SPOILERS==Shadow of Victory Comments, Queries and Opinions

Bill Woods wrote:

Torlek wrote:What was the point of the whole Zachariah McBryde and the Gaul story line in Cauldron of Ghosts if he arrives in Darius anyway. I assuming that character does something relevant at some point.

I had assumed he was going to be our sympathetic viewpoint character on Darius.

As many others thought as well, I expected him and his fellow escapee to end up as two more "Simoes."

Instead they were used to introduce us to the planet Darius. I loved the description of the planet, how its population had been created, and its uniform dedication to the Alignment, which we needed to see somehow.

Perhaps our two lovebirds will appear again having second thoughts, but since they literally saw their guards murder their fellow evacuees, why didn't they run? That's a more believable response, and would have fit very well into them becoming two more defectors from inside the onion.

Yes, they're much more likely to be trusted in the future since they searched out their contact at the next destination and showed their allegiance to the Alignment by proceeding on to Darius. Human nature ought to have encouraged them to do the exact opposite. So either I think completely differently than RFC (and goodness knows he's tripped me up far more often than I've successfully predicted what would happen next!) or they still have work do do... on a hidden planet with no way to escape or even send out a message!

Unless one or the other is involved in designing the latest and greatest ships of the Darius Space Navy, they may just have done the equivalent of walking off into the sunset. Or in their case racing madly to the bedroom to perform unspeakably perverted acts!

Finally managed to find the time to read the eARC and my suspicions where correct, the book was mostly backfill of events already covered in 8! earlier books. Parts of the book was interesting, others bits where a tad tedious to read and some was confusing upon the first read since the context was hard to pin down.

Compared to the other books in the series I would say this one is the weakest of them all since it was so hard to be engaged in the story and characters.

I can only hope that RFC has set the stage for the next book to pick up the story and just move forward.

Joat42 wrote:Finally managed to find the time to read the eARC and my suspicions where correct, the book was mostly backfill of events already covered in 8! earlier books. Parts of the book was interesting, others bits where a tad tedious to read and some was confusing upon the first read since the context was hard to pin down.

Compared to the other books in the series I would say this one is the weakest of them all since it was so hard to be engaged in the story and characters.

I can only hope that RFC has set the stage for the next book to pick up the story and just move forward.

I suspect that RFC has had a literary epiphany regarding the way to end the series, and he's setting it up here. My own suspicion involves a rebellion within the "onion", but RFC is good at surprising us.

Larry wrote:<Snip>
I hope it's the last book that keeps retreading this ground. Robert Jordan's "Wheel o' Time" series could also be said to have been "Well written" as well, and I stopped buying those at around book 6 when the damned plot just dragged to the ground. At that point I lost all interest and actually couldn't care less what happened to the characters. And I want to be clear, I don't think either Mr. Jordan or Mr. Weber was trying to milk for additional fees as it seems some have implied. I think, at least in Mr. Jordan's case, that the story just got away from him/ That he got so lost in creating this fully fleshed out world, that the fleshing, so to speak, got ahead of actually telling a story. Don't know if that has happened here, because I haven't read it.

I always felt that every WOT book would have been 50-100 pages shorter if Robert Jordan hadn't spent a paragraph or two describing the clothing each person was wearing in every scene!

However, once Brandon Sanderson took over, the series became much more action oriented, and the final book has more magic/battles/surprises than the rest of the series put together - with an ending that makes you sit up and say "Wait!!!! You can't end it yet!!!"

I ended up reading the first half of book 8 three times, and was stuck on book 10 for a couple of years. Once I finally reached the first of the 3 final books (which Sanderson wrote), I remembered why I liked the series so much during the the early books - stuff happened! Battles! Bad guys died! Good guys died! The 3 amigos developed new and interesting powers. Then we got 4-6 books of everybody's wardrobe.

Anyway, to everyone who got bogged down in the middle books of the WOT, it's well worth finishing! (Despite the three questions Sanderson is contractually prevented from answering.)

When he visited my daughter's school and had a Q&A, I had her ask about something that had been bugging me and he said "I guess that's a fourth..."

What went wrong? I think that RFC got so involved in setting things up for the next book and in world building and fleshing out the worlds and telling the stories of characters that he forgot that he had created two cliff-hanger situations that had to be resolved He wrote the story that he would have written if there had been no cliff-hangers. And this did not work. A cliff-hanger brings an imperative to advance the story, not engage in unessential development of characters and places.
The first cliff-hanger was Operation Janus. People knew of the Alignment’s plans to foment rebellions and leave Manticore to be blamed when they failed. RFC introduced a huge amount of back-story and backtracked by a large amount. And this did not work. This was partially done to bring across the scale of what the MA was doing. And that worked. But he went way beyond what he needed to do for that. I think he was fascinated by the character of Damien Harap and by the worlds and characters that he created. So he fleshed them out when the cliff-hanger required him to get on with the story. But readers wanted to get on with the story too much to get involved with his new creations or with much further detail with those that we had met in Shadow of Freedom. So the plot dragged and tension turned into exasperation.
And then readers wanted to see what happened when Tenth Fleet arrived at Mesa. They were already exasperated by the Janus story line and the failure to advance the lot further just added to the exasperation. Unfortunately it sounds as if what was to happen next was a cascade of interlinked events with no natural lace to end the book for two or three hundred ages. If readers had been warned this would have bed accepted but we weren’t.

dscott8 wrote:I suspect that RFC has had a literary epiphany regarding the way to end the series, and he's setting it up here. My own suspicion involves a rebellion within the "onion", but RFC is good at surprising us.

It's the big Mesan Allignment Bar-B-Que and the head of internal security is going to poison the sauce.

Ok, now that I've read SoV and this entire thread, which I'm certainly glad I read before posting my impression of the book, here I go.

Unfortunately, I was under the impression that this was going to be a mainline novel, when the "Shadow of" part of the title should have tipped us all off that this would be another Talbott sector novel. I don't know where I read that this book would advance the main plot. It wasn't from the eARC description on Baen's site, so it must have been somewhere in the forums. So somebody besides RFC or Baen is to blame for that!

Anyway, my major mistake was getting excited because after four years we were finally going to see the Battle of Beowulf!

So when the first snippets arrived beginning in February 1921 PD, I was disappointed. Not because they didn't make good reading - I rather enjoyed learning how Damien Harahap was recruited by Mesa, and I didn't realize just how handy he was in a scrap.

Still sure that the Battle of Beowulf was just around the corner, I plunged on, and my heart sank when not just one, but two new verge planets were introduced with DH fomenting rebellion and offering "Mantie help." That's my own fault for not reading the description of the book on Baen when I downloaded it! The description is entirely accurate with what SoV contains, but my expectations weren't.

I'm a fanatic of the Safehold series, which is where you'll find the vast majority of my posts, and I've long ago learned to identify the weirdly spelled names by the appearance of the letters in them rather than sounding them out, with the exception of the major characters and the ones who are actual historical people, like Paitryk Hainree. So the Czech and Polish names automatically became "Collection of letters designating this character" and most organizations just became "group of foreign words I won't worry about." Sokol being the only easy to recall organization on either planet that I recall. I confess that when a new section began, I often didn't know if it referred to the Polish or Czech planets for a paragraph or two. Lazy reading to be sure, and there's probably some fun tidbits that I missed by reading that way. (There always are in Safehold!)

Once the flashbacks to events in the Manticore system that appeared in previous books began, I lost faith that the plot would move past SoF and that I'd finally get to see the long-awaited Battle of Beowulf. (But I refused to peek ahead!) I have to give RFC credit, the description of the destruction of the Hephaestus as witnessed by Sinead Terekhov was some of his finest writing, and I was properly horrified by the spectacle and sincerely worried for her life!

I really appreciated that there was no cutting and pasting from previous novels. ART and SoF (or one of the Shadow novels, I'm too lazy to look it up) had entire sections that were cut and pasted. Hey, no problem since they were background material to bring new readers up to speed, so I just skipped past them, but there was none of that in SoV, which presented events we'd already seen from new viewpoints and perspectives. Kudos to RFC for that!

So I enjoyed all the scenes in Manticore and the fleshing out of some characters - particularly Aivars Terekhov. Nice to see Scotty Tremaine has been promoted to captain, and in a combat role to boot! I can't tell if "Sir Prescott Tremaine" and "Scotty Tremaine" are the same person, since the names seem to be used interchangeably as the captain of the HMS Alistair McKeon. (Nice touch!) Is that an editing mistake, or does it reflect a formal vs. informal name for Captain Tremaine?

Like others have noted, one planet rebelling against its corrupt government seemed to merge with the next one, until I had trouble telling them apart as the Manties arrived to see if Mesa had stirred up rebellions among the locals with promises of Mantie ships when needed. (Even when the locals were peaceful and a visit was a dud.) I have a bad habit of complaining that RFC's books are too short - I read them only in eBook format, since that's easiest for me so I don't care how big the paper book might be! So it would be hypocritical of me to complain about all the detail we were given of the rebellions on each planet! It's just that there were so many to keep track of that it was a bit difficult to remember the details of who lived where and what they'd done. Obviously a second reading will clarify things.

I was glad to see the Manties arriving (usually) in time, and I understand that the scope of the unrest that DH had been fomenting needed to be shown, but we got a lot of detail on camera that could have been done off camera. (Says the guy who wishes we'd gotten a blow-by-blow of Filareta's fleet being blown to smithereens!) But c'mon, the Sollies deserve to have every battle that kicks their arrogant butts appear onscreen, even though RFC would consider describing the massacre of people who can't fight back as war porn. (Please sir, can't we have just a little bit of porn?)

With DH captured, I'm hoping he spills his guts about which systems he's been working with, and that the Mesan nannites in his system don't kill him if he's interrogated. (Although he's pretty sure they'll kill him in the long run anyway if he doesn't get his "regular checkup.")

I enjoyed Gold Peak and Tourville's interactions, and the Manties and Havenites burying the hatchets that some of them still carried toward each other. Tourville's treecat is a hoot! I just wish it would bond with him...

I really wish that Gold Peak had headed straight for Mesa months ago, which would have put a huge crimp in Operation Houdini. (I was screaming for her to do it in SoF before she header for Meyers!) Heck, I thought the Andermanis would have headed straight for it during ART, since that seemed to be what the GA was planning and nobody wanted Mesa's head on a plate more than the Andermanis did. I guess that's one of those false trails RFC drops here and there and everywhere!

Deitweiler's exit - and his method of tying up the remaining loose ends of Operation Houdini was a surprise. I realize from the text that he felt his job was done, but I thought he'd have left for Darius ages ago, and would have led the alignment until even Mesan Prolong couldn't keep him alive any longer. Maybe he figured Darius is a place for the young - which given the planet's average age is absolutely true! I'm guessing that his final solution will turn out to either not be as final as he expected, or that nuclear blasts leave behind more evidence than he anticipated. And if one of those blasts didn't go off and the survivors realize that they were marked for extermination, that could leave a whole bunch of rather disgruntled Alignment members who may have lost faith in their mission and who are inner members of the onion. (I can dream that it happens at least!)

And then SoV ended, although I didn't scream like I did at the end of ART, which had the glossary attached, so I thought the Battle of Beowulf would begin on the next page and suddenly there was no next page!

SoV brings all the disparate plot lines up to date, so when "End of Honor" shows up, (or whatever the next novel is called), we'll finally see what the Solarian League does to Beowulf. (I predict an Eridani violation!)

I was amused that "Green Pines" was constantly referred to as "Green Valley," so it was clear that RFC is human and had Safehold in his subconscious now and then. This was actually the roughest eARC I've seen yet, which is easily explained by the last minute edits and I'm sure the misspellings, wrong words, and the incomplete sentences I noted here and there will be caught by the editors. Had I thought otherwise, I'd have noted them all and sent RFC a private message to pass along to them, but since he didn't ask us to proofread the eARC for Baen, I suppose it isn't our job. Frankly, I'm just tickled pink to get the book early, and I'm grateful to Baen that they make it possible for us rabid fans to do that.

So that's my review of SoV. It wasn't what I expected, which colored my enjoyment of it, but that was my own fault for not reading the synopsis that Baen plainly provided when I downloaded the eARC and I should have read it, especially since I'd read the first three snippets and already realized that it was going back in time to fill in a lot of gaps in DH's activities in the Verge and to synchronize the various plot lines.

Yes, it's redundant in places. Yes, it adds two new rebelling planets with difficult names for those who don't speak Polish or Czech. (But all the action on those two planets is new, so no complaints!) It has a fun running space battle where Captain Tremaine gets to show the sneakiness he learned from serving with the Salamander. Best of all, it sets us up for the next book, which will advance the plot past the capture of Mesa!

Battle of Beowulf anyone?

McGuiness wrote:...which will advance the plot past the capture of Mesa!

Battle of Beowulf anyone?

We can be shown the battle of Beowulf without going past the mid-October capture of Mesa. We can even be shown some reaction from several places within a month's travel of Beowulf, since the "battle of Beowulf" should happen on or about the same date as the Plebiscite is scheduled -- on 16 September 1922 PD.

Not that I think we're going to get yet another book that ends in October 1922 PD.

McGuiness wrote:Nice to see Scotty Tremaine has been promoted to captain, and in a combat role to boot! I can't tell if "Sir Prescott Tremaine" and "Scotty Tremaine" are the same person, since the names seem to be used interchangeably as the captain of the HMS Alistair McKeon. (Nice touch!) Is that an editing mistake, or does it reflect a formal vs. informal name for Captain Tremaine?

Captain Tremaine has been a Captain (junior grade) for a while now, deployed in the CLAC community. In SoF we found that (to his own surprise) he'd been promoted to Captain senior grade and given command of a division of Sag. C heavy cruisers as part of 10th Fleet. His first name is Prescott, we learnt that way back in OBS, but he has always answered to Scotty. The knighthood may be an error - surely it was his long-term associate Horace Harkness who was knighted for his efforts in Honor's escape from Cordelia Ransome's clutches, and then from Cerberus.

True, there's no specific mention of Prescott being awarded a knighthood. But does there need to be? He's certainly earned it several times over by now.

Leaving it to the imagination is a little more fun. Personally, I like the idea that Harkness 'added' Scotty to the Order's roster, so he didn't have to go to formal events without his buddy.