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This week I decided to review Safehold:
Hell's Foundations Quiver by David Weber.
In the future humanity
expands into space and forms the Terran Federation. However, they
encountered the Gbaba, an extremely xenophobic species that attacked
the Federation plunging it into a long interstellar war which
humanity lost. Seeking to avoid extinction, Operation Ark set out to
form a hidden human colony on the distant world of Safehold. However
some of the leaders of Operation Ark wished to hide from the Gbaba
for all eternity. They seized control of the mission, wiped the
memories of almost all the colonists, who were in stasis, and set up
a society ruled by the Church of God Awaiting which taught that
technological and scientific advancement was evil in order to prevent
Safehold's population from advancing to the level where they might be
noticed by the Gbaba. Eventually the Church formed an Inquisition to
put down those who opposed its edicts and over the centuries the
Church grew crueler and more corrupt. Around seven centuries after
the colony was founded, a Terran Federation AI, based on the
personalities of dead humans and named Merlin, awoke and began
planning to overthrow the Church and set Safehold back on the path to
reclaim humanity's place among the stars. Merlin allied with the
island nation of Charis and encouraged them to rise against the
Church, beginning a long war.
When the book begins Charis has
achieved a number of victories against the Church and its allied
nations due to their rapidly advancing technological base, roughly
equivalent to Earth's in the mid to late nineteenth-century AD. The
Group of Four, The church's unofficial leadership, consisting of the
leader's of the army, treasury, inquisition, and the chancellor of
the Council of Vicars, who has basically decided to stay out of
decision making related to the war, is torn. They have begun to
grudgingly adopt a number of technological innovations but the grand
inquisitor insists on being involved in military matters often
leading to conflict with the military's commander and the treasurer
as they wish to pull back their forces to shorten supply lines and
concentrate their strength while he insists on holding their ground,
in particular defending a number of inquisition-run concentration
camps in occupied regions of the Charis-allied Republic of
Siddarmark.
The Charsian troops and their allies use their superior
mobility during the winter and vastly superior artillery to inflict a
number of defeats on the church's forces and entrap some of the
church's armies, while in the concentration camps many of the church's
troops and one at least one inquisitor begin to question the morality
of how the prisoners are being treated.
And when the Grand Inquisitor
orders the execution of the inmates in the camps that can't be
evacuated before the advancing Charsian armies reach them, this
sparks rebellions among one of the camp garrisons. Meanwhile Merlin
has allied with a secret order, once part of the church, but long ago
banned and begun using her intelligence assets to aid the order's
assassins in strikes against the Inquisition, leading to increased
paranoia among the church's leadership and the Grand Inquisitor
assuming direct control of all military force in the capital city of
Zion.
On the seas the Charsian ironclads have given their forces a
massive advantage despite having to commit many of their ships to
commerce protection. But the church's allies are preparing to counter
with armored vessels of their own armed with spar torpedoes, and after
one massive battle the Charsian ironclad HMS Dreadnought is captured
along with part of her crew. As the captured sailors begin the
journey to Zion for execution, the Charsians plan a desperate rescue
while the Grand Inquisitor begins plans to better control the jihad's
most successful naval commander until he is no longer needed...
The
book also includes a detailed list of characters and information on
them as well as a glossary of Chasian terms.
I give this book 9 out of 10. It does a
great job of providing enough detail on the setting and what has
happened in the previous books that a new reader won't be completely
lost, and both the battlefront and rear area sequences are
interesting. However, there are a few parts I think could have been
trimmed without harming the story. Also, I feel there are two main
plotlines in the book and that it might have been better to spit them
into two smaller novels and add some more details to them rather
then have them both in a single massive novel.
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