Reviews

Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber

Only show reviews with written explanations

paul_gallagher's review against another edition

2.0

An intriguing premise, robots, genocidal aliens, and real naval battles in outer space (of the Bolitho/Hornblower variety - literally!). What more could we want? No zombies (yet).

Well, unfortunately all that is wasted on a lame story arc that just failed to pick me up and drop me down. The denouement is just to inevitable and predictable. Reading to the conclusion got to be a chore rather than a delight. Pity..

atyp3's review against another edition

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I don’t know if the book is just way above my reading level but the inside jacket cover doesn’t go in depth about the whole religious side plot of the book at all. We have barely met the main character at all, and all the names are some confusing amalgamation of Asian influenced and English language names so it’s very hard to keep track of the characters. I couldn’t get with it and I’m going to donate and hopefully someone else can enjoy it.

shaver's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

libron26's review against another edition

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1.0

Sigh. This book had potential but ultimately was disappointing. The most disappointing thing about this book is how it draws you in with an interesting premise and then becomes super predicatable half to two-thirds of the way through. It is frustrating to me because I am the type of reader who will quit a book if it is bad and hence never review it because I don't review books I don't read completely but this book had enough to keep me reading to the end. Which is worse in my view as it saps more of my time.

I loved the premise of this novel. A nascent space-faring human civilization is utterly crushed by aliens. A human colony ship escapes to seed humanity on a distant world determined to eventually challenge the aliens once again after a period keeping the tech level primitive to avoid detection. This plan goes awry when part of the crew instills an anti-tech religion into the mind-wiped colonists, setting themselves up as angels to God who sent down the scriptures to the world of Safehold. Centuries later after all the orginal crew members and colonists have died, there is a robot implanted with a human consciousness who is an adherent to the original plan seeking to move the chess pieces of Safehold into accomplishing the original mission and technologically develop in order to restore humanity to its interstellar heights.

After the first half to two-thirds of the novel the story stalls out and becomes super predictable. Things that should be accomplished in paragraphs take whole chapters and it becomes a bloated mess that was frankly hard for me to get through. I kept going though hoping it would get better, but it did not. The main problem is that there is that is you create a situation where the protagonist has all the advantages and is literally invincible in the setting of this world, then there are no stakes. The plot moves along without any sense that plans may be thwarted or the main character could lose. There is no tension. No matter how well the author writes battle scenes (and he does a good job of it I admit), without tension it is all very tedious.

Maybe if the book was a few hundred pages shorter I'd give it another star or maybe two if he did it well. Being as it is, the novel is too long, too boring, and definitely does not draw me into wanting to read the rest of the series.