Kufat wrote:Overall, I'm pretty happy with this installment.
That said, the lack of post-victory content was surprising and disappointing. RFC picked a heck of a time to catch a bad case of brevity!
For me, at the end of Sign of Triumph, Weber tries to wrap up as much as he can as fast as he can. Too fast. Yes, I'm glad there's no "French revolution", "era of free use of the guillotine" or even the word plebiscite involved. But he tries to sum up three months of action in single-paragraph form. All the reactions, the last desperate acts, the it's not over until I tell you, then the post-immediate boardroom wrangling, blame-throwing, decisions and ramifications. All that's the entertaining stuff. Do you expect us to believe everybody just shrugs, goes home, takes off their boots and waits for supper to be served? No! There's supposed to be a heck of a lot of yelling and rash actions about all the decisions! The Knights of the Temple Lands were disbanded. You can't "just disband" the local Stonemasons with a single sentence. Where do you think they all get their ruby rings from? Everybody owes everybody massive amounts of money- and what about the Church's new-mint coins being worthless? What about the Charis entry into Zion, Merlin in the Church, etc. I'm happy enough with the book, it's the end that's much too rushed. For the same reason, the 20 year timeskip that's said to happen is a mistake. The action is immediate reaction. In 20 years all the important (and entertaining) stuff is long over. Weber might try to plaster over all that, too. If he could think of "What about the month, Year? 5 years after?" then he would write it. If he can't, he'll skip ahead, which he's said to plan to do.
Much of this should have been saved for the next book, but Clyntan's fate being sealed does make up for much. It just shouldn't have taken three months book-time. We never even got any amusing attempt by the faithful to petition his release- or attempts to rescue him!
I suppose I'm starting to jones for the next book... I'm not alone in that, am I?