Midst Toil and Tribulation

Safehold Series, Book 6

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

David Weber's New York Times bestselling Safehold series of military Science Fiction adventure, which began with Off Armageddon Reef, continues with Midst Toil and Tribulation

WAR AND FAMINE

Once the Church of God Awaiting dominated all the kingdoms of Safehold. Then, after centuries of stasis, the island kingdom of Charis began to defy the edicts of Mother Church—egged on, some say, by the mysterious warrior-monk Merlin Athrawes, who enjoys the Charisian royal family's absolute trust.

What vanishingly few people know is that Merlin is the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which aliens destroyed Earth...and that since awakening, his task has been to restart the history of the long-hidden human race.

Now, reeling from the wars and intrigues that have cascaded from Charis's declaration of independence, the Republic of Siddermark slides into chaos. The Church has engineered a rebellion, and Siddermark's all-important harvest is at risk. King Cayleb and Queen Sharleyan struggle to stabilize their ally, which will mean sending troops—but, even more importantly, preventing famine. For mass starvation in Safehold's breadbasket is a threat even more ominous than civil war...

©2012 David Weber (P)2012 Macmillan Audio

Story good narration bad

The storyline is well done, but I cant help but wonder if we will ever get to the Gbaba at this rate. Also the narration was terrible I know many people found the last book less than satisfactory but compared to this fellow the last books was great. It seems he hasn’t gone back over the previous novels and heard how previous narrators have pronounced the various name and place's.

The Forever Saga

I agree with other reviewers that the quality of narration is way below that of previous volumes in the series. I generally like the story but Weber is way too wordy and his lengthy descriptions impair story flow. You have to be a dedicated Weber fan to wade through these massive books. After six volumes, we seem to have progressed only through 5-6 years of story. As Safehold is still only in the early stages of industrialization, it's going to take a long time for the planet to progress to interstellar capability at the present rate of progress. I know I'm not alone in urging the author to tighten up the stories and move towards a conclusion. I'm older than Weber and would like to see the story concluded sometime during my lifetime and his.

So sad!

It's sad when a narrator ruins a book to the point that I can't stick with it to the end. Moving on to the next book in the series.

What were they thinking?

My first comment regards the reader of Book 6. For reasons known only to him and his editor he has the sheer arrogance to pronounce critical place and character names completely differently than done in the 5 books (and more than 120 hours) before him. He may indeed be a very fine narrator but he is totally out of place in this series.
The second observation concerns the author and here I have very mixed feelings. I started this series intrigued by the opening premise, alien annihilation - restarting civilization etc. I have stayed with the series due to occasional flashed of genius in what is otherwise very linear plot and character development.
By the second book (yes, it took that long) I realized there was a major problem. This author uses paragraphs to convey what another might in a single sentence. Worse still, this author's sentences are often paragraph length and infuriatingly convoluted. Book 5 offered a little hope that he realized the problem, alas book 6 is back to form.
I now realize why the Gbaba are so intent on eliminating all humans. In David Weber's universe every human is afflicted with an incurable, highly contagious but unfortunately not fatal, case of circumlocution. Sorry, I have to go - there must be a Gbaba recruiting station around here somewhere...

great book and series but this narrator

seriously, narrator, take a chill pill. Not every sentence needs to be THE MOST DRAMATIC SENTENCE EVER WROTE. The performance frequently undercuts serious and dramatic moments by not feeling any different that a simple heartfelt scene.