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The Salvation War #1
Armageddon?
When all Hell breaks loose on Earth, all Earth will break loose on Hell
The Salvation War is a web original, written by Stuart Slade, which premiered online in the beginning of the year 2008, and starts by asking one question: what happens when God declares that humanity shall forever be kept away from Heaven, and all souls and bodies are now property of Satan?
Humanity chooses to fight back, declaring war on both Heaven and Hell.
The Salvation War is a web original, written by Stuart Slade, which premiered online in the beginning of the year 2008, and starts by asking one question: what happens when God declares that humanity shall forever be kept away from Heaven, and all souls and bodies are now property of Satan?
Humanity chooses to fight back, declaring war on both Heaven and Hell.
930 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2008
21 people are currently reading
612 people want to read
About the author
Stuart Slade
35 books22 followersStuart Slade was Director of the Consulting Group at Forecast International in Newtown, CT, a company which provides Market Intelligence for the world's Aerospace/Defense industries. He was also the primary analyst for the company's Warships Forecast and Industrial & Marine Turbine Forecast. In other defense related areas, he wrote United States Strategic Bombers 1945-2012, Littoral Warfare: Ships and Systems, Navies in the Nuclear Age and Multinational Naval Operations. He was also the successful author of 14 published novels including an alternate history series that began with his 2007 novel The Big One. He died in December 2020.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 17, 2014
The basic premise of this story - no spoiler, this actually happens just before the story begins - is that God is sick of mankind not obeying him and not worshipping him, so he declares heaven closed to mankind, says everyone is going to hell, and leaves Satan in charge. Mankind doesn't accept this and ends up at war with the forces of hell.
This was originally written as a series of blog posts, and whilst I'm sure Stuart Slade proofread his own work, that is usually not that successful, so there are a fair number of spelling and grammatical errors. It's also very long, a bit over 250,000 words. someone has since collected all the blog posts and combined them, so there is a complete copy floating around online, but there has been no editing done.
It's an interesting premise, and generally a fun read, but he is a military journalist, so he does tend to get a little over-enthusiastic on the minutiae of the weaponry.
This has convinced me to track down his published alternate history series and check it out at some stage.
This was originally written as a series of blog posts, and whilst I'm sure Stuart Slade proofread his own work, that is usually not that successful, so there are a fair number of spelling and grammatical errors. It's also very long, a bit over 250,000 words. someone has since collected all the blog posts and combined them, so there is a complete copy floating around online, but there has been no editing done.
It's an interesting premise, and generally a fun read, but he is a military journalist, so he does tend to get a little over-enthusiastic on the minutiae of the weaponry.
This has convinced me to track down his published alternate history series and check it out at some stage.
January 20, 2024
Entertaining, but in a very niche sort of way
February 23, 2018
Pretty damn good, although I am giving a looot of slack since it is unpublished, not formally edited, and given for free on the internet. If I bought it at a proper bookstore I might have ripped it apart for its sometimes clunky prose and typos, (and by might I mean definitely). In this particular case I can't get too mad.
I would still be pretty affectionate in my review since this is a incredibly likable "book", quotes used lovingly. It has such a catchy and interesting concept, that it can't help but be captivating, and does remarkably well in not turning it into a cheap gimmick.
Just a shame about the fate of the third book, though.
I would still be pretty affectionate in my review since this is a incredibly likable "book", quotes used lovingly. It has such a catchy and interesting concept, that it can't help but be captivating, and does remarkably well in not turning it into a cheap gimmick.
Just a shame about the fate of the third book, though.
December 5, 2014
I found the premise and thr setting very interesting, however one can notice the divergence of the writing style between the different contributors, as well as the extreme weapon obsession. For less military savvy readers, it can get quite overwhelming to be faced with such a huge amount of differemt weapons and useless information about gun cartridges. It was decent tho, and the few typos were tolerable. However I am not looking forward to reading the second book of the series.
September 5, 2024
The premise of this book is amazing: God has declared that Heaven is closed, and everyone will burn in Hell. For that, they should lie down and submit to his will. But people, stubborn as they are, decided to fight back.
The book originated as an unpublished web series. This is noticeable in the style. Every chapter is bite-sized, and the language slightly changes depending on the author of a specific chapter (Stuart Slade had a lot of help writing this series and credited every co-author). However, the author is a war analyst, and the number of references to specific weapon/vehicle models is not only astonishing but also makes it hard for less war-savvy readers to follow the descriptions. On top of that, the story does not follow the main heroes, although some characters make repeated entrances. Rather, it is a war chronicle, which sometimes zooms into insignificant (to the story) people and how they were affected by the war. So good luck remembering this plethora of names, because they can be referenced later.
The main events mostly unfold about two major battles between the forces of Hell and Earth. This should be interesting, but it is made clear from the beginning that there is a huge technological disparity between the sides. These events feel like a battle in the Civilization series, where one of the sides is two eras ahead, leaving no chance of losing this battle. While there would be blows back and forth, it never feels like humans are threatened. The lore of the world is not shown enough (although it is partially addressed in the next book) and opens up a lot of potential problems - like available teleportation.
All in all, this was a fun experience, but I find this book hard to recommend.
The book originated as an unpublished web series. This is noticeable in the style. Every chapter is bite-sized, and the language slightly changes depending on the author of a specific chapter (Stuart Slade had a lot of help writing this series and credited every co-author). However, the author is a war analyst, and the number of references to specific weapon/vehicle models is not only astonishing but also makes it hard for less war-savvy readers to follow the descriptions. On top of that, the story does not follow the main heroes, although some characters make repeated entrances. Rather, it is a war chronicle, which sometimes zooms into insignificant (to the story) people and how they were affected by the war. So good luck remembering this plethora of names, because they can be referenced later.
The main events mostly unfold about two major battles between the forces of Hell and Earth. This should be interesting, but it is made clear from the beginning that there is a huge technological disparity between the sides. These events feel like a battle in the Civilization series, where one of the sides is two eras ahead, leaving no chance of losing this battle. While there would be blows back and forth, it never feels like humans are threatened. The lore of the world is not shown enough (although it is partially addressed in the next book) and opens up a lot of potential problems - like available teleportation.
All in all, this was a fun experience, but I find this book hard to recommend.
January 11, 2020
Setting presentation, design and originality (how cool is the setting?): 4
Setting verisimillitude and detail (how much sense does the setting make?): 4
Plot design, presentation and originality (How well-crafted was the plot, in the dramaturgic sense?): 3
Plot and character verisimillitude (How much sense did the plot and motivations make? Did events follow from motivations?): 3
Characterization and character development: 1
Character sympatheticness: 4
Prose: 1
Page turner factor: 5
Mind blown factor: 2
Final (weighted) score: 3.5
Setting verisimillitude and detail (how much sense does the setting make?): 4
Plot design, presentation and originality (How well-crafted was the plot, in the dramaturgic sense?): 3
Plot and character verisimillitude (How much sense did the plot and motivations make? Did events follow from motivations?): 3
Characterization and character development: 1
Character sympatheticness: 4
Prose: 1
Page turner factor: 5
Mind blown factor: 2
Final (weighted) score: 3.5
July 2, 2017
An interesting premise that I have not encountered before. I like that he avoided the temptation to load it up with historical figures and for the most part it was a very enjoyable read.
May 5, 2014
MilSF crossed with Christian eschatology, but in a good way. The author of this series knows quite a bit about modern military hardware, perhaps going a bit overboard at times describing it, but that's really part of the fun here; you get to read lots of lavishly described battle scenes between the might modern-day Earth can field versus a bunch of demons that last fought bronze-age rabble and are going into battle expecting us to be impressed by lightning bolts and pitch forks. It's not all curb-stomp battles, though, as the forces of Hell have a bunch of other tricks up their sleeves that makes things not quite so certain for the good guys.
While I liked the story overall, it could really use a thorough going-over by an editor or two. That would tidy up a lot of the little typos and technical glitches as well as trimming some of the excessive verbosity, and perhaps tightening things up overall. But as long as you go into this story willing to forgive a little lack of polish it doesn't get in the way too badly.
The biggest obstacle to enjoying this book might be simply getting ahold of a proper ebook version. The story was originally posted chapter-by-chapter on a discussion forum with other comments interspersed throughout, and while there exist decent compilations people have put together they're not exactly "official" and may take some digging to find.
While I liked the story overall, it could really use a thorough going-over by an editor or two. That would tidy up a lot of the little typos and technical glitches as well as trimming some of the excessive verbosity, and perhaps tightening things up overall. But as long as you go into this story willing to forgive a little lack of polish it doesn't get in the way too badly.
The biggest obstacle to enjoying this book might be simply getting ahold of a proper ebook version. The story was originally posted chapter-by-chapter on a discussion forum with other comments interspersed throughout, and while there exist decent compilations people have put together they're not exactly "official" and may take some digging to find.
March 8, 2015
Lo, a great voice called out from the Heavens, proclaiming the start of Armageddon, mankind's final battle. The gates of Hell have opened, and the demonic legions are set to conquer the world and throw the souls of the sinners into the fiery pit of Gehennon.
Humanity responds with overwhelming force, and quickly gains the upper hand, because - as it turns out - daemons, angels, and Yahweh himself are no more winged sacks of meat, who will bleed and die when shot at.
The premise is fresh enough, although it's been done before (Robert Sheckley's Battle comes to mind). The plot as a whole is okay - it's mostly war porn, but there are a few twists and turns, and some characters you can actually care for. The godawful prose and the spurious nerdy references, however, completely ruined my ability to enjoy of the book. The author should probably find himself an editor.
Humanity responds with overwhelming force, and quickly gains the upper hand, because - as it turns out - daemons, angels, and Yahweh himself are no more winged sacks of meat, who will bleed and die when shot at.
The premise is fresh enough, although it's been done before (Robert Sheckley's Battle comes to mind). The plot as a whole is okay - it's mostly war porn, but there are a few twists and turns, and some characters you can actually care for. The godawful prose and the spurious nerdy references, however, completely ruined my ability to enjoy of the book. The author should probably find himself an editor.
November 30, 2015
This book reads like an unholy collaboration between Tom Clancy and Philip Pullman. Basically, what happens is that all of a sudden, humanity is informed that Satan is now their master, and they are to prepare for an eternity of torment.
Unfortunately, Satan (and his opposite number) has not been in touch with events on earth for many centuries. Ooops! Demons have some few advantages, but these are quickly countered, and they turn out to be terribly vulnerable to modern weapons. And once the humans learn the secret of getting into Hell, things start turning really unpleasant for the demons.
I'd have given this more stars, but the version I was able to find had lots of typos and other things that made me think that a good going-over by a professional proofreader would have been a Good Thing.
Unfortunately, Satan (and his opposite number) has not been in touch with events on earth for many centuries. Ooops! Demons have some few advantages, but these are quickly countered, and they turn out to be terribly vulnerable to modern weapons. And once the humans learn the secret of getting into Hell, things start turning really unpleasant for the demons.
I'd have given this more stars, but the version I was able to find had lots of typos and other things that made me think that a good going-over by a professional proofreader would have been a Good Thing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 3, 2016
An entertaining yet terrifying amalgamation of cliches. It reads fine most of the time, and the sequel is worth it. Feels like reading a stoned Tom Clancy who suddenly really likes the word "retooling". No, seriously.
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September 4, 2016interesting story...
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews