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In Enemy Hands | 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 | ||
With the success of her command in Silesia, Honor is transfered out to undertake a command more worthy of her talents. It's only a squadron of heavy cruisers, but it's a lot better than armed merchantmen! But Haven, while most definitely on the defensive, still has some good admirals, and one of them is on a heading to confront Honor'sships with a force she cannot fight. And so she surrenders, and is captured as a POW, scheduled for execution.
Despite the fact that the capture takes place halfway through the book, I didn't give any plot elements away. This is because the information I just stated was on the book's cover. If you think of it as a spoiler, blame the publisher, not me.
That first half of the book is almost entirely setup for Honor's downfall. There's a lot of politicking and character interaction and introspection and exposition. But it's never boring. Indeed, most of it makes great reading, especially for a first-time reader. It's a great deal of fun to watch this train heading towards Honor (and Honor towards it) and anticipate the meeting. And the meeting is not done sloppily, either. They are nice, tense pages in the middle as she tries desperately not to lose everything. As usual, we get a good look at the Havenites' side of things as well. It is fascinating to see just how badly the revolution has been overtaken by overzealousness and simple savagery. And the last hundred pages or more are simply excellent.
There is one problem of sorts. It is really only noticable if you read the series straight through. Namely, in early books whenever characters jokingly ask Honor how she can eat so many rich foods so often and stay so thin, she says only that she has a very active lifestyle. And since it was established in the very first book that she had a high rank in martial arts, it makes sense enough. But now it is revealed (fairly early, so again it's not much of a spoiler) that she has been genetically engineered for heavy gravity adaptation, with some side effects including a very high metabolism. In short, she needs to eat a lot. But this is mentioned nowhere in the series before this book, it should have been. Indeed, knowing Weber's writing style, I feel sure he would have included mention of it before had he thought of it, even if it was not important as a plot element. It is not large enough discrepency to be a problem, and indeed nothing in this revelation contradicts past facts or events, but it does make it seem like this is a recent afterthought, not part of Honor's original history.
This is really only noticable if you read the series straight through. And even then it's only a level or two above nitpicking. And it's about the only problem I found with the book. Some readers might think the story takes too long to get to the confrontation and capture. Myself, I think it only heightens the anticipation.
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