Honest Opinion (May Contain Spoilers)

Aethor wrote: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.

Part of my point, very realistic story not very entertaining, the book doesn't really have that same ammount of fun other books of RFC has, I know he wants to make the story realistic but as an author he needs to find the balance between realistic and entertaining, it doesn't matter how realistic the story is, no one will buy it if its not entertaining.

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).

Dreadnought's capture may do Charis some good - I mean, compared to it going boom, anyway. Dohlar can't build another. The sheer sight of it rubs in the Temple's faces that they cannot match Charis' industry or manufacturing. They may or may not be able to maintain it effectively. They'll be loading the cannons with cut-rate ammunition, and likely have to work to build shells specifically for it. And its capture raised Thirsk's stock some, and Thirsk is now or will be their man in Dohlar, now that he's free to be finally.

That said, it feels like chance and the weather gave Charis the finger where it had to, sometimes somewhat arbitrarily, just to keep HFQ from being war porn with a string of successes on land. The weather kept the squadron from stopping the screw-galleys short of getting back to saltwater; an accidental, practically unavoidable, practically unpredictable collision with a sand bank stopped the squadron and caused the loss of Thunderer; all preparations to scuttle Dreadnought came to naught by accident. The industrial accident at Delthak was a little random too, but that at least was a matter of something happening that was almost due to happen on some scale.

Charles83 wrote:Part of my point, very realistic story not very entertaining, the book doesn't really have that same ammount of fun other books of RFC has, I know he wants to make the story realistic but as an author he needs to find the balance between realistic and entertaining, it doesn't matter how realistic the story is, no one will buy it if its not entertaining.

I always find it quite amusing that people always bring this up. "The author isn't writing in a way that pleases me, hence they're a failure as an author".

Last time I checked, David Weber is one of the best selling authors of Science Fiction & Fantasy at the moment. I dare say it'd take more than one book to destroy that reputation and, by extension, his sales. Hell, Out of Darkness demonstrates that quite nicely >.>

I get what you're saying about HFQ, and while I liked it you raise some decent points. Extending that out and saying "no one will buy it if its not entertaining" misses the point entirely: namely that enjoyment of books is subjective by the nature of the medium, and that your opinion of HFQ is far from universal.

Just finished HFQ and have been reading these posts. A couple of random thoughts. I too was wondering why Merlin/Nimue didn't find a way to blow up the ironclad. Then I remembered that his purpose on Safehold is a bit different from Charis'. He needs to get Safehold to a position where they can battle (and win against) the Gbaba. So he may have wanted to get the ironclad technology into their hands despite the consequences to the ICN and the war.

Also, while I really enjoy these books, I'm a bit concerned about the pace. This book only covered 6 months. How in the world will he progress quickly enough to get to the year 1000 and the return, much less to a position to fight the Gbaba? I'm afraid that there will be a "...and then 100 years later..." type book, which while understandable, I guess, would be disappointing.

JeffEngel wrote:

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).

Dreadnought's capture may do Charis some good - I mean, compared to it going boom, anyway. Dohlar can't build another. The sheer sight of it rubs in the Temple's faces that they cannot match Charis' industry or manufacturing. They may or may not be able to maintain it effectively. They'll be loading the cannons with cut-rate ammunition, and likely have to work to build shells specifically for it. And its capture raised Thirsk's stock some, and Thirsk is now or will be their man in Dohlar, now that he's free to be finally.

That said, it feels like chance and the weather gave Charis the finger where it had to, sometimes somewhat arbitrarily, just to keep HFQ from being war porn with a string of successes on land. The weather kept the squadron from stopping the screw-galleys short of getting back to saltwater; an accidental, practically unavoidable, practically unpredictable collision with a sand bank stopped the squadron and caused the loss of Thunderer; all preparations to scuttle Dreadnought came to naught by accident. The industrial accident at Delthak was a little random too, but that at least was a matter of something happening that was almost due to happen on some scale.

As far as the bad navigational charts go ... I'm sort of surprised that no one in the Inner Circle has made an effort to get Owl to produce updated with TF tech base maps and charts, at least for the important regions. Readily attributable to seijins having done most of the legwork over time.
Or at the very least stolen copies of Dohlaran/other reliable local sources charts for their local areas. The Dohlarans knew about the sandbar/whatever it was, but it wasn't on the Charisian charts. That's something rather easily fixed - for that matter, the ICN has captured Dohlaran ships recently. If the ICN can somehow have a ship run aground and have papers with details on Sharpfields's strength captured intact(!!!), capturing copies of Dohlaran charts and then examining them for local features they have and yours don't, shouldn't be an unreasonable expectation. Frankly, that was probably the worst thing, even worse than not blowing up Dreadnought - not blowing up Dreadnought could have been explained by the massive confusion on the part of those watching, as it is said that they probably would never know for sure what went wrong, so it's entirely possible that at the time they didn't realize that the fuse hadn't been lit, and by the time they did, it was too late, which frankly, I like better as an explanation than "oh, they just decided not to"; on the other hand, capturing the papers of a warship run aground with the information to tell the enemy what strength you have is just plain stupid - you've run aground on hostile territory, you burn the bloody documents, because unless you've run aground right in front of a fort or something, it's going to be a while before the enemy can get to you, even if you can't refloat the ship before they do.

Laoke wrote:I always find it quite amusing that people always bring this up. "The author isn't writing in a way that pleases me, hence they're a failure as an author".

Last time I checked, David Weber is one of the best selling authors of Science Fiction & Fantasy at the moment. I dare say it'd take more than one book to destroy that reputation and, by extension, his sales. Hell, Out of Darkness demonstrates that quite nicely >.>

I get what you're saying about HFQ, and while I liked it you raise some decent points. Extending that out and saying "no one will buy it if its not entertaining" misses the point entirely: namely that enjoyment of books is subjective by the nature of the medium, and that your opinion of HFQ is far from universal.

First and foremost I started this thread and in both posts I have put on this thread I have been careful, I'm not putting any scene of the books and i'm not making any reference, why? because RFC has written many books that are fun and that i still love to read again, they are books that I emotionally appreciate and that give me hours of fun and debate here on the forums.

I kept my criticizing general, simply because he may write or not what I want or not, but most of the times even if its not what I want its entertaining, (dead of narmahn and hector getting wounded are examples, if you look for my posts you will see I didnt like those 2 scenes but i liked the books plenty).

In the last point an author specially a very successful author can have a bad book and still have good sales, why? because the name of the author carry weight, I'm sure every person here will buy a david weber book even if we discover afterward it was not a book we liked, and we are going to still buy the next book, but that the author is famous and can do this does not mean that us as the readers should not raise our voice and tell the author when he made a mistake, the series is not finished there are more books incoming, I would prefer to talk now when the author can still do corrections and editing to all future books, than wait until the entire series is finished and nothing can be changed because its already published.

And about the last phrase, my opinion is not universal, I'm a picky reader I like 2 or 3 genres of books and not every story sit well on me, so what I dislike another person could very easily like it, and there is plenty to choose, so from the get go the threat was called "my honest opinion", I do think the book is not entertaining, some people agree others disagree.

And last point I have so far read every single book of RFC and except for Dahak 3, every single one until HFQ has been a massive ammount of fun, Something is different in this last book and for me it just does not feel right.

P.S. Dahak 3 is a book that I have been unable to read farther than chapter 2, I lose all focus on the book the story doesnt engage me, the characters dont engage me, I do not know what it is, but i cannot read that book, and since i have been unable to read it I cannot offer an opinion about it.

TBird50 wrote:Just finished HFQ and have been reading these posts. A couple of random thoughts. I too was wondering why Merlin/Nimue didn't find a way to blow up the ironclad. Then I remembered that his purpose on Safehold is a bit different from Charis'. He needs to get Safehold to a position where they can battle (and win against) the Gbaba. So he may have wanted to get the ironclad technology into their hands despite the consequences to the ICN and the war.

That's pretty much it:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7530

Expert snuggler wrote:Asimov is what I vaguely remember.

You may well be right... it must have been 30 years since I read that story and I know that Asimov was a jokester. I have book of his jokes on my library shelf (but that has not been cracked open for at least 20)
Does any one have a clearer memory of the story, its' title and author?

TBird50 wrote:Just finished HFQ and have been reading these posts. A couple of random thoughts. I too was wondering why Merlin/Nimue didn't find a way to blow up the ironclad. Then I remembered that his purpose on Safehold is a bit different from Charis'. He needs to get Safehold to a position where they can battle (and win against) the Gbaba. So he may have wanted to get the ironclad technology into their hands despite the consequences to the ICN and the war.

Also, while I really enjoy these books, I'm a bit concerned about the pace. This book only covered 6 months. How in the world will he progress quickly enough to get to the year 1000 and the return, much less to a position to fight the Gbaba? I'm afraid that there will be a "...and then 100 years later..." type book, which while understandable, I guess, would be disappointing.

TBird50,
First of all welcome to the spotlight... it takes a certain kind of courage to come from the shadows ((even with a pseudonym) people are all reading into everything you try to say <like his tag is incorrect if he is relating to the Ford Thunderbird (aka T-Bird) cause they weren't making them in 1950 > all off the point)
On the one hand, only about six months elapsed but, we get to see how much the effect of the previous years conflicts has been having on the command structure on both sides of the conflict... How causally Merlin's inner circle have become about conferencing by com as contrasted by the effect of Clinton's controlling and conniving to silence his opposition.
My favorite scene may have been when the Helm Cleaver took out the replacement team he had so he could remove Magwaire but right behind that are any that show him unraveling with each report of the Hand of God or liberated concentration camp. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy

Pace... If David uses the same tool he did when Nimune woke in her cave, we only need to see the jihad fall and the return to the original orders (...) turn the page and a squadron is in patrol of the outer solar system.

The capture of Dreadnought was necessary because it helps to bring the rest of the populations tech base up to the standards that will support the rebuilding of space industry and arms support that permit the remaining humans to take on the Gbaba. The Empire of Charis cannot do this alone and Merlin said so in either the first or second book as you allude to in your post.

Expert snuggler wrote:

Asimov is what I vaguely remember.

Yep. SPOILER Sloan's Teddy wins the race. END SPOILER

You might also be interested in: Shirly Guinness and Mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. See: Ferdinand Feghoot.

~Tonto