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Peter Heinrich's Reviews > Off Armageddon Reef
Off Armageddon Reef (Safehold, #1)
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Great premise, but mostly unreadable. I guess the editor thought so, too, because I lost count of the typos, repeated words, and grammatical mistakes. Name spellings were a silly distraction throughout the entire book.
Even without the cosmetic errors, however, this book is a slog. The pacing is uneven, and ironically slows to a crawl whenever "intrigue"—I use the word advisedly—is afoot, as the characters discuss every nuance of every potential course of action. There's really not much for the reader to do except let all this didactic dialogue wash over him, because for all the political maneuvering and extraneous characters, the story is utterly predictable.
Weber stops explaining every little thing only after the story turns into the naval epic it always wanted to be (yeah, that happened). Suddenly, the reader must be an expert on 18th-century sailing terms, since there's no time now for even the briefest explanation. At least there's a return to action, however, and stuff actually happens.
If you must, read the first 200 pages and the last 100. The 500 in the middle add nothing.
Even without the cosmetic errors, however, this book is a slog. The pacing is uneven, and ironically slows to a crawl whenever "intrigue"—I use the word advisedly—is afoot, as the characters discuss every nuance of every potential course of action. There's really not much for the reader to do except let all this didactic dialogue wash over him, because for all the political maneuvering and extraneous characters, the story is utterly predictable.
Weber stops explaining every little thing only after the story turns into the naval epic it always wanted to be (yeah, that happened). Suddenly, the reader must be an expert on 18th-century sailing terms, since there's no time now for even the briefest explanation. At least there's a return to action, however, and stuff actually happens.
If you must, read the first 200 pages and the last 100. The 500 in the middle add nothing.
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Reading Progress
February 6, 2011
– Shelved
Started Reading
October 16, 2011
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Finished Reading
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Shilo
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Jan 09, 2017 02:12PM
I will take the first 200 and last 100 pages advice. Thank you.
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Ha ha. I'm very interested to hear if it truly makes the book more enjoyable. ;)
That's interesting! I have a 1st edition and didn't see any typos or repeated words. I thought the entire book was plot filled. Oh well!
I have been reading Weber's books on an off for years and this matches my feelings regarding how his more recent books have been. The Honorverse novels have a great story and I love the characters but the last few have become so bogged down in techno babel and redundant conversations that they have been hard to read. I've had this series in my To-Read list for a while now. I was going through the reviews to see if the style from the Honorverse books carried over to here and from what you're saying they definitely do. I'll still keep this on my list but now its going to be much less of a priority. Thank you for the good review.
Tony wrote: "I have been reading Weber's books on an off for years and this matches my feelings regarding how his more recent books have been. The Honorverse novels have a great story and I love the characters ..."If there are any of his books that you particularly recommend, I would love to give Weber another try. I genuinely enjoyed parts of Off Armageddon Reef.
Michael wrote: "That's interesting! I have a 1st edition and didn't see any typos or repeated words. I thought the entire book was plot filled. Oh well!"I wonder if errors were introduced when moving to paperback?
I agree that the story is plot-driven, but I often found Weber's focus on political minutiae to be very distracting. Frank Herbert was probably the archetypal "political" scifi author, in part because he was so good at creating nuanced relationships that advanced the plot in a compelling way.
Maybe Weber was trying for this, but the plot of Off Armageddon Reef didn't really stray from a fairly clear path. There might be a lot of decision points along the way, with alternative paths for the characters to consider, but I always felt that, in the end, the obvious choice prevailed.
It's not terrible if a plot is predictable (even very preditable)—it can still be entertaining—I just don't want to wade through a ton of discussion about intrigue and motivation that ultimately don't deflect its trajectory. I did enjoy large chunks of the book, but not enough to try others in the series.
