Off Armageddon Reef (Safehold #1) by David Webber

3.5 Stars

Swashbuckling read that dragged on a bit at times.

Don't get me wrong. I liked it, but could have trimmed a bit or maybe I'm just a whiner because it spent more time on the conflict of secular and spiritual forces and less on boats. More boats!

This basically reinterprets the Age of Sail and how innovation drives economy, growth and change. Not everyone likes change, but it is a result of innovation. New ideas, new solutions cause one to question fundamental principles. Either one embraces it or not, and the ensuing battle goes from metaphorical to physical faster than you think.

At the end of the day, a civilization either moves with the tide or gets drowned by it. Stagnation is death, just slow. I guess the blatant manipulation in this book is amusing/ironic/slightly terrifying when you think of present day consequences, but in establishing the world, Webber cribbed it straight out of history-- 15th and 16th century. If you don't know it, then it's probably necessary, but if you have a grasp of it then you spend your time saying, "Come on, come on--Let's go!"

Then there's the tedious repetitions as multi-players are pulled into a scheme and we have to hear how each one reacts to the same event and I think it could have been tightened. Second thing that really made me roll my eyes, not aggravate, more quirked brow, was the spellings of names. I love sci-fi fantasy; I get it. I'm all for weird. But taking essentially the same names and just replacing all or the majority of vowels with "Y"s was... lame.

On the other hand, love the references to Hamilcar and Hasdrubal. Yeah, I read that Hannibal book last year so this passing/throwaway nod was nice. There's a bunch, some dorkier than others, but fun.

If you've read enough reviews of mine then you've probably noticed a slight fixation on boats, sailing, islands, etc. and this was a big draw for the book. And I was NOT disappointed. Innovations in boat design as well as a good eye for naval military maneuvers were stellar. Seriously, the naval warfare and all the intensity and horrific consequences, the best two hundred pages of the book. As much as this dragged on, I'll give the sequel a go, because Duh... BOATS and I like the main characters.

To sum up in LA Style: this is Henry VIII meets Pern on a bed of Borg and Lucifer.