Sci-fi book where humanity is rebuilt on a new planet after being wiped out

Question

Between 2005-2008, I entered a Barnes and Noble and came across a book in the New Releases section that I regretted not purchasing. I remember only the following from the back-panel summary of the book:

• Humanity was more or less wiped out.
• The remains of humanity were put into a deep sleep on one (or more) large spaceship(s).
• When they arrived a new planet, they had a society where religion was/wasn't outlawed (can't remember anymore).
• A lot of bad stuff went down after humanity rebuilt itself on this new planet.

Answer 1

While it is earlier than your described 2005-2008 timeframe, there is a book published in 1999 by Stephen Gould entitled "Helm" (It's entirely possible it could have just been mis-shelved by a patron).

The TV Tropes website gives this synopsis:

Shortly after the conclusion of a war that destroyed the Earth, rendering it uninhabitable for generations, the survivors in the grossly-overstretched lunar colony decide to send four thousand in a colony ship to a planet that had been in the process of being terraformed. However, the colony ship was only designed to carry one thousand — and the other three thousand replace the supplies that the colony would have needed to start on the new planet as a technological civilization. The colony will survive ... but they will survive as a low-tech civilization that will have to rebuild to a higher level. And to help them, they will begin the job implanted with a strict religious code, designed to maximize the probability of the colony's survival.

The book actually starts much later than the colonization, but everything in that synopsis fits your description.

Answer 2

David Weber's Safehold Series sounds like a match:

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, counselor to princes and kings, Merlyn has one purpose: to restart the history of the too-long-hidden human race.

Answer 3

@ArtSabintsev -- I know this question is old but now that some time has passed I'd like to ask are you still quite certain it wasn't one of the Safehold novels from around that time? See the general plot description and most likely titles below. The primary protagonist in the series is named Merlin.

When I first read your description and the date I was quite certain you were describing Weber's books. I was also very surprised that you said that Gould's "Helm" is the right answer since your question stated the book was in the New Releases area of B&N but Helm was already many years old when you saw whatever book you saw.

"After a desperate and ultimately lost struggle against a genocidal alien foe in the 24th Century, the 8 million survivors of Earth flee to Safehold to carefully rebuild civilization. They plan to temporarily block industrialization to avoid detection [...] the mission’s megalomaniacal leader Eric Langhorne implements this by erasing the colonists’ memories, excepting only his trusted staff and the advance terraforming team under Pei Shan-Wei. To her horror, 8 million colonists awaken on Safehold with the programmed belief that they are the first humans, newly created by divine will; Langhorne is the most powerful of God’s “Archangels,” holy beings charged with guiding a permanently medieval society."

• Off Armageddon Reef (2007)
• By Schism Rent Asunder (2008)
• By Heresies Distressed (2009)

Answer 4

Also sounds exactly like 'The Knife of Never Letting Go' by Patrick Ness. Guess there really isnt anything new under the sun.