Shadow of Victory (19) (Honor Harrington)

This “book” is terrible. Lots of new names, lots of new planets, lots of mindless drivel. It’s all immaterial. I thought all the negative reviewers were wrong. Turns out it was me. After the fifth, sixth, or was it 7th new planet or liberation movement, I simply closed the book and moved on.

This really is as bad as the reviewers state.

Well, I got sucked in again. I thought this volume would advance the storyline, but as with so many of Weber's recent Honorverse novels, he spends a LOT of pages just bringing all of his many, many (many) characters up to speed on what's happened in previous tomes. In addition, his editor seems to have taken a permanent vacation, because there are lots of tedious and repetitive conversations between characters using the same quips and signature conversational devices. (He should run a 'phrase checker' through the manuscript once in a while.) For these reasons, I consider the Safehold series superior - everything is happening on one planet, and with the SNARC instantaneous communications system, the reader only has to wade through occasional justifications about why this character can't know what he (or she) knows yet.
I miss the tautness of Weber's earlier novels. At this point, I would have thought he has made enough money that he can go back his original style, rather than generate books that are more lucrative but are at least 30% overweight.

Book number 4 of a 4 book space opera and military science fiction series. This book is the 29th or so book in the 30+ book Honorverse series. I read the well printed and bound 1,120 page MMPB. I have purchased the next book in the series and will be reading it soon.

Man, what a slog ! There are so many scenarios and characters of thousands that I had severe trouble figuring out where I was. However, it is an Honorverse book and must be read in order to maintain the series. Or not, feel free to take the risk.

The book is basically a retelling of how The Kingdom of Manticore transitioned to the Empire of Manticore from the Talbot sector perspective as it changed from Solarian League protectorates to Manticore Empire members.

Weber is at his best when he develops his characters through stress and trauma. Those characters we know from his previous books are the hook that reels buyers in to see what new adventures and changes will occur. The overall conflict with the Alignment and the Solarian League form a backdrop to the current state of the Honor series, so naturally one would like more information regarding these scenarios. Unfortunately, this book reveals almost no real developments in either its characters or main plot. Instead, the first 350 pages introduce a plethora of new characters from various Verge planets - - none of which promise any long-term interaction. When Weber finally deigns to glimpse some of the familiar characters from the Honorverse, you discover this story does not really include Honor at all. In fact, those familiar characters are portrayed once again in review from a slightly different perspective. In fact, around page 500, these characters begin a new adventure, albeit nothing particularly interesting. The overwhelming superiority of Manticore's weaponry combined with Haven's forces makes any conflict merely a given ending. Eventually, one discovers the Alignment's agenda and their relationship with Mesa, but that is as much of a reveal as one can see in the over 1000 pages. My normal engagement with the original Honor series meant I could hardly put down a book until it was finished. This book took three weeks to complete only through sheer doggedness. It gets a bit better after the first half of the book, but wow, what a struggle to get there. Unless one is addicted to the storyline and absolutely must read every nuance, skipping this book in the series will probably not leave much of a hole in your knowledge of the series. And you can probably also count on Weber for more redundancy in his next book to fill in any blanks, as he appears to have no more creativity left for any new plots.

I've been very disappointed in the last few books of the Honorverse, much as I love the series:

1. It's irritating in the extreme to pay for an expensive hardcover, only to find that information about the characters you love is, literally, copy/pasted from a prior book.

2. It's also irritating to find that this copy/paste is practically the ONLY portion of the book dealing with those characters in any significant way.

Sadly, David seems to have fallen victim to the pitfalls many writers succumb to, when writing a long series: boredom with the main characters and a desire to develop sidelines to keep his own interest going, and possibly the need to continue (for himself and/or the publisher) "churning out books" in the series.

While many of the other "sidelines" and their characters, and main plot supporting characters were highly interesting and entertaining (i.e. Thandi, Victor, Anton, Cathy, Jenny, Kevin, Eloise, Thomas, Hamish, Emily, Allison, Alfred, Benjamin, etc.), Weber has become bogged down in continually introducing us to new (often "neobarb," to use his term) worlds where, honestly, I get bored AND overwhelmed with new, fairly irrelevant, information and people. Its as if Shakespeare wrote prequels and sequels to "Romeo and Juliet" in which most of the story centered on pig farmers, distant merchants, and local conflicts in Spain that obliquely affect the house fortunes of the Montagues and the Capulets.

Weber needs to re-center himself: he's given us more than enough of microscopic jockeying for power, in countless worlds, between the Mesan Alignment and the Grand Alliance, whether the Solarian League is involved in it or not, with hundreds of forgettable characters. One need not examine each individual atom and how it bumps into its neighbors, to enjoy and understand a piece of fine silk cloth.

While many of his supporting characters are enjoyable, bringing them in as THE main character in a book purportedly about Honor (as he did with Michelle Henke a few books back) is a big disappointment. I understand that he's made Honor into a character that simply cannot fail (or die) without infuriating readers. I understand that he's grown and taken the character about as far as he possibly can. I understand that he wanted to kill her off long ago, and his wife (wisely) talked him out of it... which left him struggling on what to do with her next.

For a time he did well in continuing Honor's character and the plot, bringing in some genuine twists---most especially, the existence of the Mesan Alignment and its long term machinations. The corporate corruption in the Solarian League also does well in mirroring the current state of our real world. At this point, though, the battle lines have been clearly drawn: the Mesan Alignment's plans are close to fruition, the Solarian League is falling apart, and the Grand Alliance is the best bet on stopping the Mesans. (While it's nice that certain underlings in Solarian intelligence and military have twigged to the Mesans, frankly I don't see them doing much more than possibly providing the Grand Alliance "allies on the inside of the Solarian structure").

Weber has (and has had for some time) his set-up for the finale of this series. We all want Honor and the Grand Alliance to win, obviously. We all want them to find the hidden Mesan homeworld and all the places the Detweilers and other heads of the M.A. are operating from, and take them down. We all want to see some kind of resolution to the story; and to see the winners setting in motion the building of a new universe, where those in charge set about locating all the lower-level Mesans, restructuring what is left of the Solarian League into something fairer and better, and in general, beginning the long hard haul to improve life for all humans (and treecats and other species).

All this jockeying on other worlds, is too much information. We are too involved with the (now large number) of MAIN characters to "get into" all these new people, and frankly, the various bush-league fights between MAN and the Grand Alliance, are like being at a press conference where someone is about to announce that yes, they've found a cure for cancer... but first, they want to spend six hours telling you about the nuts and bolts of ten years of research, and the family lives of every tech and janitor, before they tell you want you WANT to hear and what you CAME to hear: the vital information of the cure and how it works.

David, it's time to wrap up the Honorverse main story line. We want Honor involved. We want MAN taken down. We want the Mandarins taken down, and Solarians at large to be shown the truth. We want Honor to survive, and to be able to turn her attention to her family and children (especially her son, who seems to be even more psionically-gifted than she is), rebuilding a peaceful society, and helping to train those tasked with chasing down MAN's remnants and/or with setting up new forms of government on countless worlds.

We know nothing is perfect, that peaceful rebuilding is a daunting task, that there will always be some who are corrupt or evil for others to fight against, that in the final conflict resolution we will see some beloved characters die. (And of all who've already died, the hardest death for me was Andrew's.) But at this point Honor has more than paid her dues; she deserves not only to see (and help with) the bad guys taken down, but also to live the peaceful life she's struggled for all these years, and more than earned.

PLEASE wrap up this series. You've already got two other storylines in this universe to work with: the early days of Manticore's military, and the Treecat books you're writing with Jane Lindskold. I would especially like to see a couple more books in the latter: it doesn't matter that we know that eventually treecats were granted constitutional protection; learning about how that happened and the role Stephanie Harrington played in it, is fascinating and highly enjoyable. You and Jane still have some story to tell there; please bend the publisher's ear on that.

I've loved this series. I especially love that you (with other author's help at times) addressed multiple topics like slavery, human-centric beliefs, sexism, religion (and its excesses), biology and ecology, examined multiple systems of governance, and shown the importance of both an educated populace and participation by that populace in the governing system... along with how said systems become corrupted (as we're living, at the moment, in real life)... but it's time to draw things to a conclusion. It shouldn't take but 1-2 more books to do so. PLEASE do, because I'm tired of spending money in the hope that "the next book" WILL be you doing so.

One thousand one hundred and fifty-eight pages of what is fluff is what this book is all about. Initially, I was excited to get into this one, but as the pages kept getting turned, I was getting more and more disappointed. The whole Shadow series is a retelling of the events of the Honor Harrington saga from different perspectives to allow some other voices to come through. I get that. However, this one is much more repetitive than most. We’ve already read about the Mesa Alignment’s plans to muddy Manticore’s reputation by setting up false insurrections around the various verge worlds that are supposed to be supported by Manticore – but really aren’t. Did we really need to read about another half dozen of these efforts? About the only interesting portion of this was that it involved Damien Harahap and I was hoping that somewhere in this morass of words, we would find out what happens to him in the end… but no. There is no resolution there.

What we do have is the same plot repeated again and again and again and again and again. The different worlds have different secret police organizations. So, the author has decided to base them on a different ethnic group from our world. However, that fails when you try to really untangle the differences between the Czech sounding words and the Polish ones! Since that is the only difference between the two, why bother?

We also get dribs and drabs of other things. A few bits on Zachary McBride; Some about how the Havenite Tourville and Terekhov make up; Some on how operation Houdini was conducted and how it all came to a big blowup in the end; etc.. About the only thing that was really resolved was an explanation of Albert Dechtweiler’s end – and we find out that he actually had a loving wife! Imagine that???

In the end, this is a book that can be completely ignored and not purchased unless you are a fanatic for all things Harrington. That is why I am giving this polemic a two star rating... although I was close to only giving it a one star…

Great book.

I have read many of David Webber's books and liked them. In this book he seems to want to impress readers with how many Unpronounceable Polish names he can use. Unless you are Polish it distracts from the readability of the book. I bought a book printed in ENGLISH and think I have a right to a book that can be read by an English speaker. I like big books and was anxious to sit in the quiet of my home and be immersed in another great book. But it was not to be. This book does not help fill my many bookshelves. However, it did help fill my trash can after reading three incomprehensible chapters. David Webber - - if he really wrote this book - - has written himself out. Explore new writers. Those that speak and write with the King’s English .

Great read so far but what is taking so long to get out new episodes? Some cut and paste in this, from other books, like they have been doing. Increases page count. Possibly brings new readers up to speed. Great depictions of reactions to Battle of Manticore and the Yawata Strike from other characters perspective. Certainly brings up emotions related to characters you relate to. If you like the Shadow line of development, this is for you. And it's so far, so good. Maybe halfway through the book and already forgiving the lousy print job, bad binding, and crumpled pages.

Not what I expected