Lately the island kingdom of Charis has rejected the Church's authority. Charis has repelled the Church's first attack and is preparing to strike back. Yet not all those who support the Church are corrupt, and the Church stands ready to use the faith and belief of those blameless souls for its own cynical ends. The gauntlet has been cast down, and full-scale religious war - the ugliest war of all - looms over Safehold. To prevail, King Cayleb of Charis...

"The Shongairi conquered Earth. In mere minutes, half the human race died, and its cities lay in shattered ruins. But the Shongairi didn't expect the survivors' tenacity. And, crucially, they didn't know that Earth harbored two species of intelligent, tool-using bipeds. One of them was us. The other, long-lived and lethal, was hiding in the mountains of eastern Europe, the subject of fantasy and legend. When they emerged and made alliance with humankind,...

"After the League, committing atrocities such as the galaxy has not known in a thousand years, kills many of the people she loves, Honor Harrington, a.k.a. the Salamander, is about to show the League members something they could have never imagined"--

The struggle for human freedom continues as Merlin Athrawes and a handful of extraordinary human beings stand in the path of the Church of God Awaiting, which controls most of Safehold and has decreed the destruction of Charis and its young queen Sharleyan of Chisholm and her consort, young Cayleb Ahrmahk.

"We've come a long way in the forty years since the Shongairi attacked Earth, killed half its people, and then were driven away by an alliance of humans with the other sentient bipeds who inhabit our planet. But it also transpires that the Shongairi expedition that nearly destroyed our home planet ... wasn't an official one. That, indeed, its commander may have been acting as an unwitting cats-paw for the Founders, the ancient alliance of very old,...

"The war between magically gifted Arcana and psionically talented Sharona continues to rage. The dragon-borne Arcanan assault across five universes has been halted but at atrocious cost. One of those was the life of Crown Prince Janaki, heir to the newlycreated Sharonian empire, who went knowingly to his death. Another price will be the sacrifice of his younger sister, Grand Imperial Princess Andrin, now heir of Sharona. Andrin bears her family's...