BOOK REVIEW: The Safehold Series, Books 1 Thru 4 - David Weber
(Lily's Theme - Alexandre DeSplat)
'What If' is a powerful question when asked in reference to certain topics. While it can certainly lead to unnecessary hand-wringing, it can also lead to seriously thought-provoking conversations.
David Weber's 'Safehold' series, of which 'Off Armageddon Reef' is the first novel, attempts to ask a series of rather deep 'What Ifs' about topics such as the nature of life, artificial intelligence, and the human tendency to evolve and go ... farther. Heady questions, to be sure, but what about Weber's answers?
They're wrapped up in a thread of significant length. Indeed, the Safehold series is a whopping TWELVE BOOKS in length at this point, and all signs point to there being more books on the horizon. Those books tell the story of humanity at the height of its technological evolution before abruptly turning everything on its head and sending the books' occupants back to a pre-steam era of industry.
The story, without spoiling much, revolves around mankind's journey into space, and the discovery of an ancient alien civilization that was both mighty and long-lived. Emphasis on 'was'. The question of, "Where did they go?" is answered within the first chapter. -Something- had to have come along and wiped these ancient aliens out, and unfortunately, mankind runs afoul of them all too quickly. The Uber-Bad Guys find mankind because of their high level of technology, and it rapidly becomes apparent that we're doomed to annihilation. The twist here is that the Big Bad Guys aren't really that much more powerful than humanity, they simply outnumber us by a considerable margin. And that's where the What Ifs start.
What if we'd known about them sooner?
What if we'd had another 50 years to build and evolve?
In an effort to preserve humanity, a distant planet is terraformed and seeded with eight million humans that have been forced to live in a pre-steam society in order to avoid attracting the bad guys. The goal here is to control their technological evolution in such a way that we build up quietly, jump out of the closet at the right time, and obliterate the bad guys.
That was the goal, anyway.
Safehold's many books explore this journey in a reasonably compelling, but also insanely frustrating way. The writing is excellent, and the author's attention to detail is evident, which makes the faster-moving sections of the book utterly joyful to work through. Unfortunately, the attention to detail goes very, VERY overboard with alarming frequency in a few really annoying ways:
- In an effort to illustrate linguistic drift over a period of time, everyone in the book has normal names spelled in a REALLY fucked up way, frequently using Z, H, and Y instead of other letters. 'Stephen' becomes 'Styvyn'. 'Jasper' becomes 'Zhaspyr'. 'Clinton' becomes 'Clyntyn.' 'Harold' becomes 'Haarahld'. 'Norman' becomes 'Naarmahn.' This is bad enough on its own, but there are a TON of characters in these books, and keeping anyone who isn't a principle character straight is next to impossible. It's 'Game Of Thrones' bad. He's got a character guide at the back of every book, but I shouldn't have to reference an index just to figure out who a particular chapter is about.
- As if the names weren't bad enough, there's the way that nobility is referenced in the books. Bob Jones, the Duke of Boggy Rock, isn't referred to in the book as Duke Jones. He's referred to as Duke Boggy Rock some of the time, and Jones other times. Except his name is also spelled in that infuriating fashion that's common throughout the books, so it would probably be Rahbyrt Zhawns. It makes keeping track of characters even more complicated, and I spent the first book just being pissed about this. JUST the way that names are done was almost enough to make me put the books down. It's that bad. More annoying even than this is the simple fact that the author isn't consistent with the names and words he's doing this to.
- Much of the action in the first four books takes place at sea in the form of naval warfare. David Weber has a sailing fetish. It's bad. His descriptions of boats and naval maneuvering go far beyond 'detail' and into that hellish world that only people like Steinbeck and Tolkien live in. For the few people that like sailing, this is probably the closest thing to boat porn that you'll ever find in a book. For everyone else, it's 'The Grapes Of Wrath' on the water. And it's fucking awful.
- There is SO MUCH INTROSPECTION IN THESE BOOKS. There are just pages and pages devoted to the rambling thoughts of random characters, and almost all of it is ultimately pointless to the plot!
- There's a piece of tech in these books called a SNARC, and it's basically a God-Level stealthed recon drone. The main character controls these SNARCs in a world that is otherwise pre-steam in technological terms, so he basically sees and hears all. Because of this, there's far less suspense in the book because you know there's no intrigue. The main character is almost always aware of what the bad guys are doing because he's eavesdropping on them using tech that's far more advanced than they have. This is HUGELY painful as a literary device, because you have to read these scenes of bad guys talking about their dastardly plots in one chapter, and then listen to the main characters discussing the same thing in the next chapter! I've blown through the first four books in about a week, and I've done so by simply skipping over any bad guy conversation chapters that I come to because they're regurgitated in the very next chapter. And because, with one or two exceptions, the bad guys are so one dimensional, there's no penalty for doing this!
These books are like "Pink Floyd - The Wall". You could cut about half of The Wall's two discs of music out and end up with one disc full of AMAZING MUSIC. Every single one of the Safehold books that I've read so far is like this. And now, we get to the most frustrating thing of all:
Once you skip past the names, past the introspection, past the pointless bad guy chapters, you get to the chapters with the Principals in them, to the chapters where there's action, and they're WONDERFUL. They're so awesome that I keep slogging through some of the worst book reading that I've ever endured. I dig through the garbage to find amazing writing, and it's WORTH IT.
I just wish I didn't have to work so hard for it.
I don't regret reading these books, but I would caution anyone who picks them up. If you're sick of all the shit that I've pointed out in this review by about a third of the way through book one, don't bother reading any more. The next three books are exactly the same.
'What If' is a powerful question when asked in reference to certain topics. While it can certainly lead to unnecessary hand-wringing, it can also lead to seriously thought-provoking conversations.
David Weber's 'Safehold' series, of which 'Off Armageddon Reef' is the first novel, attempts to ask a series of rather deep 'What Ifs' about topics such as the nature of life, artificial intelligence, and the human tendency to evolve and go ... farther. Heady questions, to be sure, but what about Weber's answers?
They're wrapped up in a thread of significant length. Indeed, the Safehold series is a whopping TWELVE BOOKS in length at this point, and all signs point to there being more books on the horizon. Those books tell the story of humanity at the height of its technological evolution before abruptly turning everything on its head and sending the books' occupants back to a pre-steam era of industry.
The story, without spoiling much, revolves around mankind's journey into space, and the discovery of an ancient alien civilization that was both mighty and long-lived. Emphasis on 'was'. The question of, "Where did they go?" is answered within the first chapter. -Something- had to have come along and wiped these ancient aliens out, and unfortunately, mankind runs afoul of them all too quickly. The Uber-Bad Guys find mankind because of their high level of technology, and it rapidly becomes apparent that we're doomed to annihilation. The twist here is that the Big Bad Guys aren't really that much more powerful than humanity, they simply outnumber us by a considerable margin. And that's where the What Ifs start.
What if we'd known about them sooner?
What if we'd had another 50 years to build and evolve?
In an effort to preserve humanity, a distant planet is terraformed and seeded with eight million humans that have been forced to live in a pre-steam society in order to avoid attracting the bad guys. The goal here is to control their technological evolution in such a way that we build up quietly, jump out of the closet at the right time, and obliterate the bad guys.
That was the goal, anyway.
Safehold's many books explore this journey in a reasonably compelling, but also insanely frustrating way. The writing is excellent, and the author's attention to detail is evident, which makes the faster-moving sections of the book utterly joyful to work through. Unfortunately, the attention to detail goes very, VERY overboard with alarming frequency in a few really annoying ways:
- In an effort to illustrate linguistic drift over a period of time, everyone in the book has normal names spelled in a REALLY fucked up way, frequently using Z, H, and Y instead of other letters. 'Stephen' becomes 'Styvyn'. 'Jasper' becomes 'Zhaspyr'. 'Clinton' becomes 'Clyntyn.' 'Harold' becomes 'Haarahld'. 'Norman' becomes 'Naarmahn.' This is bad enough on its own, but there are a TON of characters in these books, and keeping anyone who isn't a principle character straight is next to impossible. It's 'Game Of Thrones' bad. He's got a character guide at the back of every book, but I shouldn't have to reference an index just to figure out who a particular chapter is about.
- As if the names weren't bad enough, there's the way that nobility is referenced in the books. Bob Jones, the Duke of Boggy Rock, isn't referred to in the book as Duke Jones. He's referred to as Duke Boggy Rock some of the time, and Jones other times. Except his name is also spelled in that infuriating fashion that's common throughout the books, so it would probably be Rahbyrt Zhawns. It makes keeping track of characters even more complicated, and I spent the first book just being pissed about this. JUST the way that names are done was almost enough to make me put the books down. It's that bad. More annoying even than this is the simple fact that the author isn't consistent with the names and words he's doing this to.
- Much of the action in the first four books takes place at sea in the form of naval warfare. David Weber has a sailing fetish. It's bad. His descriptions of boats and naval maneuvering go far beyond 'detail' and into that hellish world that only people like Steinbeck and Tolkien live in. For the few people that like sailing, this is probably the closest thing to boat porn that you'll ever find in a book. For everyone else, it's 'The Grapes Of Wrath' on the water. And it's fucking awful.
- There is SO MUCH INTROSPECTION IN THESE BOOKS. There are just pages and pages devoted to the rambling thoughts of random characters, and almost all of it is ultimately pointless to the plot!
- There's a piece of tech in these books called a SNARC, and it's basically a God-Level stealthed recon drone. The main character controls these SNARCs in a world that is otherwise pre-steam in technological terms, so he basically sees and hears all. Because of this, there's far less suspense in the book because you know there's no intrigue. The main character is almost always aware of what the bad guys are doing because he's eavesdropping on them using tech that's far more advanced than they have. This is HUGELY painful as a literary device, because you have to read these scenes of bad guys talking about their dastardly plots in one chapter, and then listen to the main characters discussing the same thing in the next chapter! I've blown through the first four books in about a week, and I've done so by simply skipping over any bad guy conversation chapters that I come to because they're regurgitated in the very next chapter. And because, with one or two exceptions, the bad guys are so one dimensional, there's no penalty for doing this!
These books are like "Pink Floyd - The Wall". You could cut about half of The Wall's two discs of music out and end up with one disc full of AMAZING MUSIC. Every single one of the Safehold books that I've read so far is like this. And now, we get to the most frustrating thing of all:
Once you skip past the names, past the introspection, past the pointless bad guy chapters, you get to the chapters with the Principals in them, to the chapters where there's action, and they're WONDERFUL. They're so awesome that I keep slogging through some of the worst book reading that I've ever endured. I dig through the garbage to find amazing writing, and it's WORTH IT.
I just wish I didn't have to work so hard for it.
I don't regret reading these books, but I would caution anyone who picks them up. If you're sick of all the shit that I've pointed out in this review by about a third of the way through book one, don't bother reading any more. The next three books are exactly the same.
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