David Weber’s How Company a Foundation may be the latest novel in the brand new York Times-bestselling Safehold series begun with Off Armageddon Reef, By Schism Lease Asunder, By Heresies Distressed, and A Mighty Fortress.

The Charisian Empire, delivered in war, has always known it must battle for its very survival. What most of its subjects don’t know even now, however, is just how much more it’s fighting for. Emperor Cayleb, Empress Sharleyan, Merlin Athrawes, and their innermost group of most respected advisers do about How Firm a Foundation: A Novel in the Safehold Series (#5) know. And because they actually, they know the penalty if indeed they reduce will be far even worse than their own deaths as well as the destruction of all they understand and love.

For five years, Charis has survived all of the Church of God Awaiting as well as the corrupt men who control it have thrown on the island empire. The purchase price has been high and paid in blood. Despite its string of hard-fought naval victories, Charis is still on the protective. It can keep its own at ocean, but if it’s to survive, it must beat the Chapel upon its own ground. Yet so how exactly does it invade the mainland and take the battle to a foe whose people outnumbers its own fifteen to 1? How does it prevent that substantial challenger from rebuilding its fleets and attacking yet again?

Charis has no response to those queries, but needs to find one…quickly. The Inquisition’s brutal torture and hideous executions are claiming more and more innocent lives. Its agencies are fomenting rebellion against the only mainland realms sympathetic to Charis. Spiritual terrorists have already been dispatched to wreak havoc against the Empire’s subjects. Assassins stalk the Emperor and Empress, their allies and advisers, and an innocent youthful boy, not yet eleven years of age, whose father has already been murdered. And Merlin Athrawes, the cybernetic avatar of a woman one thousand years dead, has finally discovered what sleeps under the far-off Temple in the Cathedral of God Awaiting’s town of Zion.

The men and women fighting for human freedom and tolerance have built a foundation for his or her struggle in the Empire of Charis with their own blood, but will that foundation be firm enough to survive?

Safehold Series

1. Off Armageddon Reef

2. By Schism Rent Asunder

3. By Heresies Distressed

4. A Mighty Fortress

5. How Firm A Foundation

6. Midst Toil and Tribulation

7. JUST LIKE A Mighty Army

8. Hell’s Foundations Quiver

9. At the Sign of Triumph