Rating: 
Summary: Thoroughly disappointed, again
Review: I was hoping that Ashes of Honor was an over-written aberration, but the author seems to be bereft of a good editor and a clear plotline. He is lost in charactors and seems to have run out of scenes, referring to recycle ones I have read before (i.e., the scene where the captain boots an obnoxious political charactor out of his conference room.)Gone is the crisp writing of On Basilisk Station. What a shame to see a writer run out of gas and resort to hot air! I'll wait for the paperback on the next one...when it gets to the remainder table!
Rating:
Summary: The freshness of the series is gone. A very dull book.
Review: A very weak book. After the first 200 pages I started skimming over the dull political writing. Since Weber is writing the political stuff for all sides its predictable and not at all interesting. Certainly a little bit is needed to know why the war starts up again, but not 80% of the book. Even the parts with Honor in them are getting to be somewhat questionable.
At 300 pages the book could have kept a better pace and been worth reading every page, not the 860 pages of junk we got. Even the space battles were glossed over in favor of politics.
Finally, if Weber's going to get Honor into a romance with White Haven he needs to have someone else write those paragraphs. It's about as bad as the romance stuff in attack of the clones, totally unrealistic and very convient how he has Samantha 'adopt' White Haven and then a final bonding with Honor and White Haven as the first Human-Human mind link. Give me a break. Kill White Haven off in some dramatic fashion and get Honor a real boyfriend, or does Weber plan on marrying the them on Grayson so White Haven can have two wives.
Get an editor, get a real romance, get rid of the excessive political talk, and get back to focusing on Honor the way the first few books did. Keep it under 500 pages and no more transitional books. People said the last one was a transitional book as well, and we're still in transit.
Rating: 
Summary: A little less conversation, a little more action
Review: "A little less conversation, a little more action", to quote Elvis. I've developed an appetite for the Honorverse, and came away hungry. For ardent Honor fans like myself, this book is a must read. If we weren't so far along in the series, I'd swear this novel was a middle book in a trilogy. I was impatient with the multi threaded exposition of Andermani, Sollie, Sillie, Peep (err, Havenite), Manticoran, Grayson military / political plotlines. Our warrior goddess is all grown up now, and I can appreciate that she's beyond the point of commanding a single craft or small task force in some insanely successful tactical maneuver. No one trick pony, our Honor. But I just couldn't stay interested in the book - kept skipping pages and waiting for the good part. Honor's actual fleet engagement, near the end of the book, blew by in a few pages. The good news, she has all the body parts she started with and she never 'squared her shoulders'. Let's hope this novel is a bridge to something more palatable. Honor's sister or Mayhew's daughter might make a fine Honor substitute in future volumes.
Rating: 
Summary: Vindicated
Review: I was less than thrilled with Weber's previous Honor Harrington book so it was with much trepidation that I bought this one. I was more than pleasantly surprised with this book. The story telling aspects that have made this author a favorite were still here and there was some satisfactory conclusion to tangling threads with Honor's characterization that were more than a little niggling and annoying for their failure to be addressed in the book prior to this one. I feel vindicated by it. Oh, and the CD that comes with it is almost worth the price of the book alone, even if you hate it.
Rating: 
Summary: A transistion book - don't expect much action
Review: Unlike the rest of the Honor Harrington series, War of Honor is decidedly lacking in action. Much time is spent filling in background stories, and developing the political situation into one that will allow continuation of the story in future books. What action there is comes late in the book and lacks much of the detail characteristic of Weber's previous Honor Harrington novels. One irritating point about the development of the political situation is the consistent lack of due diligence in montioring communications by leaders on both sides of the Manticoran / Havenite negotiations. I understand that David Weber needed to contrive some way setting up the conflict for future books, but the idea that NO ONE would have noticed blatant tampering streches reality a litte thin. As a result, the complex characters that David Weber spends so much time developing do not "feel" as real as they otherwise would have.
Rating:
Summary: Weber needs a better editor to cut and focus
Review: Weber sells books and War of Honor reflects his power to make his publisher money. Thus, in the battle between the author to write unrestricted and the editor to limit and focus the story, Weber unfortunately dominated Not a great book, not even a good book at 861 story pages. In 861 pages, no conflict is resolved: not between Honor Harrington and White House in their clumsy romance; not between the Queen and Baron High Ridge for control of Manticore; and not between the Anderman Empire's and Manticore's conflicting interest in Silesia. Nor is the war between Manticore and the Republic of Haven resolved. Still, it is an essential book to read if you like Honor Harrington because it does introduce new plot and character growth opportunities to extend the Honor franchise. Look for future Harrington Honor books to resolved old issues. But before writing the next book, David Weber needs to read 10 romance novels to improve his stiff and clumsy handling of the Harrington and House affair.
Rating:
Summary: Honor's back
Review: If you want to read a synopsis of the book read someone else review of David Webber's latest offering for the story of Honor Harrington. It is filled with the usual mix of politics and war that have made these books some of if not the best science fiction over the last decade. Webber gives us characters that seem to come to life off the page, and gives us a story worthy of the main characters he has spent years creating. For the first time since "Echo's of Honor" Webber in this story gives us the action, suspence, and an ending you just can't miss that have defined a series of science fiction novels that I would say rank with the best of time.
Rating:
Summary: The book is worth a deeper reading
Review: This is the tenth book in the series, and weighing in, literally, at 864 pages. A tome indeed. Most of you have probably have read all of the preceding nine books. Here, the Star Kingdom has defeated the People's Republic of Haven and has spent five years negotiating, though not finalising, an uneasy peace. Haven has undergone another revolution and is now a wobbly, democratic Republic of Haven. All the surviving protagonists in the last novel are back, which will please many readers. Qualitatively, this book is really the start of another series. If you think of it this way, several things make sense, like its length, and the criticisms of other reviewers. I suggest you take a time out here from reading my scribblings and peruse the other reviews, if you haven't already done so. Several reviewers have panned this novel, saying that there is little action and way too much verbiage. I don't disagree. If it is space opera, there is essentially only one significant fleet action here. But look a little deeper at what Weber has done. In the early books, the Peeps were the out-and-out bad guys. No ambiguity here! And Manticore had several ratbags amongst its politicians and officers. But as the series went on, we saw several decent Peeps. Not so black and white any more. The nineth novel ends with the good Peeps successfully overthrowing their government. Along the way, the Andermani empire was increasingly mentioned. Weber was positioning it as a possible future plot complication. Do you know what I found strange about the tenth novel? The top leaders amongst the Haveners (they are not Peeps anymore) are all decent chaps. A couple of lower ranking creeps, but not more so than in Manticore. Weber is writing a subtler game. It is also harder to write. He is setting the stage for future novels of greater ambiguity. This in part, I think, accounts for some of the book's length. Don't forget the Andermani. A large portion of the book is set in the Silesian Confederacy, which sits between the Star Kingdom and the Andermani Empire. The Andermani are clearly modelled on Bismarck's Germany, a militaristic expansionist regime. Anyone reading this book might sense future trouble between them and the Star Kingdom. Clearly, Weber is hedging his bets. So he is fleshing out the terrain. He probably does not know how the future novels will turn, but he is keeping his options open. In part because a straightout rematch between the Star Kingdom and Haven might simply look too repetitive to readers. And there's even a hint that the Terran-based worlds may take an active part in future conflicts. This is why I claim that this book is really the start of a new series. Compare it to the previous books for logical consistency. But it opens new arenas. Could be very interesting indeed! So yes, I do agree with those reviewers who say that this book is long, with little action, and is not the best of the ten books. But I say to you: Dig deeper and see WHY this is, and what it implies for the future novels.
Rating: 
Summary: Wait for the Paperback
Review: Wait for this one in paperback if you want to have the entire series. It must be terrible to have a conversation in War of Honor. Imagine a room of people who will say three sentences and then look off into space for several minutes while completing their inner monologue. This happens to some extent in all this series, but it was very pronounced in this one. I really like the series as a whole, most books are four or five stars. This one gets two because it is setting up the Napoleonic Wars (with a few twists from later continental conflicts), and that takes some background. This much background is really overboard. I found this book to be a waste up through the mid-four-hundred page range, leaving a moderate book at the end that wasn't bad, yet wasn't up to any of the prior ones. It is obvious early in the book that England and Prussia (Manticore and Andermani) are going to war with France (Haven), having agreed to partition Poland (Silesia). Russia (Solarian), with its huge outdated military, waits in the wings. Napoleon (Tom Theisman) has overthrown the Committee for Public Safety and restored the morale of the military. Is the moral to the physical as three to one? Find out in the next book.
Rating:
Summary: A Different Honor
Review: This is an interesting twist in the Honor Harrington series. Weber is building up to a climax in the next book. War of Honor is a book more of politics and relationships. WoH developes the relationships and creates a love triangle, and of course, the relationship between the nations. Be wary, the person who finds politics boring, will most likely find the book boring. This book is merely a stepping stone into what will be the new Honor. If you are looking for combat action, look somewhere else. I happen to enjoy combat, and sadly there is not much of that in this book. Whatever little there is, Weber sums up in a paragraph. This book is far from bad, it's just not an exciting read, diehard Honor fans will love (like me) and new readers of Honor will be attraced to the bind in disk. The Honorverse disk is the best thing that Baen could ever do. Every Honor book is on the disk. This is a great plus to new fans, and to old ones. Included is music by Echo's Children, a great filk group. (For more information about filk, go to filk.com) I give this book a 3 out of 5 because it lacks action, and is devoted entirely to stetting up the following books.
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