being advertised as 8-10 novels, book 4 here clearly falls in the 2nd Act of the typical three act structure. But how can we tell for sure its the 2nd Act?
Its boring as all get out.
We have a book of hundreds of pages where almost nothing happens. Theres no driving narrative, virtually no plot. Everything is either a continuation of last book, where (barely) something happened, and promises of the NEXT book, where we hope something will happen. It is page after page of talk and talk.
Minor characters talk about stuff, which will happen in another book
Major characters talk about stuff with already happened, which would be nice if we didnt already know
Secondary characters we neither know nor care about talk
New characters who are introduced here only to drop back out talk
Exposition, exposition, exposition, and we're not given ONE reason to care. We already knew that the Church was building a new fleet. We already knew there was going to be another fight. We could already guess who was going to win. So when it happens here, why are we supposed to care? There's nothing new whatsoever. With no exaggeration, you can skim thru hundreds of pages at a time and not miss a thing.
Skim skim skim- OK Merlin is saying something
Skim skim skim- OK someone somewhere fired a bullet
SKim Skim Skim- Minor characters we have no reason to get involved about are planning devious plans which are never as interesting as they say

I have NEVER been outright disappointed in a Weber book before. But here we are. This book has no readability at all. Once the series is complete, this book will be passed over in its entirety in favor of later entries.

The worst part is, is boredom like this that's kept Weber from completing his OTHER series. No Harrington? No Multiverse? There's more adventure in any 50 pages of either one of them than in this entire novel. And I felt cheated reading it.

So, I love the concept of the overall series, Terran Federation gets thrown back to the preindustrial age and now has to climb its way back into space.

When I first began this series I thought that would be the central focus and plotline-- mankind getting back into space. Instead what we really have is a very carefully disguised mimmick of Eric Flint's 1632 but not as well done.

By now, its obvious that the Author's pace will never get us back into space. Don't get me wrong, the story is still decent but you have to reside yourself to the fact that what we really are reading is a quasi 1632 type story (Eric Flint). The bad news is that 1632 and 1633 are superior to this series, the good news is that 1634+ sucks really really bad and David Weber's Safehold series (this series) is better than the follow on books to 1632.

Back to this book. The pacing is a bit slow compared to the other books but it still held my interest. I don't have the burning need to grab the next book in the series though. The set up for the major pitch battle in this book was a bit long and of course we can see it coming a mile away which is always sorta anticlimatic since the writing is on the wall.

I'm going to start a different series and i'm not sure i'll get back to this one. Up to this point, we've probably read over 2000 pages worth of story and if you can't move things along significantly after that much time, then your readers are bound to move on to more action packed pastures.

Mr. Weber, if you are reading this I guess what I expected when I began this series was each "book" more or less representing the next generation or time period as we try to get back into space. I think that would have been a much better treatment not to say that I don't enjoy this persepective. But if I were going to go this direction, I think I would have defeated the church within 2300 pages, 3000 tops. And at this pace, That's not gonna happen. At this pace I think its gonna take a good 5000 words to defeat the church. Especially if we seesaw back and forth with key pieces of technology. Charis develops a new weapon, the Church catches up... Charis develops another new weapon, the Church catches up. At that rate and at the rate you are writing (i.e. each book is about 1 yr) this is going to take a lot of books to resolve. In any event, I did enjoy everything up to this point, thanks for the read

After reading by Schism Rent Asunder, I was eager to read the next (and I presumed final) installment in the Safehold saga. Alas, this work begins to do a Robert Jordan (the exhaustive extension of a failry straightforward plot line as infinitum). Although there is more character development, we barely hear from the primary three (Cayleb, Sharelyn, and Maikel. This work is mostly about the ancient cybernetic avatar who is fighting to save the last of humanity. The book plods along endlessly with only a few moments of the clear writing present in the earlier installment. The book is LONGER than the last with endless ponderings on naval organization and repeated archaic references to top gallants, spars and other ancient nautical terms. If I had wanted to read Horatio Hornblower, I would have bought it.

The book covers a significant period of time but precious little relevant action. Some politics are examined in the conquered lands of Corisande, but the book begins to lose its believability owing to the massive distances crossed by its protagonists and the juxtiposition of the modern and archaic. If you've started this series, I might suggest steering clear of this work and looking for something else.

The previous volume was sadly marred by having only one map, which was only tangential to the main battle scenes anyway. Apparently that was due to some snafu between the publisher and the printer; several more maps had been prepared. Well the nice aspect of book 4 is that, as in books 1 and 2, there are several germane maps. But if you haven't read book 4 yet, try starting by turning to the back and thumbing thru the list of characters. Whew! Weber is determinedly trying to flesh out an entire world and his effort clearly shows. Bravo.

Maybe I spoke too brashly. If you do turn to the back of the book, you'll get some idea of the volume of reading and the amount of character retention needed in your mind. A good test of the capacity of your working memory.

The pace of action is very drawn out as others have bemoaned. If you have made it this far in the series, you have already seen this. Unfortunately book 4 does not get any more concise than 2 or 3. Book 1 was still the most action packed. Is Weber getting paid by the kilo of paper printed? To some extent we have seen this with the Honor Harrington [aka. Horatio Hornblower] series. The early ones were tautly drawn. The later ones groaned under extensive [or is it intensive?] introspective character development.

The Safehold series does differ, in that Weber is emphasising the moral and religious struggles as coequal to the political fracas, whereas the HH books really had little to do with religious tensions. As Weber said in a book tour lecture I attended in 2008, Safehold is not meant to be a thinly clothed recap of HH.

On a final and tangential note, the Safehold books appear to have sidelined Weber's parallel magical worlds that he cowrote with Linda Evans. Perhaps the latter books did not sell as well as Safehold? For a full time writer, Weber has to reinforce success, as one of his military characters might say. And Weber is certainly doing so.
Comment

This is the fourth of five books published to date in the "Safehold" series whose central character is Nimue Alban".

Some readers will enjoy this, particularly those who are already hooked on the characters and situation as a result of reading the earlier books in the series. As with the first three, I found it hard to put down. However, a significant chunk of David Weber's fanbase will get bored with this book because it goes into a lot of detail about things which some of they may not be interested in.

It's a massive book with 690 pages of story followed by another 30 pages or so of appendices (character index, glossary etc.) Most of the first 500 pages are taken up with a detailed account of the consolidation which the heroes of the story would have to carry out to incorporate the territory conquered in book three.

One sub-plot involves a beautiful but lengthy description of a journey through the savage Safehold winter for a minor character who has been summoned to the Temple where the technological church who dominate the planet have their HQ. Another sub-plot, as the bad guys in the Temple prepare to crush any internal opposition within the church by the most cruel and brutal means, involves the attempts by the doomed leaders of that opposition to give as many as possible of their families and supporters a chance to escape.

If you have become attached to and interested in the characters built up over the first three books, and the world which Weber has built for them, you may enjoy this as much as I did. If, however, you are one of the many readers who enjoy David Weber's books mainly for the battles, this is probably a book to miss. There are two or three squadron actions in the early part of the book: finally towards the end, the Temple starts to move the huge fleets they have been building and, unusually for this series, takes the good guys by surprise. Which leads to some nail biting moments and a major fleet action at the climax of the book.

By this point in the series, the technology with which the naval battles are fought appears roughly comparable to that of the mid-seventeenth century. Weber shows that he can create sea battles similar to those of the age of fighting sail as well as he handles futuristic space battles.

But this book will probably, like "Storm from the Shadows" in the author's "Honor Harrington" universe, be one of the books which a significant part of the author's fanbase hate because there are not enough battles.

Another aspect of the book, very typical of David Weber, is that his characters spend a LOT of time in conferences and conference calls which are described in great detail. I doubt if there can every have been another SF novel set in a world where most of the technology is at a 17th century level where the main charactesr spend as much of their time on conference calls those in this book do! These can be a good way of explaining what happens by looking at how the different characters see what is going on, but even the most devoted Weber fan can occasionally wonder if there is a bit too much of them.

Incidentally, either Weber or his editor appear to have listened to this criticism, because the number of conference calls in the fifth and following book in the series, "How firm a foundation," has been dialled back.

If you're going to read this series, start at the beginning and work through in order. The five "Nimue Alban" books to date are:

1) Off Armageddon Reef (Safehold)
2) By Schism Rent Asunder (Safehold)
3) By Heresies Distressed (Safehold)
4) This book, A Mighty Fortress
5) How Firm a Foundation (Safehold)

Not all the ideas are new: the story is a re-working of a number of the ideas in a some of Weber's earlier books, particularly the Dahak trilogy "Mutineer's Moon," "The Armageddon Inheritance" and "Heirs Of Empire" - the whole trilogy has been published as "Empire from the Ashes". But IMHO Weber deploys the experience he has gained in the meantime to re-use the same basic ideas more effectively and with some original twists.

For example, the alien attackers who are at war against humanity at the start of the first book, and the threat of whom hangs over subsequent books, will remind many Weber fans of the Kangas from "The Apocalypse Troll" and even more of the Achuultani from the "Dahak" trilogy.

The anti-technological church which the heroes and heroines are struggling against throughout the first four books bears a striking resemblance to the church on Pardal in "Heirs of Empire (Dahak series)," the third book in the Dahak trilogy. But in both cases the presentation of those ideas is better done.

None of the statements in this review are spoilers for "A Mighty Fortress" but the following description of the setting of this fourth book may infer more than you want to know about the outcomes of the first three books if you have not read them yet. If that is the case I suggest you navigate to the page for "Off Armageddon Reef" (see links above).

The basic idea for the series is that in the 25th century, humanity finds evidence that other intelligent races have recently existed on nearby stars - but that a xenophobic alien race is exterminating them. The Terran Federation has just enough warning to make a fight of it when that enemy finds us and attacks ten years later. The war lasts fifty years - but at the end of that time it is obvious that humanity is losing.

Operation Ark, a final desperate attempt to plant a colony outside the area patrolled by the enemy is launched. If they succeed, the colonists will face a choice: try to build a civilisation powerful enough to defeat the attackers, or abandon any technology which might attract their attentions and simply hide.

The anti-technological faction in the leaderships of the new colony win, and set up a totalitarian theocracy whose main aim is to stifle any technical change. For eight hundred years nobody on the planet knew that it was a colony, that humanity has a deadly enemy out among the stars, and that the real reason for the ban on technology was to avoid attracting the attention of that enemy.

But eight hundred years after the founding of Safehold, a cyborg was activated with the mind and memories of Lieutenant-Commander Nimue Alban, a brilliant tactician who had been one of the thousands of people who gave their lives that the colony fleet could get through. When the church tried to destroy the nation of Charis for being a bit too innovative, as a warning to others, Nimue adopted the persona of "Merlin Athrawes," a warrior mystic, and helped them to defeat the initial church invasion.

At the start of this fourth book, through a mixture of war and brilliant diplomacy the young King of Charis, Cayleb has created an empire out of the maritime island nations around Charis. Most recently by he defeated and conquering his nation's long-term enemy, Corisande. Unfortunately the Church managed to murder the ruler of that state - Prince Hector - when he was about to surrender, in such a way as to make many of the people of Corisande wrongly blame Cayleb for the assassination. This is making the assimilation of the country more difficult.

Meanwhile, in the Temple, the corrupt leaders of the Church are licking their wounds while they build up a vast fleet and prepare to declare Holy War on Charis. And the evil Grand Inquisitor is also planning a terrible vengeance on anyone inside the church who gives him and his confederates less than 100% support ...

I sadly, must concur. I enjoyed the first and second book, but by the third, it was getting decidedly long-winded and lacking in excitement. Weber's first books, including the Mutineer's Moon series and Apocalypse Troll, were full of adventure and intriguing characters. He now still retains the characters, but far too many in my opinion! I was something like 300 pages in before the first battle! I appreciate his extensive back story and the genius that weaves it all together, but I'm not even all the way through and I feel like I'm drowning! By now, I'm skimming and skipping whole sections!
I'll read on to the end and try the next installment, hoping he steers us back on course to the Gbaba. But if not, there are others to read, and thankfully, not all are almost a thousand pages long! The books are so thick they're almost intimidating! With that many pages, I'd suggest he deal with each book as separate eras in Safeholds eventually rise back to the stars seen through the eyes of Nimue AKA Merlin.

David Weber is a very good author who has developed a compelling story and world. The problem with this book is that there is very little action and, when there is, the sequences are short relative to the length of passages used to plan for the action.

An annoyance is the continuous re-explaining about Merlin's origins, about the com systems, about the reasons behind Merlin'e existance. We are in book 4 of the series, we know all of that and the re-telling simply bogs down the story.

All long series have similar problems. Whether it is Jordan, or Goodkind or others, middle books tend to be prepatory in nature and, because of this, somewhat boring. Hopefully, Weber can overcome this in book 5.

Short and Sweet, it aint. Weber, if you read this, Are you still alive or are these latest novels by Ghost Writers?
I was unable to set a David Weber space novel down, you know you can always sleep later but what is on the next page, was my driving force. GONE GONE, where are you WEBER? Off Armageddon Reef drew me in. The Title, the premise, the early characters, Wow. Now I won't think of continuing. I might years down the road,if I am living and get all the remaining
books on CD and listen for the ascendancy of the Race back to power, but not now, no way.

Come back Weber

Thanks for the memories of bugs and White Caps.

Michael Gonzales

Without an editor, or without an editor willing to edit, the quality of the writing David Weber's recent offerings has dropped off dramatically. Both this latest Safehold book and the most recent Honor Harrington novel suffer from sprawl that would make Robert Jordan blush. David has the potential to be a great writer (the original Harringtons, early Legacy of the Aldenata, and the first two books of this series prove that) but he's far too enamored of his own prose to be turned loose unedited. Apparently he has the idea (mistaken, but all too common with writers who become popular) that if ten words are good, twenty are better, and two hundred are terrific. My guess is that getting paid by the word is having the unfortunate side effect of pushing him to write reams of unnecessary exposition--a sad turn of events, since when he started his terser style and lean prose made for great books.

I will probably give the next book in this series and the next Harrington a read, but if the drift continues, he will have lost me as a reader. I suspect that if the trend continues, he may lose a lot of other fans, too.

The 1st book in the series showed as much promise as any of Webers' early Honerverse books.

By book three of this series, it was torment to wade through the litany of minutia in dialogue and charactors. A mighty fortress--- I'll say,, it's a fortress of boredom. It's a fortress of tedious verbosity. It's an unassailable fortress of mind-numbing exhaustion.

I've tried four times to just FINISH this book, yet all I've been able to do is fall asleep every. single. time.

How on earth this disappointment got published is beyond me, but I promise-- it's the last Safehold book I'll buy.

On the other hand, I will continue to use it to stave off insomnia.

This book is a worthy addition to the Safehold series, full of action and intrigue. I am really enjoying the series

The characters development is well done and the character's are likeable and some you will really despise

Seriously, if Weber actually has an editor (and after reading this effort it is impossible to fathom that he does) that person should be taken out and flogged...repeatedly.

What started out as a fairly interesting combination of science fiction and fantasy has quickly degenerated into a Robert Jordanesque mess of epic proportions. Too many characters, too many sub-plots (many of which are repetitive), and almost no movement on the main storyline.

This isn't really a series of books that are connected through a shared storyline, it is one 5000 page novel broken up into 8-10 or however many parts his publisher thinks he can sell.

Even worse, he appears to have abandoned the idea of bringing the series full circle back to space and dealing with earth's enemies. Or perhaps he is planning another 8-10 books to deal with that story arc as well.

Given Weber's age and physique my suggestion is that he contact Brandon Sanderson now and start sharing his background material.