Tor 2013. Hardback with dust jacket, 672 pp
For centuries, the world of Safehold, last redoubt of the human race,
lay under the unchallenged rule of the Church of God Awaiting. The
Church permitted nothing new - no new inventions, no new understandings
of the world. What no one knew was that the Church was an elaborate
fraud - a high-tech system established by a rebel faction of Safehold's
founders, meant to keep humanity hidden from the powerful alien race
that had destroyed old Earth. Then awoke Merlyn Athrawes, cybernetic
avatar of a warrior a thousand years dead, felled in the war in which
Earth was lost. Monk, warrior, counsellor to princes and kings, Merlyn
has one purpose: to restart the history of the too-long-hidden human
race. And now the fight is thoroughly underway. The island empire of
Charis has declared its independence from the Church, and with Merlyn's
help has vaulted forward into a new age of steam-powered efficiency.
Fending off the wounded Church, Charis has drawn more and more of the
countries of Safehold to the cause of independence and
self-determination. But at a heavy cost in bloodshed and loss-a cost
felt by nobody more keenly that Merlyn Athrawes. The wounded Church is
regrouping.Its armies and resources are vast. The fight for humanity's
future isn't over, and won't be over soon...