Off Armageddon Reef

Safehold Series, Book 1

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Oliver Wyman

Length: 29 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

Humanity pushed its way to the stars—and encountered the Gbaba, a ruthless alien race that nearly wiped us out. Earth and her colonies are now smoldering ruins, and the few survivors have fled to distant, Earth-like Safehold, to try to rebuild. But the Gbaba can detect the emissions of an industrial civilization, so the human rulers of Safehold have taken extraordinary measures: with mind control and hidden high technology, they've built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, a religion designed to keep Safehold society medieval forever.

800 years pass. In a hidden chamber on Safehold, an android from the far human past awakens. This android, Merlin, emerges into Safeholdian society to begin the process of provoking technological progress, which the Church of God Awaiting has worked for centuries to prevent. To conceal his formidable powers he finds a base of operations in Charis, a mid-sized kingdom with a talent for naval warfare, where he plans to make the acquaintance of King Haarahld and Crown Prince Cayleb, and maybe, just maybe, kick off a new era of invention. Which is bound to draw the attention of the Church…and, inevitably, lead to war.

It's going to be a long, long process. And David Weber's Off Armageddon Reef is going to be the can't-miss Sci-Fi epic of the decade.

Listen to more in the Safehold series.

©2007 David Weber (P)2006 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC

Critic reviews

“Wyman rises nicely to the near Herculean challenge of performing this 30-hour epic. His clear, expressive reading never falters while he skillfully navigates his way through a labyrinth of plot twists and multiple characters. Whether describing high-tech space battles or the covert activities of courtiers and spies, Wyman brings Weber's intricate world of Safehold to life.” —Publishers Weekly

WARNING WARNING Read only if you like details!

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I recommend this book highly if you want to know everything about everybody and are not that interest in a story moving forward. I finished all of the 6 books out so far. If I would have known that every minor detail of everything was in the story I would not have started. This book is interesting and Sci Fi after this one you need to go to Wikipedia and study Naval and land warfare tactics of the 18th (Sailing ships and what came next) century. You will learn every and I mean every single thing about handling a ship of war (in another book).
Example (trust me not a spoiler) in a further book down the line you learn in about 20 minutes of audio how a super minor character fixed a plumbing (water pipe issue) in a city. After the excruciating details of how he tracked the water lines to find a leak and then the method of repair the story is allowed to proceed. WTF?

If you’ve listened to books by David Weber before, how does this one compare?

I LOVE David Weber and have read or listened to just about all he has written. I just finished the Honor Harrington series = awesome! He does love details and the creation of worlds but in this series he went off the deep end.

Have you listened to any of Oliver Wyman’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Ok here is a HUGE complaint against audible. If you start a series with a narrator stick with the same one Oliver does a fantastic job given the amount of text he has to read through. Audbile switches narrators three times in this series. Voices and pronunciations of names and places change (although that may not matter so much since you get so many names and places you really can't keep track!)

Could you see Off Armageddon Reef being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

The overall story after reading the six books so far is pretty good you only need to cut out about 2,000 pages of fluff and political intrigue. Then maybe...

Any additional comments?

If you are into big long highly detailed stories this is the series for you. If you are a science fiction fan this is not the series for you.
Slight SPOILER ALERT: The premise is to defeat an alien enemy in space. Considering this book starts us off with late 17th century tech and after 6 books and near 150 hours of audio we have only moved to the18th century - how will we ever get to space? One maybe two "tech" ideas are introduced per book and the tech is how to build (in extreme detail) an 18th century weapon.

Great book

I was a little put off by the first chapter. But once the story started focusing in on specific characters, beautiful, well written and read.

Good , but not great

Pretty good book. Some very interesting ideas and concepts introduced and investigated through the book. However, I find that Weber has the habit of rambling on about some things and at other times he jumps around from place to place without sufficiently informing the reader/listener about where they are in the world or story (noticed this in the Harrington books as well).

Overall very interesting, look forward to the rest of the series.

Different narrator for three books in series

I loved these books there a great story. Changing narrators every few books is really annoying. They have a tendency to go on and on about something that really doesn't matter but I like that so you know

Not a space opera

this book while creative is not like the space opera it clames to be with ocean sailing ships, medival style speach and way way to many "my lords" and "your grace". while yes it is set in a future scape of humaity regressing, the book spends far to much time going over in pointless detail of one Bishop talking to another, or this sailing term or that. honestly its hard for me to care even a little about this duke or that earl. most of the book is about the begginings of a medival holy war that moves as about as fast as a sailing ship with a barnical encrusted hull in a null winded day. really unless you like sail faring battles, or crusade level politics this book is not for you.

Playback Issues

It was very good except there were some minor playback issues which made it mildly confusing.

Slow (ish) start, fantastic end

It certainly took a little bit of patience to make it through early portions of the story where the basic framework of the world was being established, but then the sequences of dialogue or action or intrigue would more than make up for the wait. Eventually you reach that point where there's minimal explanation required, and the story takes off like a rocket.
Will definitely be continuing the series.

Good story

Great book, it was easy to get through and a good story. imaginative and vivid.

the first one an excellent series

I love the depth of this series. the pain and joy can be felt. I wish the same narrator had been used but you can't have everything.

Brutally slow beginning but got better

Classic case of an author tells you about the world he is creating instead of showing you as the book progress. The first 3 or 4 hours are terrible. I almost stopped listening. I trudged on and made it to some conversation and action. I ultimately I liked how this book progressed but man the author dives in to these periods of just describing things outside the plot that just seem to go on forever. It really takes away from the story. I am probably going to listen to the next in the series but I hope the author matures is writing. Show the world a bit at a time through the course of the story. Don't ram the whole world context down my throat for 3 straight hours without character conversation.