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A review by mburnamfink
Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber
2.0
I enjoyed this book a lot more when it was called Heirs of Empire.
The premise is pretty cool. At some point in the future, interstellar humanity encounters a genocidal alien empire. Overmatched by sheer numbers, they come up with a desperate plan to plant a secret colony, hinder its technological development until the threat has passed, and then tech back up and kick alien ass. The plan gets highjacked by the high command, who brainwash the colonists to regard them as divine entities and set up an even more brutally stultifying theocracy. Internecine fighting wipes out these 'archangels', and 900 years later a contingency plan of an AI based off a young officer wakes up in a robot body with instructions to kick off the scientific revolution.
That's the first three chapters, and then the rest is a slog though Weber's usual themes. The superiority of enlightened despotism; using 18th century military technology to beat up more primitive weapons; adoration of Nelsonian England; multiple points of view, including the antagonists. The story pits Merlin and his chosen maritime power of the Kingdom of Charis as the seed for the industrial revolution. We get descriptions of ships of the line, intrigues, swordfights, etc, as Merlin and Charis build a navy that outmatches anything on the planet. Galleons armed with carronades and backed up by satellite recon and bugs in the chambers of the holy alliance against them give Merlin's forces an incredible advantage, and they win a lopsided victory that took the Honorverse five books to settle into. The king is dead, but his sacrifice creates a noble example against the harsh repression of the anti-innovation Church.
This book basically mashes up a bunch of Weber's previous works, and it's overlong and melodramatic to boot. I got this book for free, and I still feel like I overpaid. The only reason for two stars is that Weber is still a decent writer on a sentence to sentence level, and hey, you didn't expect to do much thinking. I'll be passing on the rest of the Safehold series.
The premise is pretty cool. At some point in the future, interstellar humanity encounters a genocidal alien empire. Overmatched by sheer numbers, they come up with a desperate plan to plant a secret colony, hinder its technological development until the threat has passed, and then tech back up and kick alien ass. The plan gets highjacked by the high command, who brainwash the colonists to regard them as divine entities and set up an even more brutally stultifying theocracy. Internecine fighting wipes out these 'archangels', and 900 years later a contingency plan of an AI based off a young officer wakes up in a robot body with instructions to kick off the scientific revolution.
That's the first three chapters, and then the rest is a slog though Weber's usual themes. The superiority of enlightened despotism; using 18th century military technology to beat up more primitive weapons; adoration of Nelsonian England; multiple points of view, including the antagonists. The story pits Merlin and his chosen maritime power of the Kingdom of Charis as the seed for the industrial revolution. We get descriptions of ships of the line, intrigues, swordfights, etc, as Merlin and Charis build a navy that outmatches anything on the planet. Galleons armed with carronades and backed up by satellite recon and bugs in the chambers of the holy alliance against them give Merlin's forces an incredible advantage, and they win a lopsided victory that took the Honorverse five books to settle into. The king is dead, but his sacrifice creates a noble example against the harsh repression of the anti-innovation Church.
This book basically mashes up a bunch of Weber's previous works, and it's overlong and melodramatic to boot. I got this book for free, and I still feel like I overpaid. The only reason for two stars is that Weber is still a decent writer on a sentence to sentence level, and hey, you didn't expect to do much thinking. I'll be passing on the rest of the Safehold series.