This is book 3 of the "Safehold Harrington" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Third in this new series.

Things haven't changed much. The Empire of Charis is under interdict, and its leaders are excommunicated, but the local church is ignoring that (is part of the schism). We're dealing with ground combat rather than naval combat mostly so far, and nothing really big has happened.

Well, except for hanging 6 priests who incited soldiers to massacre civilians. Annoyingly, this execution is referred to repeatedly as "shedding their blood". The exact case doesn't leave me feeling that Weber lost track of events, at least; he's just using a common metaphor in a very unfortunate way.

Anyway, the priests are hanged, and the Group of Four in Zion gets smart enough to accept the evidence that they led the massacre, run a formal investigation, and admit they acted wrongly. I haven't gotten to the consequences of that bit of smart behavior yet.

Right now, we're watching an assassination attempt against the Empress be set up. It's not allowed to succeed, but it's only stopped at the very last second, by Merlin flying half-way around the planet and risking being discovered by the orbiting sensors.

Complexities within the Church are being set up, too, including some serious reformers. Also, the child the Emperor went to such trouble to save is vowing blood-feud. Stupid git.

And, in fact, it ends with very little resolved. This is an annoying middle book.