I've been a fan of most all of David Weber's books to this point, but rarely, after finishing a book of his that actually has a designed conclusion, have I more desperately and immediately wanted a subsequent book--or at least, short story anthology--than I did after finishing The Gordian Protocol.
I'll try to make a few points without excessive spoilers. First, I'd say the feel of this one was probably closest to Hell's Gate for me, as compared with all Mr. Weber's other works. This is true both conceptually, and in the ways in which the characters and societies tend to be drawn. Like a lot of Weber books, the "bad guys" are pretty complicated, some of their motivations are quite understandable, and the main "really evil jerk" types are highlighted mostly by the way in which they act when those actions are presumed to have no consequences. When the main "bad guys" do objectively bad things to one of the main protagonists, for example, the reader can, I think, at least understand the motivations. And even some of the characters with whom you sympathize have a hard time adjusting to the fact that people from the past are real human beings with agency.
As you read through The Gordian Protocol, it may be tempting to dismiss the first post-prologue chapter as a "typical conservative rant about social justice warriors". But that would be a mistaken dismissal of some of the complexity of the book. I don't know whether Mr. Weber and his co-author intended to make a complex and interesting argument about tribalism, group identity, and the easy way in which we dismiss those not of our group--even if that "group" involves a temporal moment or an entire universe. But there's definitely a sub-text of that in the book, and it definitely ties back to the questions of tribalism and identity politics verses judging individuals on their own merits that are addressed in the first chapter. And it also, again quite subtly, asks the question of whether even that individual judgment can go too far, when we value an individual so much over the lives of... let's go with lots of people... that we potentially sacrifice the objective good to save that person. All in all, it raises a lot of subtle philosophical points, if you're inclined to look for them.
But, never mind all that, the alternate history itself is fantastic. It's hard to talk about how much fun it is without serious spoilers, but I think the main AH scenario on which the book rests is plausible and well-crafted, though it's far from the only way things could have turned out. And that's not even getting into the literally hundreds of possible side stories the premise, and the way that premise is resolved, opens up!
I don't know if the plan here is to create a series, or even a group of loosely-related spin-offs, from The Gordian Protocol. But man do I hope that's the plan, because the possibilities the resolution of the book's central problem create could produce a whole multiverse--pun intended--of really interesting reading material for years to come.
Read this book. Read the EARC if you can; if not, get it when it comes out. It's fun, it's thought-provoking, and authors who write fun, thought-provoking books with interesting future possibilities should be rewarded, and encouraged to find some way to keep the project going.
