Through Fiery Trials – David Weber

“Through Fiery Trials” is effectively a book-length epilogue. The storyline that covered the world war between the corrupt church and its supporters and its would-be victims ended in book 9. TFT covers the next decade-and-change: We get to see who marries whom, we get to see the protagonists having kids, we get to see the next generation of technological change.

There isn’t much story or, rather, the story that is told is a red herring. Most of Safehold is riding a wave of technological and economic expansion. In order to have a story to tell, the author makes things go to hell-in-a-hand-basket in two nations. So we get hundreds of pages of bad things (and a few good things) happening to new characters we don’t much care about.

It is telling that I can’t tell, after finishing book 10, whether it is intended to be the end of the series or whether it is meant to be continued.