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Honor Among Enemies | Rating | |
| A | |||
| David Weber | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Honor Harrington | Jayne's Intelligence Review: The Royal Manticoran Navy, Jayne's Intelligence Review: The Havenite Republican Navy, On Basilisk Station, The Honor of the Queen, The Short Victorious War, Field of Dishonor, Flag in Exile, Honor Among Enemies, In Enemy Hands, Echoes of Honor, Ashes of Victory, War of Honor, At All Costs, More Than Honor, Worlds of Honor, Changer of Worlds, The Service of the Sword, Crown of Slaves, The Shadow of Saganami | ||
The situation in the nearby Silesian Confederacy is getting terrible. With Manticore's warships occupied in the fight against Haven, shipping in the weakly governed confederacy is getting absolutely mangled by opportunistic pirates. The Star Kingdom's shipping cartels demand the government do something, and do it now, or else they'll be forced to suspend shipping to the area, and that would be bad. So they bring Honor out of exile, give her a few merchant ships that have been converted to Q-Ships, and tell her to go get 'em.
The book is great on a large number of fronts. First of all, there are a multitude of plotlines going on, something that has not really been done in the series before. The closest was the very first book, but there all the disparate threads turned out to be part of one overarching plot. Here, there is Honor's hunting and killing of pirates, there's the storyline of the Peep's involvement in the area, there's a bunch of particularly nasty pirates out there willing to rape and kill for the fun of it, and a plot involving some of the bad apples in Honor's crew. Obviously, they don't stay seperate for the entire book but rather weave around each other, especially in the second half or so. But they're not related, other than that they all have to be dealt with, and it makes the book fun to read. Whenever I got tired of one plot thread, there was another waiting to be picked up.
Politics are kept to a minimum. I like a good political novel, but Weber's version sometimes is a bit overwhelming. This one is heavily weighted towards action. On the other hand, what few politics are included are done very well. And in fact we get to see a side of one of Honor's old enemies that I hardly expected at all. It was a nice touch.
The main problem I had was that this is the second time in the series we've come across Q-Ships, and Weber has yet to explain the term. One would think that in a book that revolves around warships disguised as merchantmen he could devote a few paragraphs - or a few pages, considering his expositive style - to explaining where the term came from and the like.
But this is picking nits. It's a wonderful addition to the series, and it basically tells those following the books that Honor isn't out to pasture quite yet. If you're following the series at all, you'll like this one.
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