CRC wrote:Not really disappointed, just somewhat perturbed by the very rapid technology escalation between this book and HFQ - not to mention from AR.
Specifically I am referring to the sudden appearance of minesweepers, armored ocean going steam transports, steam powered landing craft, 12 inch shore based guns, observation balloons and Composition D filled shells in useful numbers.
Armageddon Reef was based on the year 890. ATST is based in the year 897. Notwithstanding Baron Green Valley's dissertation on the differences between Safehold and the US Civil War R&D, production, logistics and manufacturing, or Merlin's discussion of water wheel technology and its adaptability to steam power, the extremely fast technological escalation is just not that believable in a 7 year time span.
The items they are producing, now in mass, require precision machining and creating mass production precision machines take time to design, build, produce and deploy in significant numbers.
The only real disappointment has already been mentioned. Neither Merlin nor Nimue de-briefed Clyntahn. That is unforgiveable and a huge oversight. They apparently knew of the secret tunnels, but there may be more that Clyntahn's knows about the 1000 year visit, the room under the temple, even such mundane stuff as possible threats to Duchairn.
Those two items being said, I very much enjoyed the book. Am now re-reading it, and will probably read it several more times - especially with the new maps - so that I can savor those little tidbits I missed on prior reads.
If you are going to bother building the big naval ships then building a mine sweeper is sort of a no brainer. Pretty easy to do with something along the lines of the ironclads they already had because once land mines are seen as a thing it is a short hop for that to turn into a sea mine especially when facing opponents you can't face in fair combat they are going to look for every mean to neutralize them.
As for the victory ships again it is simply just applying what they had already been doing for a while in an obvious solution. They are a lot simpler to build than war ships and transports that can cross that distance needed to wage war in the back yard of the church rapidly to supply the army is almost more useful than the warships once the churches navies got knocked out.
Just look at pre world war one and post world war 1 during times of conflict progress can be extremely rapid especially when one side already has a lot of the info necessary for those advancements and their only sticking point is to try to make it look as naturally developed as possible.
Had charis been willing progress could have been even more advanced but they could not risk doing to much to fast.