Honest Opinion (May Contain Spoilers)

My big disappointment was not finding out what was in Seijin Kohdy's diary. If he wrote down what the "demon" said to shake his faith, then that could suggest a tactic for The Reveal, which will be one heck of a challenging operation at best.

Everyone who thought Clyntahn was on the trajectory to a Berlin bunker scene, this book confirms it.

I liked this one more than LAMA (or, for that matter, ART.) I felt like there was more overall plot progress this time around. That said, I feel like it's about time for the series to wrap up. Between the King Haarahlds and the dismal state of affairs for the Church, this war is all but over. Let's see how it ends!

Expert snuggler wrote:My big disappointment was not finding out what was in Seijin Kohdy's diary. If he wrote down what the "demon" said to shake his faith, then that could suggest a tactic for The Reveal, which will be one heck of a challenging operation at best.

Everyone who thought Clyntahn was on the trajectory to a Berlin bunker scene, this book confirms it.

We did get a general description of what was in the spanish portion of the diary. (The 'demon' was mayor of that town etc pp).
And it seems that DW feels that's enough to understand the Kohdy - part of the general plot. He probably even is right.

But yes: Being enough of a description and explanation for us to understand the text's value is not the same as being an emotionally and intellectually satisfying reveal for us readers.

The description we got was not 'first hand' - it was second hand.
We did not actually witness Merlin read the text for the first time (or read it to someone - like say Sandaria - for the first time. Instead we got to witness the core cast discuss the already read text second hand. And that to me was not quite as satisfying.
It's like being walked up to King Tut's tomb, getting a detailed description of the door and how it was found. And then making a cut and not being allowed to enter. Instead being scrolled forward to an academic discussion about the contents later on.
You get the necessary theoretical knowledge but you do not take part in the experience of making the discovery.
Experiencing things is an enjoyable part of reading.

Jill A wrote:I, too have felt the story is dragging out. What I don't know though, is will it feel that way when the big story is all done and published. Siddermark was attacked in November, 895 in the book published Sept. 2011. Here it is now October, 2015 and we have only gotten to October, 897 in the book.

So, four years of waiting and talking and thinking in real life to get through two years of Safehold life. For myself, I have enjoyed the stray story lines in Honorverse much more now that the are all coming together. It is making a great story and I'm pretty sure this will happen with the Safehold Series. That when it takes only a week to read about the whole Mainland war, it will be well paced and a good read.

I love the series. I'm enjoying it immensely. None of my above should be taken as serious criticism. I think Bruno is right, it is a different type of storytelling, but it is a great story! Thought provoking in places, funny, touching, sad, all in prose that carries you right along.

Thank you for your work, for telling this tale!

Jill A

It is all about Critical Mass... reaching the tipping point on all sides of the conflict. Any success requires a base of support; Merlin's is expanding and deepening and the Church's is evaporating. I believe that the next book sees the Inquisition collapse (maybe Harchon has a brief civil war or coup when the Mighty Host returns with enlightened leaders and guns in their hands) and Merlin and his team begin to reeducate the populaces via new personalities and mysterious broadsides.
We have seen the thoughtful understanding of how the jihad would throw them away shared by top officers of The Mighty Host, expanding the inner circle (still need some in Tarot and Chisolim to keep an eye on things), undermining the inquisition and the ICA and SRA consolidating their position and breaking the AOG on every front.

Yes there were some unexpected (and unwelcome) setbacks with the KH battleship but, on the other side of that...snatching the pow's and concentration camp detainees and especially Trask's family from Clinton all have moved the story to the point of "the last straw that broke the camels back" The camp inquisitors are scared spit-less and the Fist of God is putting the squeeze on the temple itself.

My only complaint is that it takes so long to get my hands on the next book.

I agree with C. O. Thompson. HFQ is the book that builds up to critical tipping point of the war with Church and the Group of Four. You have to have that build up and while it may have taken a lot of book to get there, I think it was important to show that the tipping point is building across the entire planet. Part of that critical mass is seeing many of the Church's military officers (e.g. Rainbow Waters, Bishop Militant Bahrnabai Wyrshym, the officer in the concentration camp that killed the inquisitor right before the camp was liberated -sorry don't have the book near by to get the name-, etc...) going around their orders from Clyntahn to do what is actually militarily sane/morally right.

C. O. Thompson wrote:Jill A

It is all about Critical Mass... reaching the tipping point on all sides of the conflict. Any success requires a base of support; Merlin's is expanding and deepening and the Church's is evaporating. I believe that the next book sees the Inquisition collapse (maybe Harchon has a brief civil war or coup when the Mighty Host returns with enlightened leaders and guns in their hands) and Merlin and his team begin to reeducate the populaces via new personalities and mysterious broadsides.
We have seen the thoughtful understanding of how the jihad would throw them away shared by top officers of The Mighty Host, expanding the inner circle (still need some in Tarot and Chisolim to keep an eye on things), undermining the inquisition and the ICA and SRA consolidating their position and breaking the AOG on every front.

Yes there were some unexpected (and unwelcome) setbacks with the KH battleship but, on the other side of that...snatching the pow's and concentration camp detainees and especially Trask's family from Clinton all have moved the story to the point of "the last straw that broke the camels back" The camp inquisitors are scared spit-less and the Fist of God is putting the squeeze on the temple itself.

My only complaint is that it takes so long to get my hands on the next book.

>(maybe Harchon has a brief civil war or coup when the Mighty Host returns with enlightened leaders and guns in their hands)

Or before! Sun Tzu would approve of avoiding a fight with the Mighty Host by making them turn back to suppress a revolt. (But who's left there to rise up?)

My thoughts while reading it were of a similar vein to many posters here. It was enjoyable but didnt live up to expectations.

I found the pacing slow, and instead of being engrossed in it found it easy to put down and do something else for a while.

With respect to the naval arena, I found the combination of events in context with each other to be a bit heavy handed.
Yes, ships do have navigational errors, and yes, arrangements to scuttle can fail, and yes industrial accidents happen. However the combination of them seemed a bit obvious plot wise. (And yes, Merlin could have used a remote to drop a detonator into Dreadnaught's scuttling charge if he wanted to).

With respect to the land arena, good military tactics dont always make good reading. Flanking and enveloping an enemy who didn't protect their rear areas is the smart move but not very exciting.

I was also hoping for the Khody plot line to be more important as well.

However, most of these events do help advance the overall plot, like other posters have commented on. The AoG is more or less neutralized, at least for now. The allies can focus on the Mighty Host for the next campaign season.
The coming collapse of the jihad's war effort could use some plot love, however. I don think Clyntahn will truly lose it until the Mighty Host is fails to make any headway and the economy hits a crisis, and there has been almost no foreshadowing of preparations by Magwhair or Ducharin, and by now I would have expected some by now.

ericth wrote:My thoughts while reading it were of a similar vein to many posters here. It was enjoyable but didnt live up to expectations.

I found the pacing slow, and instead of being engrossed in it found it easy to put down and do something else for a while.

With respect to the naval arena, I found the combination of events in context with each other to be a bit heavy handed.
Yes, ships do have navigational errors, and yes, arrangements to scuttle can fail, and yes industrial accidents happen. However the combination of them seemed a bit obvious plot wise. (And yes, Merlin could have used a remote to drop a detonator into Dreadnaught's scuttling charge if he wanted to).

With respect to the land arena, good military tactics dont always make good reading. Flanking and enveloping an enemy who didn't protect their rear areas is the smart move but not very exciting.

I was also hoping for the Khody plot line to be more important as well.

However, most of these events do help advance the overall plot, like other posters have commented on. The AoG is more or less neutralized, at least for now. The allies can focus on the Mighty Host for the next campaign season.
The coming collapse of the jihad's war effort could use some plot love, however. I don think Clyntahn will truly lose it until the Mighty Host is fails to make any headway and the economy hits a crisis, and there has been almost no foreshadowing of preparations by Magwhair or Ducharin, and by now I would have expected some by now.

I fully understand and share your frustrations. Having said that and having tried my own humble hand at story telling, I became more aware of how hard it is to bring a story line to the place you intended in a way that stays entertaining and is not an obvious construct. The "somehow it all worked out" is the same as "suddenly a miracle happened" and I have become critical and cynical of such devices.
Reading the posts in this forum caused me to remember an example of taking things to extremes to achieve the goal. I don't remember the name of the short story and I may do an injustice to ascribe it to Roger Zelazny but the entire story was written to set up a pun (actually a real groan)with the main character a guy named Slone who has some sort of unlikely animal (maybe a cockroach) that he races as part a gambling pool. He called the animal Teddy and he never lost.

I remember the punchline but will hold for someone to give the title and to let me know if Roger Zelazny is not the author I am thinking of.

The real point of this post is that I think that David Weber has a subtle and compelling story telling style. He obviously sees the character way down the road like when a midshipman named Hector fights back to back with his king against advisories working not only for the Go4 but for a prince named Hector and then not only marries the daughter of the prince but joins her to fight the Go4 at a more effective level than either could have guessed possible in OAR.

It took a long time to peel away the layers to get to that point... a lot of water under the bridge or over the dam but, I don't think that most of us though of that at the time.

I guess we are all sitting on the edge of our seats, chewing finger nails waiting to see how this will work itself out.

Take cleansing breaths, think of happy events and do something good in your neighborhood while waiting for the next book

For what my opinion is worth

Asimov is what I vaguely remember.

HFQ would have been good if I were reading the whole series, complete with books that are yet to come, immediately one after another.

But after waiting for two years, and before what is likely to be another 2-3 years of waiting for the next book, HFQ is... simply not enough.

It does not have that... crescendo moment. In OAR there were massive sea battles at the end. It left us with some conclusion. The land war in Siddarmark is obviously going to take longer.

It's realistic, I'll give it that. It's a war of industry, supply, controlling supply lines, mobility, information and disinformation. But I found the earlier battles - Thesmar, for example, or fort Tairys - more interesting to read. They sort of had a well-developed story and ending.

HFQ is... an intermezzo. It's like there was supposed to be a bigger book, and we got the first half of it.