Ashes of Victory

Honor Harrington, Book 9

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 25 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

The People's Republic of Haven made a tiny mistake when it announced the execution of Honor Harrington. It seemed safe enough. After all, she was already dead. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Now Honor has escaped from the prison planet called Hell and returned to the Manticoran Alliance with a few friends. Almost half a million of them, to be precise including some who know what really happened when the Committee of Public Safety seized power in the PRH. Honor's return from the dead comes at a critical time, providing a huge, much-needed lift for the Allies' morale, for the war is rapidly entering a decisive phase. Both sides believe that victory lies within their grasp at last, but dangers no one could foresee await them both. New weapons, new strategies, new tactics, spies, diplomacy, and assassination all are coming into deadly focus, and Honor Harrington, the woman the newsies call "the Salamander," once more finds herself at the heart of them all. But this time, the furnace may be too furious for even a salamander to survive.

A Note from Author David Weber
There's been some confusion—not to say, um, energetic debate, readers and fans being readers and fans—about the correct pronunciation of "Manticoran." The truth, alas, is that a stitch was dropped. An error occurred. A mistake was made… and it wasn't Audible's fault. It was mine. Before Audible recorded the very first Honor Harrington book, narrator Allyson Johnson and I not only corresponded by e-mail but actually spoke to one another by phone. She wanted to make absolutely certain she had the correct pronunciations for names, places, star nations, etc., and I tried to make certain all of her questions were answered. And so they were. Unfortunately, at some point in the process, I replied to one of her e-mails by telling her that "Man-ti-core-ahn" was pronounced "Man-tik-er-ahn." Exactly how this happened is more than I can say at this point, except to blushingly disclose that the original e-mail remains intact, confirming to all the world that it was, indeed, my fault. I can ascribe it only to a temporary mental hiccup on my part and crave your forgiveness. If, however, you must blame someone for the mix-up, that someone should be me and not Audible, who have done everything they could to get it right.

Listen to another Honor Harrington adventure.

©2001 David Weber (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"The new Honor Harrington novel is the longest yet, but justifies its length and complexity by greatly advancing the story of Honor and her universe. Honor has triumphally returned from Hades, at the head of a fleet of liberated POWs. Her reward is to become an admiral, a duchess, and a billionaire. She also becomes an elder sister of twins and, since Nimitz has lost some of his telepathy to war wounds, helps the ever delightful treecats learn signing, thereby proving they are fully sapient. But the war goes on, and the Star Kingdom's superior technology and training increasingly give it the advantage....Factor in Honor's personal and professional dilemmas, realistic R&D and procurement problems, spine-tingling action, and the series' usual dry wit, and it is clear that Weber has produced another mandatory acquisition." ( Booklist)

Mind numbing

The author just keeps writing these long pointless conversations that go on for ever. Then he switched to different characters to have the exact same same conversations. He should have cut about 8 hours off this book and it would have been 5 star.

Foreboding.

If you could sum up Ashes of Victory in three words, what would they be?

Suspense.
Loss.
Victory.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

This series has been quite a pleasure — the physics and realism of the space battles (in the context of this SF world) — is great. In general, I enjoy Weber's exposition, but there are a few instances in this book where it goes a bit far on some non-military topics. It was appropriate to the plot, and interesting.

Have you listened to any of Allyson Johnson’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Allyson Johnson’s performances are great. There are so many characters in these tales that her accents, intonations, and personalities are very helpful.

Unfocused

Good but less Honor and Nimitz then I would like. There were just to many side stories.

Weber needs an editor and I'm done.

I enjoy the world, the characters, and especially the action. Sadly Weber is beyond hope when it comes to editing out the nonsense. At this point I am NINE HOURS into this audible and it has gone NOWHERE. What is worse is it is a chore to listen to. While exercising on my Nordic track with most books I have no real idea how long it is until the timer goes off. With Weber, unless it is in the rarer and rarer interesting sections where something actually happens, I find my self checking the time over and over again. I hate to throw in the towel on this series but after conferring with others whose opinion I value the consensus is Weber's writing only gets worse as this series goes on. Many of them felt invested enough to trudge on, I cannot justify wasting my time if the author cannot be bothered to write well. I am 9 hours in on this and am calling it quits.

David has decided you need a break.

Story:
Dear god in heaven. This was the longest book in the series (so far). And it seemed to go no where. The series main character is shuffled off to a weak side plot (maybe she need the vacation). The manipulation that takes place to put her back in the story is the story weakest point, not that there aren't a few of those. While the story is moved along at a snail's pace and does eventually allow some of the myriad of plot lines to reach at least some resolution David doesn't take us on a roller coaster to get there. It is a carriage ride through the park. Page after page of endless character thought processes that make you wish someone would take a pulser dart to the head. And the epic space battles are no longer even epic, they are depressing. Simple and bleak forays into violence. That leave you feeling simply wishing it were over and at the same time longing for a shadow of the previous stories of foes battling with wit and daring. Not in this book. What you get is a carriage ride with layers of political maneuvering with a dose of brutality.

Performance:
I have always enjoyed Allyson Johnson's portrayal of the characters in the series, but when did Allison Harrington become a Jewish mother from New York City (Pre-Diaspora)?

Reluctant critic

Having started at the beginning, and loving the Honor Harrington series, it was very disappointing to find the last couple of books less than I had hoped for, but I had to speak up with this one. I agree with an earlier reviewer about the use of "on the other hand". It occurs so often in this one, that I find myself rolling my eyes every time it occurs. That is bad enough, but the use of other cliches is simply so glaring! For example: "sitting ducks", "half-cocked", "million-dollar question", "smoking gun", if you can think of one, it is probably in there - literally dozens and dozens of anachronistic cliches that have no place in the far future, particularly when Allyson Johnson has chosen to give nearly everyone except Honor a bad accent. What is with the French accent?...it is awful!--please stop! Mr. Weber went a bit overboard in the ruminations of the characters, to the detriment of the story. He DOES tell a very, very good story, and it is in there...but it is being buried by too much of what is on the characters minds or excruciatingly long descriptions of motivations or explanations of the inner workings of this or that. Get back to the STORY, man... you are certainly capable of it. Please lose the cliches and the accents They do not advance the story and are irritating in the extreme. The three stars is generous, overall, but because I like so much of the actual story, it was fair.

Good Story, Bad Naration

For anyone who's read the first eight, you'll like this. It progresses the story and delivers the same sort of tale. This was the first audio I'd purchased for the series, and I'll avoid doing the same until I get to the other narrator.

Buy the book. Read it.

Why does Honor sound like a schoolgirl? Even with prolong that makes no sense. No steel in the voice.
Why does Alyson Harrington sound like a surfer dude? Nothing about the performance says "impish and brilliant geneticist".
Did the Graysons come from Ireland? No. Their traditional music is "Country Western", and I think they came from Idaho.
Scotty Tremaine...sounds like an idiot.

I really don't think the narrator has payed attention to the material. I regret that some of my purchase price has gone to support so poor a performance and wonder that she's been given so many books. Recommended only if you have no other way to access the story.

Good book. Lousy narrator

I have read the Honor Harrington series before and enjoyed them. They are well crafted stories with good characters. A little over the top maybe but fun all the same. I thought I would try out the audiobook version and I started with this one because it was my favorite in the series. Unfortunately the narrator is terrible. Very disappointing. She has a rough voice that does not lend itself well to this particular series. She tends to come up with goofy accents for a lot of the characters. Her accents are only sometimes logical for the characters nationalities. She can't even keep the accents straight for each character, and she mispronounces words repeatedly. And her voice for Honor Harrington is just a silly girly sort of voice for what should be an ultimately strong and bold female character. I don't think I will bother with listening to any more of this series.

More of a future history book

As a fan of the Honor Harrington series this is the book where I begin to check out from the series. Starting from this book and onwards the main character of the story ceases to be Honor Harrington and beings to be the war its self. Things revolve a lot less around Honor Harrington and instead the story jumps from character to character who each gives the reader exposition on politics and battles. The problem with this is, without true main characters, its hard to care about what is going on since you don't have a anchor point to events going on. If you like books that read closer to a history book than a character driven story then you may be in luck

13 Hours and still no action

I like the series... have read and listened to the previous 8...but this one is absolutely the most boring and dry so far. In thirteen hours of listening, there has not been a second of any action... but a solid 30 minutes concerning the biology of speech and teaching tree cats to sign. I'm actually fast forwarded over the 20-30 minute detailed discussion and even nodded off in the car I was so bored. I'm unimpressed with Weber's vast education and penchant to drone on and on and on......