Off Armageddon Reef

[sawyl]

In a conversation last week, I claimed that the reason I've yet to read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle was because I was too short of time to get stuck in to a long set of novels. Only later did I notice that the book I was reading at the time, David Weber's Off Armageddon Reef, was only slightly shorter than Quicksilver. Anyway, here are a few thoughts on the Weber.

The book opens with a description of an encounter between humans and implacable and dauntless enemy. After a number of years, the enemy forces the remains of the human race into a desperate gambit: the last remaining fleet sacrifices itself in order to allow a group of colonists to escape. The trick appears to work and a new colony is established on a planet called Safehold, where a new religion is established by the colonising committee in order to prevent any forms of advanced technology — the sort that might attract alien attention — from arising. But after a few years, the committee, now styling themselves as angels, fall out over nature of the restrictions and, in a mirror of the War in Heaven, the two factions wipe each other out.

The narrative then jumps forward 800 years, to a hidden cave in the mountains of Safehold, where a robot carrying the memories of a woman killed during the original diversion that allowed the colonists to escape. She soon learns that she was concealed by the liberal faction to deal with the suspected excesses of the conservative faction. When she emerges from her cave, she finds a late medieval world dominated by a corrupt universal church, complete with an Inquisition to enforce the proscriptions against technology.

Searching for a way to bring the world out of its self-imposed dark age, the robot decides that her best bet is to start an industrial revolution, and possibly trigger a Reformation, in a monarchy called Charis. To do this, she change sex and becomes a master swordsman called Merlin. So disguised, she becomes an advisor to the king, coming up with various innovative twists on the existing technology — particularly naval and military technology.

In general, the book is rather enjoyable, with a good mix of political machinations and action on the high seas — very much a naval novel masquerading as an SF novel. Although some of the set-up might be familiar from some of Weber's other novels — religions hostile to technology appear both in the Honorverse novels and, more particularly, in Heirs of Empire — but the questions of conscience and behaviour it raises are interesting. Thus, despite Merlin's intense dislike of the manufactured religion, she has great respect many members of the clergy who come across as decent sorts despite believing deeply in something that is essentially a manipulative lie.

On the down side, the book is pretty long, although I barely noticed, and it contains a vast cast of characters to keep track of — any time a book comes with an appendix listing the dramatis personae, you know you're in trouble. Further, the character of Merlin is, perhaps, slightly under-developed especially given that she's the only female character, and even then, she spends almost her entire time as a man.

So, in summary, a fun read but perhaps slightly heavy on the machismo.