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War of Honor

War of Honor

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good but not your typical David Weber
Review: Let me begin by saying that I am a rabid fan of David Weber. I skipped out of work to buy this book and made the sales person take it out of a sealed box on the morning of October first. After two sleepless nights of reading I have to say the while the book is good, it doesn't match up to David's normal gripping story.

Mr. Weber in the past has created an epic and heroic universe with an excellent balance of intrigue and nail biting, edge of the seat combat scenes. In this book he gets away from his careful balance and for the first six hundred pages focuses entirely on the intrigue and Machiavellian politics of the Star Kingdom. For the first time ever I found myself wanting to skip scenes in one of David's books, craving some of his trade-marked space combat. If it wasn't for the last 150 pages of the book I probably would have given this one a three star rating.

In any event, it's not one of his best but it's still David Weber. In my view of the world that qualifies as a "hard bound purchase on date of release" scenario every time. A word of advice... Don't skip ahead unless your willing to jump to the last chapters of the book. That's where most of the space opera occurs.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Keeps the action going nicely
Review: In brief, this is a great addition to the Harrington-verse. Not much left out by Mr. Weber. We have a love triangle; a bad government for the good guys; a good government for the bad guys, albeit with problems; some great political work and some great space battles, mixed in with a well known cast of characters. The character and plot development hasn't let up in the least, and you won't fail to enjoy this book if you are familiar with the rest of them. On that note - one thing that annoys me about book reviews is that you don't always know where to start if you find part of a series that matches your interests, so go and look for the start of the series, "On Basilisk Station", ISBN 0743435710.

If I have one problem with the author, it is the level of detail and development he applies to the book. I found myself wondering while reading if there wasn't a little too much technical detail and exposition thrown in. Personally I don't have a problem with that, but to be blunt some might find it just a little windy. Why doesn't it bother me? I spent six months reading the first chapters of the book online (should give you an indication that I like it!) I am a natural skimmer as well - I will go back to books over and over rather than read a book once slowly, and I seem to have a way to skip parts of dialog but stick to the plot. Developed the knack from years of reading rather than do just about anything else - what a geek!

I'd find this book hard to recommend if you haven't read all the previous ones, as it would be hard to catch up, but it won't disappoint the faithful.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Baen and Weber: a loss of Honor
Review: In the long, slow decline of the Honor Harrington saga, this work is an abrupt plunge into the depths. Filled with endless exposition disguised as conversation, Weber abandons the formula which made his early work so vibrant, and instead attempts in his usual heavy-handed way to explore the black and white world of politics.

Baen should be ashamed: don't they EDIT anymore? This work cries out to be edited. And Weber should either retire Honor, or spend more time to write a cohesive novel. This one is filled with promises which it seldom delivers.

If you want black and white characters, no subtlety at all, and a tedious narrative, then this one is for you. But if you are looking for the joy of the early novels, forget it, Weber has lost his way and doesn't have the discipline or skill to explore the world he has now created.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A perfect recovery
Review: War of Honor is a perfect example of David Weber at his very best. The previously noted "mistakes" of Ashes of Victory, ie In depth stories of the treecats, Honors' teaching assignment, these were all items accused of slowing the story down. You will find little or none of that here.

HH10 sets a pace at the beginning and steadily builds to a strong climax....Likening it to other events when they're well done I suppose. I would certainly recommend this book to all HH fans, and new ones as well since the CD Rom contained within is an excellent way to hook the new ones while they're young.

Sleep is for the Weak

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Good Book in General
Review: The latest addition to the Honor Harrington series is a bit slow because of the inherent nature of trying to build tensions between Haven and Manticore. It took three books for open war to break out between these two powers.

The biggest weakness I see in this book is that I would have liked for the family aspects of Honor Harrington's life to have been developed. Also the Queen also plays a marginal role to the very end. Although the internal tensions in the Government are worked well. It would have been nice to have Cabinet sessions with the Queen in which they had to face the wrath of a Queen that has made its deep displeasure with the High Ridge Government.

All in all it was a great book. It worked the internal political interactions in Haven and Manticore and added a sense of cloak and dagger an excellent grasp of how the foreign (or in this case interstellar) policy of a state is deeply affected by its domestic political needs. David Weber does an excellent job explaining the way how domestic and foreign policy work.

You can't only feel but feel sorry for everyone in this book. Even the bad guys of the piece, which ironically is the government of the good guys in the previous nine, are heading inexorably to disaster. You almost feel as if you were watching an accident.

It was a good book. Laughed a lot even with the sense of inevitable doom that this book engenders.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Complex and forboding ...
Review: Yep, our girl is BAAAACK! And the bad taste in your mouth from the fall of the Cromarty Government was warranted -- it turns out to be as bad as we imagined. Honor contends with politics on both a personal and military level, gets involved in conflicts with both Andermani and Peep forces, Manticore also tweaks the Sollies (albeit unintentionally) for future books.

This is big (800+ pages), complex (Maniticore good guys, Manitcore bad guys, Peeps of all kinds, Sidemore, Grayson) and forboding novel. Most of the novel feels like the Sword of Damocles hanging overhead.

The only downside is that since this novel covers a *lot* of events setting up the next 4-5 books, you don't get as much exposure to characters such as Benjamin, Elzabeth, Michelle Henke, etc.

Still, it may be the best one yet, if only because of how well all the plot advance toward a grim set of confrontations...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: War of honor
Review: David Weber Strikes again. A wonderful addition to the Honor Harrington series, this book kept me up all night reading. A must read for any David Weber Fan or lover of Military Scifi.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Finally 2 good empires at war YAY
Review: Well done. Loved this one. Im usually the "intellectual type who likes exploding ships" but i think the fact Haven blew up a Manti fleet or 6 (not really sure how many, was awsom. you see i rooted for the bad guys most of the time cause in my opinion they fought for their nation, even when it was wrong, with what ever they had. Unlike alot of Manti officers who were stuck up rich nobles, who bought their way into the military, who im glad alot of them died i think the peeps had the better military as alot of their people vame in from the lower ranks of life and many of them were realist who had no position to defende and even knowing failure was death they made the better decisions when to fight and retreat while many Mantis officers got many people killed just to look uncowardly. GO Grayson who had very few incompetant officers. The Erwohan made the right choice. :-). my two favorite people are Horace Harkness and thomas Theisman.

now it looks like that field has changed and there will be a new enemy in this war (but it looks like their technology is almost as far back as the Havanites at the end of the 1st SKM and PRH war. not sure though if they will really join the war.

Loved this one and hope i love the newest one im buying today after work :-).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I want more...
Review: a bit of extra stuff but still a must read for Harrington fans!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: It's a Bait-and-Switch, Beware!
Review: What a ripoff. This book is hands-down the biggest bait-and-switch I've ever read. It's called War of Honor. Guess how much war we get? In an 850 page book, maybe 50 pages, and I'm being generous. It's the biggest ripoff since Robot Wars, a Silvermoon Production movie that had no robots and no wars.

It's very slow moving and talky. I actually know what he was trying to accomplish, well one of two things actually. He wanted to show the entire setup to a big war starting off, both sides, all the political maneuvering etc. He did an okay job of this. The problem is, it's boring as hell. I don't mind some political intrigue, character building stuff or whatever. But he's slathering it on because he wants to show every little thing. There are many ways he could have compressed the same info down without losing anything, but I can tell he didn't want to do that. He wanted to show every little thing because he's DAVID WEBER and he's damn well earned it after 7 books.

Anyway, on to the bait-and-switch. This was the other purpose of the book, other than lining the author's pockets. Again, what gets me is how blatant he is. He even winks at the reader in the last fifty pages; after 750 pages of setup and 50 of "war", in the 50 page denouement he has another character say to Honor, "This isn't going to be my war, Honor, it's going to be yours." or words to that effect. Actually, I've got the book right here, I'll look it up.

Here it is, page 853, "So I suppose-" he smiled crookedly at her "-that this war is going to be yours, Honor. Not mine."

What gall. If this book was supposed to be the setup, perhaps he should have titled it "Boring Political Prelude to War of Honor".

All I can say is that his next book is going to be his. Not mine.


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