By Heresies Distressed
By David Weber
Tor, $27.99, 496 pages
In this third book of Weber’s Safehold series, things start heating up. Book One set up the situation: the last humans fleeing a genocidal alien race set up home on a new planet, Safehold, and are mentally programmed to believe in a technological averse religion, patterned after the founders who set themselves up as arch-angels. Why? Because millions of colonists all remembered awakening at the same time, fully grown, seeing “miracles” (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” ~ Arthur C. Clarke) performed by the Church, and none with memories of anything prior to the Awakening. When a schism between some of the founders results in the destruction of the dissident city by an orbital strike and a retaliatory mini-nuke takes out the Church hierarchy, the citizens of Safehold continue to develop their world, while staying within the technological limits set by the Church.
In the first book Off Armageddon Reef, after 800 years of uncontested power the Church has become corrupted, run by the Group of Four. They are mostly interested in worldly power, riches, and comforts. The small island kingdom of Charis has become the target of their wrath, and they force several other nations to act as their cats paw. Some nations require more encouragement than others. At the same time, an android containing the conscientiousness of one of the original officers of the colonizing fleet awakes and, seeing the state of the world, decides to take an active role in educating Safehold’s citizens as to their heritage. Merlin joins with King Haarahld of Charis and his son Cayleb, and uses his technological skills and tools to help Charis destroy the fleets of four other nations, buying themselves time to build up a better defense against the Church directly.
By Schism Rent Asunder was a much slower book, mostly conversations between key players reacting to the events in Off Armageddon Reef. The Church has a hard time believing that the technological developments by Charis actually were that much of a deciding factor in the epic battle. Charis ramps up their production of new weapons, ships and tactics (mostly quietly encouraged by Merlin), and looks for new alliances and priorities. Cayleb, now king after Haarahld’s death, proposes marriage to Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm-one of the countries that required a great deal of persuasion to join into the original attack on Charis. Charis also creates a new Church, and while most of their citizens support the change, enough see themselves as true believers to create a dangerous insurgency within Charis itself.
By Heresies Distressed goes back to the active scenes that Weber does so well. There are still politics aplenty, but more battles on sea and land. The Church has almost infinite resources, and now that they have stopped worrying about the “sin” of technology, they are better able to compete with Charis, putting more pressure on Merlin and Cayleb to stay one step ahead. Sharleyan, now Empress of the combined kingdoms, becomes a larger figure in the story, yet unaware of the truth Merlin has shared with Cayleb and a few select others. Many of the previously introduced characters continue on, and some new ones get introduced. While it would be easy to paint the Church or Charis’ enemies with a broad paintbrush of “evil,” Weber creates realistic motivations for them (including the occasional evil one), and develops them as complete characters.
In By Schism, it is discovered that one of the founders, Shan Wei, had left two secrets after her destruction. One was a monastic order that kept the secrets and truth of Safehold’s founding; the other was Merlin. Her rebellion against the prevailing power in the colony ended with her being forever labeled in Church doctrine as a fallen arch-angel, or the devil. In Heresies, it turns out that she was not the only one to leave a multi-generational secret. While not resolved, the hanging story line leaves plenty to look forward to in the next volume.
For readers of Weber’s other books, the Safehold series bears a resemblance to his previous book Heirs of Empire from the Dahak series-technologically reversed civilization, powerful Church maintaining the status quo, technological advanced visitor helping small isolated country against overwhelming odds. Yet Safehold really develops itself. Weber uses his military history knowledge to create believable situations but also gets to tweak them with “What if we added in…” elements. Safehold is one of those series worth buying as they get released, even if that means you have a year to wait till the next installment.
Reviewed by Ross
