Rating: 
Summary: MORE! MORE! MORE!
Review: I have read every single Honor Harrington novel and I have found them to be absolutely the BEST!!! But I was disappointed in Echoes of Honor. It did not seem to have as much impact as the older ones. I sure hope Mr. Weber will keep churning these books out!!!
Rating:
Summary: Peeps take the offensive and Honor strikes back
Review: For Honor Harrington fans this is a real winner, but if you are just joining the series it would be a mistake to buy now. You would be better off starting with the first book, "On Basilisk Station", which I believe is selling for $1.99 now. In the novel, Mr. Weber, finally gives us at least the possibility that our Manticoran heroes can lose the war. Upto now it has been one victory after another and it was getting a little stale. Now the RMN is in a real fight and fortunately they have some new weapons in the hands of some old friends to deal with it. Weber, does another good job of putting ther reader in the middle of the action. The biggest fault I have with the book, besides the length, is that he tends to get a little too technical. It's no where near as bad as Clancy, but it seems to get worse with every book. It's a long book that can be a little slow at times but it genarlly moves well. The book is also broken up into six large sub-sections that helps the reader to keep focus.
Rating:
Summary: Great characters and action, but inconsistent background
Review: This is an excellent book, with excellent action and characters, but you should be aware that Weber plays fast and loose with the Laws of Nature.For example, he uses hydrogen fusion to accelerate his ships to speeds as high as .8 lightspeed in normal space. Now, it's not difficult to compute the maximum speed you can achieve starting from rest with the technology he describes. Assuming that the fuel tank takes up half the volume in the ship, that the fuel is liquid deuterium with a specific gravity of .142, and that all of the energy released by the fusing hydrogen is turned into the ship's kinetic energy (using "gravity impellers", not rockets), the maximum speed you can reach is .016 lightspeed, if you hold back enough fuel to return to base, and .023 lightspeed, if you empty the fuel tank. He also seems to assume 100% efficiency in the process of converting hydrogen fusion energy into motion of the ship through the "gravity impellers". This is hard to swallow; surely there would be some losses due to friction, turbulence, electrical resistance, and other disorderly processes. To illustrate the magnitude of the problem, if the engines were only 95% efficient, a 6 million ton superdreadnought accelerating to its maximum speed would generate as much heat as 1.7 million megatons of TNT. It would have to tow a radiator the size of a small asteroid, glowing white-hot all of the time. He also allows fusion plants to fail, vaporizing the ship in a nuclear explosion. It is hard to see how any kind of fusion plant could explode in this manner. An inertial confinement plant explodes the fuel as fast as it can anyway; if it failed, it would stop operating and the ship would lose power. A magnetic or gravitational confinement plant could indeed suffer a containment rupture, but the resulting loss of pressure would cause fusion to stop immediately. If the plasma in the bottle were hot, dense, and large enough, it could explode like any pressurized gas tank and probably destroy the power plant, but I doubt that it would cause major structural damage to the ship. After all, you would make the power plant as small as you could and rely on pumping fuel through quickly to achieve high power levels. On the other hand, if a "graser" hit the filled part of the liquid hydrogen fuel tank, the liquid hydrogen would instantly flash into superheated, high-pressure gas and rupture the fuel tank. If the fuel tank is half the volume of the ship, as would seem necessary to get anywhere, this would indeed blow up the ship. The ship would not be vaporized, however, merely torn to pieces. Apart from small problems with the physics, however, these are fine books.
Rating: 
Summary: Thank you David, Honor is just great.
Review: I love Honor Harrington, just wish you wouldn't make us wait so long. Keep them coming. Ed
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful officer and a fine leader.
Review: I cannot say enough about Admiral Harrington in this last story. She is an example to us all. But what I really want is a ticket to Grayson!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, heart-thumping action - I couldn't put it down!
Review: As Honor extracts herself from the depths of hell, her supporting cast of characters come to life in a war of plots and sub-plots. Echoes of Honor is aptly named as we get to see the stunning influence Honor has on characters and governments on both sides of the war. Not only do we get the chance to see how the supporting cast has grown and changed in the bloody grip of war, we get to walk in the moccasins of some of the stronger peep characters. Only then did I start to notice the different shades of gray that the war brings out between right and wrong, good and bad, and love and hate.
Rating:
Summary: This book ROCKS!
Review: Why does this book rock, you ask? I've been reading the Honor Harrington series since "On Basilisk Station", and the novels just keep getting better. David Weber is an excellent author, balancing action, storytelling, character development, and just enough hard SF to make this future time a beleivable one. This novel is the best of the series, with solid character development, great storytelling, and plenty of action, all working in concert to keep the story going instead of bogging it down like some other authors are wont to do. I won't go into the story itself, but suffice it to say, if you liked the rest of the series, YOU WILL LOVE THIS ONE! Mister Weber, keep up the great work! And by all means, please, GIVE US MORE HONOR HARRINGTON!
Rating: 
Summary: The author is writing too fast and quality has fallen.
Review: Its just not as good as the earlier ones. Reading Echoes (and to a lesser extent In Enemy Hands) I felt like Weber was under pressure to produce a book, not necessarily a good book. I still liked it, the plots were great, but the quality fell off as the book went on. Much more time is spent building up to an event than on the event itself. Even though its long, I felt like it should have been longer.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest heroine in all space, exceeds all hopes!!
Review: David Weber wrote an excellent conclusion to In Enemy Hands without the gratuitous violence common in his previous stories about Honor. Yes, bad things do happen in this novel too, but our imagination was left to fill in the details. Honor our heroine has reached new heights as she died, entered Hell and brought the captives forth. What will she do to for an encore? Thank you David!! Bring on more Honor!
Rating:
Summary: Great stories are too large for a single book.
Review: Leaders help people do more that the people think they can. Great Leader help people do more than anyone believes possible. Honor Harrington is getting there. The other subplots help show this. Cpt Alice Truman, RMN is one case in point. Entrusted with the experimental LAC Carrier. Besieged and harassed by desk jockeys, she uses some tactical moves, that reminded me of Honor, to handle the problem. Just a couple of words on the LAC Carrier. A LAC is more like a Patrol Torpedo Boat, than an aircraft. Its' crew is 10-20, not 1 or 2. Its' endurance 3 weeks not less than a day. The closest analog I can think of in the USN is a Landing Craft Tender filled with PT Boats. But don't look at the technology, anyone can dream up Hi-Tech wowsers. The people and the people problems are MUCH more interesting. Mr. Weber I can hardly wait for number eight. I almost gave this book a 4 star for the lack of Honor, but then realized what you meant by the "Echos of Honor".
|
