Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

Book Overview

With humankind reduced to a single colony on the world of Safehold, the human rulers of the planet, in an effort to preserve the remnants of their industrial civilization, build a religion designed to hide the colony by keeping its society medieval.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765315009
• ISBN13: 9780765315007
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 2.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

You will hate yourself for starting this series.

I stopped reading the sixth book in the series on page 309 of 548. I love David Weber's works however this series isn't one of them. Take a GREAT premise for a story line (first book in the series) and ruin it with 5 additional books explaining, in DETAIL, the evolution of technology from medieval to 1800's level. Very frustrating. It's like he is cutting and pasting from history books to increase the word count. I get it - Safehold was stunted technologically. I'm tired of reading how ancient armies waged war and every nitty gritty detail about sailing a Galley or how a bicycle with a coaster brake works how arbalests are inferior to flintlocks etc... I kept hoping they would get better but the more I kept reading the further into the 'history' abyss I went. I read the synopsis of the future books in the series (7,8 and 9) and I fear more of the same with the exception of them maybe moving to WWII technology...….eventually and that's just a guess based on the blimps on one of the covers. Going to wait until the book comes out when the Aliens come back - if they ever do.

Reformations Rock!

The Safehold Series is a brilliant retelling of the Protestant Reformation that I think will be enjoyable by those with and without religious backgrounds, but it is best understood in that light. Weber has a particular gift for weaving fascinating subjects such as the development of weapons technology, philosophy, political machinations, religion and ethical considerations into a rich story with somewhat larger than life characters. Furthermore, Weber makes an interesting choice in that within the setting of his story, he chooses to forgo the easy route of assuming that there is no God. In fact, all of the characters who are fighting against the abomination that the Church of Safehold has become all believe that there is truly a God. Even better, he includes his readership who may not be particularly religious or who may be atheistic, by not putting a strict Judeo-Christian face on God, and also by not hammering on the point either. Off Armageddon Reef begins with a short but seemingly stereotypical space opera style confrontation with a technologically superior (but apparently also by this time, technologically stagnant) race. I must admit that at this point in the book, I had serious reservations. However, once the story moves beyond this and the exposition necessary while the necessary explanation is made to the book's protagonist, it truly comes to life. Very quickly the reader is immersed in a well-spring of tricky decisions Nimue (Merlin) must make, political machinations within the Church and each of the realms of Safehold, and characters who must have the courage to turn away from everything that they have ever been taught to begin to test the truth for themselves. At this point I must say that men who have difficulty accepting strong, independent, and intelligent women will not like this book and will probably grumble about unrealistic characterization. Women who primarily base their decisions on emotional responses and resent any intrusion of rationality or pragmatism will also probably strongly dislike this series, and Weber's characterization of women. Weber shares Orson Scott Card's gift for writing female characters who think quickly and lucidly, who can make deductions, think scientifically, and can understand the ramifications of the situations they are in and the information they are presented with. And though it is true in most cases that the good guys never make any dumb mistakes, save later in the series when the head of the guards of the empress sends only one soldier to check on the disappearance of another--hello, would you gift-wrap your guardsmen to be picked off one by one?--Weber is to be commended for his ability to characterize intelligent women and intelligent men who are not threatened by the former. Much has been made about Weber's choice to provide strange archaic and sometimes almost Welsh appearing names, Dynnys instead of Dennis, for example. And though I admit that more than once I had to stop

Loved the 1st book, love the potential

I try to write reviews of books I've read several weeks to months after I've read them, it helps me put the books in perspective with other books I'm reading. So, as I sifted through my recollections of reading the book and what I thought of it, two things keep popping to the forefront of my mind... 1. I loved the book, it was a great read. 2. I am excitedly looking forward to the next book in the series. That is high praise for a book for me as I have such a poor memory that I forget most details of what I've read very quickly. Just looking at the cover of the book as I was sitting to write the review I thought "Oh yeah! A sequel will be out soon, great!!". I liked the book because it has a great hook and the way Weber tells it is fresh and engaging. I almost didn't buy this book because the basic premise seemed so over done, the common theme of "and all of humanity is threatened and is at the edge of total annihilation...". However, I should have known, Weber comes in and paints that picture with some initial twists in such a way that I am immediately engaged and I "care" about the next parts of the story. He has me now, I have to finish the book. The rest of the story lives of to my expectations of Weber story writing skills, he creates characters that I empathize with and want to see what happens next to them. I like the universe created and see a great potential for a number of stories in this universe. I eagerly look forward to the journey.

Fasinating Characters & Wonderful plot

It has been noted that this has similarities to a couple of Webers other books, however I think this one is more interesting then they are. What I found fascinating was the details in characters and 'history' that framed the action scenes. I'm always very interested in how advanced technology would be percieved by less advanced cultures. I'm looking forward to how Weber will handle the reactions of the Safeholdians to learning the truth behind the religious lies they've believed all their lives. I found the character of Merlin - the android with the personality of Nimue Albin to be very interesting and I'm interested in how she will handle being imortal amoungst the mortal humans she must guide safely to the future. I've already re-read this book and my favorite sections several times and am eager to read the sequal.

The Wizard Merlin

Off Armageddon Reef (2007) is the first SF novel in a new series. Humans have been expanding through space for hundreds of years without finding any other spacefaring species. In 2368, however, they found the remains of another civilization that had been thoroughly destroyed. Although some argued that the aliens had committed suicide, most supported the development of a real space navy. Ten years later, the Terran Federation Navy encountered the Gbaba. The TFN thoroughly lost its first battle with the aliens, but took out some of the enemy. The aliens then systematically killed every remaining human in the system. This scenario became the rule for the next few decades. In 2421, the TFN managed to sneak out a squadron of ships to establish a holdout colony. A prior effort had worked for a while, but eventually the Gbaba located the colonists, probably through the characteristic emissions of advanced technology. The current group of refugees was supposed to revert to primitive technology and multiply for several centuries until the Gbaba became less alert. Eric Langhorne, civilian chief administrator of Safehold, made some radical changes to the original plan to ensure that all high technologies -- and even the scientific method -- were suppressed. One of the key points was a modified psychological profile imposed upon the colonists, which established the Church of God Awaiting with Langhorne and his department heads proclaimed as Archangels. Another was the erasure of all knowledge of the Gbaba. Some of the administrative council objected to these changes and moved away from the main colony to Alexandria, where they maintained records for all human history. Langhorne ordered Alexandria destroyed. Kinetic missiles crossed and recrossed the site with high energy strikes until every body was vaporized. The area was filled with craters, forming Armageddon Reef, and was thought to be haunted by demons. In this novel, Nimue Alban awoke within a cave in the Mountains of Light some eight centuries later, or did she? A holographic recording explained to her that the real Nimue Alban had died in battle with the Gbaba. She is the PICA -- Personality-Integrated Cybernetic Avatar -- of Nimue and her job is to prepare the colony for battle against the Gbaba. Mother Church is still running the colony, although it has direct control only in the Churchlands. The hierarchy of archbishops and other clerics strongly influence the nation states elsewhere in the world, but communication delays preclude effective management of the peripheral nations. Moreover, the Church is mostly guided by secular concerns and the archbishops spend more time at the Temple of God than in their nominal lands. Charis is among the richest of the peripheral nations, with the largest fleet of ocean-going vessels. King Haarahld VII is the current ruler of Charis. The kings of Charis are unusual in that they feel responsible for the well-being of their citizens. Thes

grim microcosmic struggle

Weber commences a new series with this well polished book. Fans of his earlier works should note the clear thematic associations shared between those novels and OAR. The closest of which is the scenario of "In Death Ground" and the "Shiva Option". There, humanity and a coalition of other spacefaring races win a desperate genocidal war against the Bugs, where each Bug world was detected and destroyed. Here, the situation is grimly reversed. There are no friendly powerful races to aid Man. Instead, the few human worlds are overwhelmed, and finally, so is Earth. Shades, too, of Saberhagen's Man-Berserker wars. Or of Ringo's Human-Posleen war series. Another parallel is with Weber's "Excalibur Alternative" and its ending. Where an alien fleet bent on destroying Earth is defeated. That book was, thus far, the only one of its series. Its ending plainly suggested sequels of humans against a large alien empire. But in the absence of those, we have OAR. What is distinctive of OAR is how the losing space war is merely the preface to the main narrative. Where a cyborg now struggles to lift a fugitive remnant of mankind back to the stars, from a medieval world, in order to one day confront the Enemy. The travails where she tries to upgrade a nation in its struggles with the rest of the world are a microcosm of the earlier futile war by Man against the Enemy. A deliberate pathetic fallacy rarely seen in science fiction. The notable exception is Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", where there is a struggle on a backward world, against a backdrop of a galactic conflict. That book won a Hugo in 1991. Wonder if Weber's might also rise to such greatness? There are also parallels with Drake and Stirling's General series. In those, spacefaring Man collapsed into civil war. And on one fallen world, a sentient computer strives to pull humans back up the technological ladder. At least in that series, the collapse was not due to genocide, and humans still exist across many worlds. The writing in OAR is quite well done, in both the descriptions of technology and the overall plot. It is also a refreshing change from Weber's long running Harrington series. While that has garnered many fans, it seems to be running out of conceptual steam. Those books tend to blur into one another. Whereas the new blank page of OAR permits more flexibility. There is a slight awkwardness. The android hero is so far ahead of her opponents in capability that a Superman syndrome almost arises. You know, when the Superman comic strip was first written, its artists/authors made him invulnerable. The error of this was quickly corrected with the introduction of kryptonite. In OAR, Weber has to struggle to make plausible difficulties for the hero. None of the battles are actually close calls. Though in counterpoint, the hero's advantages can be considered outweighed by the backdrop of her against the aliens; a most unequal contest. Clearly, Weber intends the reader to grit her teeth at the fate of