This is book 2 of the "Safehold Harrington" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Second volume of Weber's new series for Tor. I believe the title is not yet definite. From an ARC, obviously; so no quotes and less detail. But definitely spoilers.

Things progress. The need for actual Reformation of the church becomes clearer (as the corruption of the hierarchy is made more obvious). Other threads of attempted resistance dating back to the founding of the colony appear, beyond just Nimue/Merlin. Other countries join our good guys in opposition to the Church.

Merlin hasn't started to deal with the issue of the real need for technological limitations yet, but they're nowhere near the point of creating engines that could be detected yet. And there's still rather a ways to go to build a viable space fleet that could take on the enemy that destroyed the rest of humanity. In fact that's totally and entirely out of reach from what I can see so far. But nobody said it would be a short series.

Definitely still fun.