38 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ludlum, Stirling's General and kryptonite, July 9, 2009
Several things.
First, unlike the first 2 books, there is no map of the world. Surely an extra page for this wouldn't have added significantly to the printing cost, given the length of the book. And if the publisher had commissioned the map and owns it, then there might be no royalties to pay to the artist. The only map in the book is of Chisholm. It's basically a non sequitar. Little action happens there. Instead there should have been a map of Corisande. The land battles happen here and a map would have helped the reader. Puzzling omission. In
By Schism Rent Asunder, there were maps germane to the naval actions, for example.
But let's move onto the text itself. As with the earlier books in the series, and indeed Weber's other recent offerings, this is long. Quite a contrast with his early works. The latter first came out in paperback, while as he got more successful, newer ones were in hardcover. Is Weber one of these writers that cannot resist the temptation to bulk up? I am reminded of Ludlum. His early stuff, like
The Scarlatti Inheritance and
The Gemini Contenders were gripping and compact. Then in the 80s, the books got longer and longer, and the plots more and more intricate. They became largely conspiring about conspiring in a meta self referential way, with the actual action deprecated. To some extent Heresies suffers from this. Though the countervailing opinion is that Weber is impressively fleshing out an entire world. You can safely expect other reviewers to bewail the seemingly interminable dialog!
By now this series is a fascinating variant on Drake and Stirling's 5 volume General series,
The Forge (The Raj Whitehall Series: The General, Book 1). They posited a fallen world, reduced to early 19th century technology, and fragmented into warring monarchic statelets. The hero, Raj Whitehall, is Cayleb. There is a sentient computer, Center, who reveals itself to Raj and aids him in world conquest, primarily by giving him access to superior technology. Sound familiar? There are differences of course. Center does not have human form, unlike Merlin. And there is not the brooding backdrop of a genocidal alien race.
If you like Weber's series, you really should check out the General books. You will appreciate both. By the way, it was the General series that also has the "custom" of taking a common English name and mis-spelling it to add an air of otherworldliness. Some of you might look askance at this, but I think in both series it adds a nice filip.
One problem with the current series is the kryptonite dilemma. You know, when the Superman comics came out, the authors made the mistake of having him invulnerable. Hence the hasty inclusion of kryptonite. Even so, there is always a problem in those comics; Superman has it too easy, frankly. Ditto here. In Heresies the battle scenes lack enough suspense. The combination of Merlin's introduction of better weapons and his ability to surveil incoming enemy dispositions removes a lot of the tension. In the General books, Center had lost its satellites and could not surveil, which let Stirling even the odds somewhat, by having Raj often unaware of enemy deployments. Hence the enemies at times could pull genuine surprises that were difficult to overcome.
Think about it for a moment. Imagine you are a general with better weapons and tactics. Plus you know where the enemy is. Just the latter is priceless in war. Any of you from a military background, or who read history, will be well aware of this. The book rolls the dice so heavily in favour of Merlin. Oh and yes, Merlin has super-physical powers and effectively cannot be killed in combat. Come on! Weber needs to tighten the odds to make more interesting reads.
In similar wise, Birmingham ran into kryptonite with his
Weapons of Choice (The Axis of Time Trilogy, Book 1). That series suffered from the same problem; most everything the enemy did was easily detected and foiled.
On a final note, Heresies can be better appreciated if you have read other Weber books. Notably
In Death Ground. Heresies has the humans and Bugs swap places. But also look at
The Excalibur Alternative. That had a human group escape genocidal aliens and set up an empire capable of taking them on. In Heresies, there is a piognant moment when Merlin explains to Cayleb what the Church cost the humans on Safehold. If technology had never been suppressed, then after 500 years the humans would have improved their weapons and rebuilt their numbers sufficiently to go hunting the Gbaba. Instead, they must still unwittingly huddle on Safehold and hope to continue undetected, like mice near a cat. Excalibur was the antithesis of this current scenario.
By the way, in 2008 Weber was on a book tour for Shism. I asked him if he ever intended this series to have humans take on the Gbaba in a rematch. He said unlikely. The emphasis of the series is on having the humans throw off a tyrannical Church and on how there could be good people on both sides of this conflict. Damn!
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31 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I wish I loved it, November 8, 2009
I loved "Off Armageddon Reef", despite the character names. The names were a huge impediment to understanding; it was a constant chore to translate them (or should I say "trahnzlayte thayem"). I liked "By Schism Rent Asunder", but not nearly as much as the first book. I hoped "By Heresies Distressed" would get back to the people and what at first appeared to be the major theme, but it didn't. It became very impersonal. It felt as though the interactions between the major characters were thrown in at random and for inadequate reasons.
Also, as other reviewers have mentioned, the story was lopsided. The good guys won too easily; the bad guys were so evil they were comic bookish. By book three, all the characters were shallow, and the story fluctuated between religious politics and mechanisms of warfare. Not that those were new themes, but there was too much "They have more muskets, but we have better rifles. They have the better ground, but we have better cover. Of course, our better cover means we have to deal with brush and vines, which hamper our longer rifles. This shape cannonball is good for reasons A,B,C, but the other shape has the advantage of X,Y,Z." This is combined with constant switching between a large number of characters with distracting names, and I found myself skipping pages because I no longer cared. I no longer knew who was on which side of the conflict, except for a small number of major players, and skipping pages didn't reduce my understanding of a thin story line that seemed to drift from theme to theme. I felt frustrated by all the dropped issues, the little threads that seemed to be introducing a subtopic, but were never mentioned again.
I had such hopes for this trilogy, but I was very disappointed, and I don't think it's done. Based on the vengeful thoughts of a minor, uninformed, young character who vows to make someone pay for something he didn't do, I think the door is open for more shallow confusion and more drift from theme to theme.
I've noticed problems in other books by this author. In one Honor Harrington story, the plot was interrupted by a very lengthy, boring, distracting discourse on the history of a character's family background. It did not fit in with the action of the moment, a conversation between Honor and the bad guy.
I think publishers have decided that some authors are so popular that they don't dare edit them for fear they will switch to another publisher. I wish some brave soul would tell Weber that he needs to learn to define his scope, focus, and quit introducing distractions that don't add anything of such value that it's worth the sidetrack. I get the impression that he can't decide if he wants to write action or something with political/sociological/religious depth, so he tries to combine them and fails.
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