(See my reviews of the previous books in the Safehold series here and here.)
I don't generally do this when I'm reading a book, but in this case, I left the thing littered with bookmarks to help me remember things I wanted to write about. See, the thing is, Weber's writing is clunky, awkward, and in places actively bad, and yet I can't stop reading his books. I can't quite put my finger on why they're so compelling despite their flaws, but I did isolate a couple of specific instances of sloppy writing that jarred me straight out of the story when I got to them. (Yes, this implies I am better at complaining than at bestowing praise. I think I have to own that flaw.)
But before I get into details on the things that bug me about Weber, I shall attempt to talk a little about this book in specific, though unfortunately, due to the way the events in this book build on the prior ones, there are some spoiler issues to deal with, for which I have employed good old rot-13.
In a very real sense, nothing actually happens. There are no sweeping plot developments (nothing like Pnlyro'f zneevntr gb Funeyrlna naq gur cer-rzcgvir fheeraqre bs Rzrenyq in the previous book, or the grand setup-movements of the first one) - and that's not particularly surprising. We've moved into the mid-game now, and things have to inch along for some time before they get into place for whatever the next dramatic action might be (my money's on gur bssvpvny qrpynengvba bs Ubyl Jne ol gur Puhepu naq gur svefg onggyr jvgu gurz qverpgyl, though at this rate that'll happen in book eight or something).
Which is not to say the book was boring. There's plenty of battles (including a land battle at long last) for those who read Weber for the gore and/or the technological self-congratulation. There's rather a lot of politics, for those who read Weber for the maneuverings and petty backstabbing. There's a bit more world-building-y stuff, and a lot of character development. And the plot overall may not have advanced much in large terms, but it never felt stagnant.
Perfunctory review having now been constructed, I'm afraid I'm going to go off on rather a long rant about Weber's use of language.
At one point, there are two adjacent paragraphs that contain the parenthetical phrase "(from the [x]'s perspective, at least)". I suspect this may actually have been deliberate, but while repetition of this sort works in poetry, and indeed in some kinds of well-crafted prose, dropping a repeated phrase in to prose this unassuming and colloquial is awkward, and caused me to stop reading and do a double-take to make sure I hadn't jumped back up to the previous paragraph by mistake. It's doesn't work as "repetition for emphasis" (for one thing, that usually requires more than two instances); it just reinforces my thesis of "many famous authors are inadequately edited".
A portion of a sentence from another section of the book: "(...) which meant you tended to kill quite a few of your own men if you tried something like that, and the infantry, for some peculiar reason, didn't much care for that." (emphasis mine) Ha, ha, cute. I could forgive an occasional instance of this sort of attempted irony in the musing of a viewpoint character, if a) it actually were occasional, and b) if it were only one or two characters. The fact that this is apparently the way the vast majority of Weber characters formulates thoughts is odd, to say the very least.
One more: "Somehow, sir, I can't quite find it in my heart to regret that. Odd, isn't it?"
I'm not going to quote any more bits, but I think the tools of sarcasm and self-deprecating humor are vastly overused in Weber's writing, and that they are largely without desired effect when so frequently employed. At least, I'm assuming that the desired effect is to create the impression that these characters are real and well-rounded, with senses of humor all their own. What it achieves is to help make them seem like caricatures, and to, in some cases, deeply erode the suspension of disbelief.
That last effect is also achieved by the oh-so-casual dropping in of 20th and 21st century Earth pop culture references, or Earth military history references of earlier vintage. It really oughtn't to have quite so drastic an effect (it's less egregious than when it happens in fantasy, for sure), given that this is indeed our future, and one character, at least, knows this perfectly well. Nonetheless, it does, and while I could speculate on why that is, it would be a rather substantial digression, and not really particularly germane to the point that they just plain don't fit.
I'm not, by the way, what I would previously have called a particularly demanding person in what I expect from my prose. 95% of the time, what I want from an author's use of language is not to notice it. I want to words on the page to serve as a portal to the story, and carry the plot without interfering with it. (The other 5% includes things like The Phoenix Guards, wherein the gorgeous use of language is a significant part of the point of reading the book.) I think perhaps the reason the awkward use of language in these Weber books bothers me so much is that the story on the other side of the page is pretty damned awesome, and I am irritated by having to use such an imperfect lens to look at it. The writing is not, as a whole, transparent. It's full of "aren't I so clever" bits, which are very disrupting to the flow of the story, as I perceive it.
I note, in the interest of fairness, that my husband disagrees with me on pretty much every point here, and to him, the writing of these books indeed does disappear and serve as a perfectly serviceable vehicle for the story. So maybe I'm pickier than I thought I was? I don't really know.
As a further caveat, I do want to repeat that I am really loving this series - and for the most part have enjoyed the Honor Harrington series, too, despite it sharing pretty much the same list of flaws. I think the above-listed items would bother me less were it not so, if only because if I hated them, I wouldn't keep reading them anyway, and if I only kinda liked 'em, I'd be bothered less by the interference with my consumption of plot.
But as a closing note, one truly egregious item of authorial cutesiness: There is a character in here named Nahrmann Baytz. Given the way names in general are phonetically re-spelled, I leave it up to the reader to determine why that one is eye-rolly.
