A Rising Thunder

Honor Harrington, Book 13

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Peril and strife strike on a double front for Honor Harrington and company. After a brutal attack on the Manticoran home system, Honor Harrington and the Star Kingdom she serves battle back against a new, technologically powerful, and utterly nefarious enemy. And as if that weren’t task enough, Honor must also face down a centuries-old nemesis in the crumbling, but still mighty, Solarian League.

The war between the People’s Republic of Haven and the Star Kingdom is finally won and peace established, but grave danger looms - for there is a plan well on its way to completion designed to enslave the entire human species. Behind that plan lies the shadowy organization known as the Mesan Alignment.

Task number one for Honor is to defend against another devastating Mesan strike - a strike that may well spell the doom of the Star Kingdom in one fell blow. It is time to shut down and secure the wormhole network that is the source of the Star Kingdom’s wealth and power - but also its greatest vulnerability. Yet this is an act that the Earth-based Solarian League inevitably will take as a declaration of war.

The thunder of battle rolls as the Solarian League directs its massive power against the Star Kingdom. And once again, Honor Harrington is thrust into a desperate battle that she must win if she is to survive to take the fight to the real enemy of galactic freedom: the insidious puppetmasters of war who lurk behind the Mesan Alignment!

©2012 Words of Weber, Inc. (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Fantastic Read!

I thuroughly enjoyed this novel. I wish the author had elaborated on the Manticoran system battle, but the book was still well written and its characters engaging.

This one just stops, no ending.

It seems Weber may be tending toward the episodic books with no ending. The "Who shot JR" endings may work on TV, but books that just stop without an ending are poor literature.

Next Event...

Of course Webers books more or less reenact historical events with space ships, and this will not be historically correct. But it is very entertaining. It's a bit like smashing giant robots into other giant robots. But that's what the sci-fi genre is there for, right? To do things impossible today.

However, the whole Star Kingdom turns Star Empire story, with the genius Honor Harrington saving the world starts to feel... stale. Familiar, comfortable, but slightly known. I'm taking away a story star for that, so if you don't mind this, just mentally add a star.

What I really don't like is that all the parties involved constantly compete in thinking all the others being more idiotic than the others think they are. Nobody ever thinks the opposing party might actually be smart, and all the leaders, military as political, are somehow bundles of uncontrollable emotions. This costs another story star.

The end is rather abrupt, as this is part of an ongoing series.

The narration is flawless, and helps over the rare outright boring parts.

All together this is a good listen for all who like military sci-fi with brief economic insights and endure the occasional report on royal weddings.

1st half

While the book is three parts long and may seem long, it is in fact only the 1st half of the book. It does end suddenly, but if you want honor then that's the price you have to pay. If you have the patience I would recommend that you wait until the 2nd half comes out.

Why change the pronunciation?

I really enjoy these books, including the technical details.

The characters are real, and frustrating, and heart breaking.

The narration is perfectly done by Johnson.

I am disappointed that the pronunciation of Manticore has been corrected to the true pronunciation. When I first heard Manticoran, instead of Mantickoran, I was confused. Now I am just mentally correcting to the preferred “mispronunciation.” I feel like Mr Weber should have left perfection alone.

Honor Harrington Universe Book 22

"THE NEW CHAPTER"

"June 1922 Post Diaspora: Protector Benjamin Mayhew IX makes first interstellar state visit to Manticore to sign Manticore-Haven Peace treaty on behalf of Grayson".

The war is over, and from the ashes of this war the "NEW ALLIANCE" is born.
The alliance of two enemies who now understand that they became enemies not by their own Will. Now they finally understand that for more than Twenty years they were puppets of the third party, party who wanted to destroy them both all along. And now one more Puppet of the same master is used to Finish them. But perhaps this NEW ALLIANCE has some friends it doesn't even know about.

"EW" gets a new meaning.
Previously "EW" Electronic Warfare but now it's time for Economical Warfare!!!

PS
It's been taking a bit longer than expected to complete this book , originally it supposed to be around 1200 pages long, but publisher decided to cut it in two, and publish them separately. This book is around 440 pages long and the next one is 610.


NEXT BOOK IS "SHADOWS OF FREEDOM"
Expected publication march 5th 2013

Almost like a Pre'cis of current events.

The story fit the title. A rising thunder is designed to build up all the causation for the push in the second half of this installment due later this year. The story is actually made up of several short stories interlinked by the main common theme. I liked the quick pace of multiple events happening in succession all over the the galaxy and being interlinked with the "rising" plot. I am salivating for the missile crescendo that will spell the end of Manpower....
As For JOHNSON's narration. Ok one Good compliment and one little criticism. The critical first: Johnson had a tendency to confuse scenes a bit in this one. For example: At the end of a certain Board meeting in old Chicago (towards the end of the book) she cuts away to a conversation between a powerful Male and Female character without a breath, it was a little disorienting. On the bright side, People have been hating on Johnson for her changing of the pronunciation of Manticorian. She used to say Man-Tic -or-n. BUT she has grown as a narrator and now pronounces it Manticorian, which is the correct phoneme structure. The old way was 4 distinct Morphemes while the proper (new say she says it) is only 3. Proper pronunciation is defined "Communicating a words intent using the least morphemic units" SO major kudos to Johnson for this.
THIS IS NOT for the first time Weber reader, it would be like trying to read Lord of the rings and getting irritated because you choose to start in the last half of the third book.
Overall I enjoyed it for its purpose; to build up for the coming storm and it was needed synopsis for the major events enveloping every major and most of the minor star nations in the series.

Hours of meetings, minutes of space battles

Hours of meetings, minutes of one sided space battles, and the wedding of the millennium.

This book is kind of a bridge between the former war with Haven and the new War with the SLS and the secret bad guys.

Every player gets multiple meetings to speculate about what is coming next. There are two or three of the shortest battles in history.

There is a long wedding that is the GREATEST WEDDING OF ALL TIME!!!

I like the series a lot, but this book is about twice as long it needed to be to effect the transition to the New Galaxy Order.

a bit dragged out

story is a bit dragged out in this one. there's just one battle that you know is coming anyway, and everything else is people explaining things to eachother over and over again.

Tsunami story line crests over the characters

The cresting wave of the story looms like a tsunami. The broad weave of all the story lines coming together in a classic beautiful whole. Well worth the read and the listen.