As for defense. The spirearch makes clear he cannot trust the Guard till the traitor are flushed. Also they are police he gives the numbers and points out they are stretched thin over 236 habitted habbles. He has to let things play out without any obvious response from himself other than the sending of a small secret force.
There are always spies and traitors in any large force. The spirach was worried that if his agents worked closely with the local guard forces, that traitor would be warned off and his investigators would find nothing. That is the risk he was avoiding. To argue that the spirach is helpless to respond to information lest “a spy find out” is taking that argument to an extreme that does not make sense.
It is entirely reasonable to suppose that the spirach might….
• Once evidence is gained that Landing is where the enemy marines are based, he can concentrate more forces in/around that region and make sure they can respond quickly to fresh news
• Once evidence (or reasonable suspicion exists) that the enemy might escape through a ship docked in Landing, then it is simplicity to cut off that retreat route by simply stationing a small warship in the mists nearby or making sure the landing defense installations stay on alert
The Fleets defensive strategy I've explained is down to Wilson. As to his genius Bayard and Grimm may have been ironic! There are clearly lots of problems within the fleet. If Jim is modelling the British Admiralty over its history then there's internal battles over Aristocratic Command structures mostly by baffoons buying their positions versus professional seaman earning command [Rook]. In any event he Wilson was thinking invasion not guerrilla warfare.
500 highly trained Marines vs 96 Grimms Crew [minus casualties as the book progresses]. Plus the Silkweavers [1000?] Grimm is outnumbered and has to be reactive following the marines not taking them on one on one. He is ordered to protect Ferus group that's important he cant defend the landing and do that with the resources he has. He also has no idea what the marines will do next.
I certainly agree that Grim could not protect the landing directly with his forces. I certainly agree that the fleet admiral could have been operating as an idiot. But even given all that, the defenses around landing were nonexistent even though it is a very critical and vulnerable port. The fixed defenses alone should have been enough to easily deal with an armed merchant no matter the surprise gained.
This is not a world which has been at peace for centuries. Warfare is fairly common. Spire Albion has been expecting war with Spire Aurora for years. There are only THREE ports, and landing is clearly the most economically important. In any war, Landing WOULD Be attacked. To suggest that a single merchant ship could attack and destroy the port so easily and get away so cleanly is simply not plausible.
Butcher could easily have resolved this problem with some minor changes in the text. The Marines could have specifically targeted the shore defense batteries and took them out before the mistshark starting firing. It could have been stated somewhere that this whole mission was a high risk gamble. No doubt there are other ways to achieve the same outcome. These elements are not a barrier to the story. But the fact that Butcher did not spend the extra sentence or two explaining the above is a FLAW in the story. Logical flaws always make it harder to “live the story” and thus make the book less “good”
Also haven't specifically timed everything but main events in whole book is over a couple of days i"d say. There's no time to particularly put the Spire on a war footing never mind that for his own reasons the Spirearch has kept the information suppressed. So who knew ... a handful of people in the spire and the fleet outside it.
I imagine everybody in the Spire knew they were going to be/at war. An attack on the fleet base would have been very public, very quickly.
There's obviously infrastructure in place for such things, but when you've always done everything a certain way, and your society is based on that assumption, there's not going to be much innovation. And if the Spire wanted to divert the power that's already in use, how are they going to rewire the whole Spire (see earlier point about spirestone being less than easily manipulated)?
My question was not WHY not add electricity now. My question was WHY did the builders not add electrical outlets when the Spire was built when doing so would have been easy.
As for Iron rot... love it It applies to both sides seriously handicaps armed warfare sets limits makes for interesting world building. I suggest Jim has thought through the implications and is having fun with the problem he has set himself.
My point is that iron rot is too much of a handicap. It happens too fast and copper plating is too uncertain/limited a defense. Iron tools/weapons/armor would have very short lifespans in actual combat and thus become astronomically expensive as you must keep replacing your tools/armor.
