Through Fiery Trials: A Novel in the Safehold Series

David,I'm sorry to say this, but if you don't do better on the next book, I'm breaking up with this series.Honestly, who CARES about any of this story line? I'm not going to spoil it for everyone, but I found this to be the most frustrating book I've read in ages. It's almost like you decided to write a crapload of stuff without ever getting to the meat of the issue ON PURPOSE! Seriously. The book should START with the last paragraph. That's what you've been building up to the last 9 books. Why muck around with the Marshall plan and the rest of the crap? Have you been hanging around George RR Martin and decided to torment your fan base? Please tell me you will publish the next book in just a week. Your editor should have spanked you!!! This is the fluff between the story.Sigh.

Nothing. Happens.Seriously, you could just skip to the last chapter and be ready for the next book. There were several weddings, a few funerals, some political machinations and upheavals, but in the end nothing happened. The final chapter in the book is the only one that couldn’t have been glossed over in a preface to the next tome.See, there needed to be some big enemy or evil plot that was fighting the good guys, but there wasn’t. It was just...people being people.Another criticism is that I got a bit tired of having noblewomen explain how they aren’t shocked by coarse language. It got boring. Or the overused metaphor that is an understatement that has to be thoroughly explained to be an understatement. It got repetitive.There was no plot. No driving force, except waiting for something to maybe happen that might not actually happen for another 80yrs if someone counted wrong.David Weber writes some great scenes. The emotions he can evoke with his words are deep. Some parts of this book have those moments.But it shouldn’t have been published like this. This was boring and pointless. The stories may have needed to be written, but they shouldn’t have been presented to us the way they were.If you are a long time fan, read it. The voice is there.If you like your reading to have a point? Your time is better spent elsewhere.

I keep thinking that I'm a glutton for punishment because I've found the last several Safehold books to be overstuffed with characters and plots I don't care about, and yet I keep reading because I'm invested in the core group.I'm pleased to say that I found myself skimming less of this book, though there's still some extensive sections in Harchong and Siddarmark that I didn't care as much about -- the Siddarmark sections, in particular, contain what felt like Economics 101 material.This book also spans the years 901 to 916, which means that a good deal more time is covered than in previous books (At The Sign Of Triumph takes place from 897 to 899), so of course Weber needs to remind you how old the various children are so that you can keep track of these things.Did I mention the children? There are multiple pregnancies and births during this book, and several marriages, proving Weber's (recent?) fascination with Babies Ever After. To go into more detail would be too spoileriffic for this review, but if you hated Honor Harrington's pregnancy, you'll probably hate at least one of the pregnancies in this book too.It's ambiguous as to whether Weber has another book planned in this series. The ending here could be a decent one for the series; it certainly provides more of a sense of resolution than many of the others. The religious schism, which came to a conclusion in the previous book, is wrapped up tidily here, but there are still politics and innovations yet to explore on Safehold. We certainly didn't get answers to some of the long-term questions posted, so count me among those tentatively hoping for more.As an aside, either the Kindle version was poorly edited or Weber's editor is truly asleep at the wheel. A character that appears in two different sections (and two sections only) has his name spelled differently in each section; there's another notable misspelling that stood out at me as I was reading it.

This was beyond bad. Endless chatter —and the repetitive banter between characters got old several books ago. Too many flat characters that seemed like clones of prior characters. The book just meandered aimlessly. The early books were good to brilliant. This one, I just started skimming after first 100 pages.

I really liked the first few books in this series (particularly "Off Armageddon Reef"), in the same way that I really liked the first books in Weber's "Honor Harrington" series. Sadly both of them have ended up degenerating badly as time has gone on, to the point where reading them crosses the line from "pleasure" into "chore". They just keep getting worse, bogged down by innumerable minor subplots with innumerable minor characters who get a page or two of detailed introduction and are then never mentioned again.The only good thing I can say is that after painstakingly going through a multi-year war almost week by week at times, there are FINALLY some substantial time skips between chapters in this book (around 15 years in all). This was long overdue.The bad news is that despite this somehow the plot itself doesn't really go anywhere in all that time. Almost nothing important happens. Without exaggerating too much, you could read the very first chapter, then skip to the end and read the last two and you would honestly have covered pretty much all that's worth reading with the exception of one or two significant deaths (all due to old age/illness, there's very little action of any kind to make things interesting).This book is all about Weber indulging himself exploring the aftereffects of the war that he already indulged himself describing in such detail over the last few books! Most of this book concentrates on rebellions in Harchong, economic problems in Siddarmark (read science fiction for lengthy discussions about central banking? you're in luck!), and an array of literally dozens of royal children and marriages and babies that I did not even attempt to keep track of (they're all basically irrelevant anyway).Even though the process of technological innovation is continuing, it's mostly relegated to the background throughout. There are brief mentions of some more advanced steam-powered warships and vehicles, and rigid airships are introduced too, but that's about it.The very last chapter/section is the best part of the book, while also acting as a very predictable cliffhanger for what I assume will be the first of several more sequels.I just hope Weber can pull himself back out of the weeds a bit and focus on moving things along at a faster clip without this compulsion he has to go into masses of needless detail. I'd really like to see this series one day get to the point of describing humanity leaving Safehold and going after the Gbaba, but the way things are going at the moment that is likely to take over a dozen books and they will not be fun to read.

Frankly, the book reads like a cross between ‘The Waltons’ and a local church list of births/deaths/marriages.It’s attempt to imply generational change (deaths of some key characters & development of new) could realistically been achieved in 10-20% of the book but actually takes up a good 70%.Sure there is a smattering if ‘innovation’, a light dusting of actual societal events and the tiniest, slimmest hint of the events the book promises.A filler. An awful, dull, boring filler. After 30% I was skipping pages rapidly simply to save my sanity.I have every book in the series but I will wait a good 5 years before considering another Weber after this. Sorry DW but this is too much saccharine-sweet ‘family’ mixed with dull activities.

The concept, which has been maintained throughout the series, starting with Off Armageddon Reef, is quite brilliant and as far as I’m aware totally original. If you’re considering this book I can see no point in summarising the plot to date. The principal characters are not just interesting but easily trigger our empathy.Like almost all books it has its plus and minus aspects, many of the former but far more of the latter than in earlier books. I’ll omit the long list of pluses and only name a few minuses:There are far too many newer characters to keep track of, to the extent that I gave up trying.It is extremely verbose in places, so much so that I could skim pages and the same characters would be saying more of less the same things.The interim stories, to give us an idea of what is happening, interspersed with big time jumps to get through the entire 15 years didn’t work well for me.One final minus is largely also a plus; it’s the author’s dry sense of humour, which I enjoy, and is projected onto many of the characters; but what makes it a small minus is how very many of the book’s characters have exactly the same dry sense of humour.So while not as good as earlier books I’ll be buying the next when it comes out.However I consider the final chapter not only belongs to the following book but insults the intelligence of readers by blatantly attempting to pursuade them to buy it.

I have enjoyed all of the previous safehold books. The concept of going from galleys to steam powered battleships in 10 years is a bit silly but it is fiction and it took me along well. It did bog down at times but on the whole it was enjoyable. This 10th book has been a joyless chore requiring fast forward skim reading or just putting it down due to pointless wandering and drivel. I do hope he can pull it back into something with a plot and pace. Will it take him a year to produce the next book or will he have to quicken it up to avoid the loss of readership this one will cause.

David Weber has always been much, much better at writing wars and naval battles than he has been at writing people, and this book really suffers for that; its basically an attempt to bridge fifteen years of realistic political history between the war he ended in the book and the war he'll presumably be starting in the next one.It suffers. People are one dimensional; either good or bad, with no grand flaws. I cannot think of any real world leader with such saintly personalities. Churchill was a villain in the story of India, and monstrous in his advocacy of empire and brutal suppression of rebellious Arabs and Indians. He is also rightly the national hero of western democracy who refused to yield in the face of disastrous defeat. A history buff like Weber should be inspired by that and add depth accordingly.but their are more problems. first, this fifteen year skip really does suffer for lacking any deep focus on any one area. It could have forgone the POV of several characters, I'm thinking the entire imperial family and Merlin for a start, who don't DO much, and just lived though the lives of those in the more conflict ridden areas where actual plot is happening. A wider view of these events isn't needed; the inner circle don't have any more insight to offer than would a peasant's eye view in Harchong amidst the collapse. More drama, less long descriptions of improving or declining international relations. Consequences are more interesting than events, and people realising what the assassinations and marriages of distant royals mean for them is more interesting to my eye than soppy romance scenes that Weber reeeeeeally struggles with.This turned into rant, but really, Mr Weber, if you read this, stick to your strengths. in pervious books in this series you wrote some of the best naval action scenes I've ever read, and your love of and expertise in the subject matter shines through. The ground war too was fine work, if not quite as brilliant. This book... really needed a good hard editor. But I look forward to the next one.