Since Paityr Wyllsyn revealed the archangels were returning in ten years back in 894, there are only 5-6 years left before whatever returns from where only RFC knows.
Since that hasn't transformed Safehold or prevented the war with steam power on both sides 20 years from now, the result is apparently closely held by the inner circle but may be discovered by a CoGA member, though RFC has stated Cayleb accidentally revealed too much too soon.
I hope we get it next year since Safehold's been about one a year since 2007.
L
israelsmith wrote:I know exactly what I'm expecting with the next novel.
I'm expecting that we will jump straight to 20 years in the future with the major players conversing about the "last 20 years", possibly some we will have lost due to accident or natural causes depending on who was treated with nanites over the years and who wasn't.
I'm expecting some light-hearted adventure possibly to open things up, some more sappy love stuff that a lot of us eat up from our old favorite couples, and major advancements under the mountain (and abroad of course). However, I'm talking about resources to be able to actually attack/diable/takeover the orbital platform, hack the temple remotely, preparations against the possible "return", and to help bootstrap the rest of humanity.
I think that Owl and a couple others will have actually begun working on theoretical advances that were being discussed (even if its only incremental from last-gen earth tech) near the end of the final days. After all that's the real mission, the true end goal and endgame.
I expect that some sort of ambassadorial or even united nations or united churches sort of organization will have developed fomenting a greater peace religiously and secularly.
I expect the new religions to have solidified and see the new Northern Harchong church and possibly even one or two others that weren't alluded to.
I expect possibly one brief altercation to have occurred between non-Charisian nation-states from the after effects of the Jihad, even if its only something between North and South Harchong, possibly even some sort of Korean DMZ zone being setup.
Of course I also expect the "return" becoming the major contention. However, I see a slow return, something where a lot of activity starts to happen possibly not even entirely from underneath the temple, maybe from multiple locations. I would think that in this scenario, that the big reveal would actually be at the end of the book. So we don't know what we're up against until the end.
I don't forsee PICAs coming on-line, but not exactly "Archangels" either. I could see the characters finding out to their dread that their network had been hacked or at least errant wireless data having been captured and then decrypted from even before the initial attack or launch. I could even see a direct assault on Nimue's cave occurring near the end and them having to destroy it kind of like a rough Empire Strikes Back ending.
In that scenario I would then think the next book after that would show that because we had other working on the "more advanced" or experimental federation tech that a secondary site had been set up.
Then again I'm probably totally wrong and we'll simply have an Archangel appear from underneath the temple and revitalize the Church after discovering to their horror the changes wrought during their stasis/hibernation starting a new Jihad or War of the Fallen 2. Maybe our heroes will have been smart enough in that scenario to have disabled all the satellites no longer necessary and kept the Mountains signature low and wireless connection turned off to stay under the radar of a possible return.
The possibilities are endless, can't wait either way! Oh how I wish we already had snippets!
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this is the kind of guy that walks out of a movie theater while you are standing line to see the next showing and says "The butler did it" 