Honor Among Enemies

Honor Harrington, Book 6

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 19 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

Despite political foes, professional jealousies, and the scandal which drove her into exile, Capt. Honor Harrington has been offered a chance to reclaim her career as an officer of the Royal Manticoran Navy. But there's a catch. She must assume command of a "squadron" of jury-rigged armed merchantmen with crew drawn from the dregs of her service and somehow stop the pirates who have taken advantage of the Havenite War to plunder the Star Kingdom's commerce.

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.

©1997 Baen (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

can't take it anymore

Would you consider the audio edition of Honor Among Enemies to be better than the print version?

NO

Any additional comments?

I have tried to adjust my ear to the chosen pronunciations of the reader but even after listening to 5 of the books I'm being pulled out of the story every time the home star nation of HH is mentioned to find my self screaming in frustration. Can't do it anymore. Love the books, just can't listen to them anymore.

Loved it!

Allyson Johnson was really great! She brought the story alive! Great story plus great reader!!!

A good story with some interesting plot twists

As you can tell from the cover Honor gets called back to active duty in the RMN. It's kind of a step down for her, and partially set up by her enemies who hope this will be a suicide mission.

The story starts slow, in the manner of the old sea stories by CS Forester and Patrick O'Brian. Not surprising since Honor herself reads the old novels, puzzling about the meaning of pounds, feet and miles.

The story is good, with a lot of interaction with the People's Navy. It turns out that the officers of the Peep Navy are not so bad after all.

The Honor story continues with this book, as good as the preceding volumes. The multiple subplots keeps the reader in suspense.

I find the narration to be just fine, no complaints there.

The end of the story is satisfying, except perhaps for the tens of thousands of dead 'red shirts' left behind.

I took off one story star only because I found the huge size of the Starship crews seemed to me to be almost ridiculous. Several thousand on a medium sized warship. Several hundred thousand on a military space station?

One of the subplots would have been ruined if the Star Kingdom has the Disney Magic Band (tm) technology to keep track of where the crew members are located on the ship. The ships internal communications seemed to be about that of a WWI battleship much of the time.

One other observation, not a fault, but something occurred to me. The Honorverse has no robots!!!!! Hyperspeed travel yes? No robots though. Who'd have thunk it?!

A return to what's good about the series

Any additional comments?

I like this series enough to keep reading it, but it's not the best thing I've ever read. It's strongest when it focuses on naval operations and the particularities of the far future setting. I enjoy the "Napoleonic Wars In Space," schtick. The political infighting within all the big nations is completely believable. The way the space technology works is extremely detailed, which is fine, and the way the setting re-creates an interesting historical period in the far future is a treat.

This book was a partial return to what made the first book successful. Honor Harrington does "Navy Stuff,"- she commands a starship, fights space pirates, makes life or death decisions, and suffers the consequences. The subplots are all set up well and all pay off. I particularly enjoyed the plight of the People's Navy officers who were too decent for their own good. The theme that civilized states, even when they fight one another, are all superior to barbarians resonates with me.

The series is weakest when it wallows in the protagonist's emotional life (for someone who has killed thousands of people in space battles she sure has a lot of angst about relatively minor problems), with the absolute low point in every book being when the space cats appear. Cats don't belong on naval vessels, ever, and should be thrown over the side, or out the airlock, whenever an infestation appears. These animals gain more intelligence, telepathic powers, and page space in each successive book of the series and are obviously not ever going to be killed, by anything, ever, despite how ridiculous they are. To me, they are the Jar-Jar Binks of the whole fictional universe. Maybe David Weber likes cats?

When Honor Harrington becomes an action hero, able to defeat anyone at their own game, I roll my eyes. This is the stuff of B-grade action movies. Since the tone of these books is light, perhaps I shouldn't complain about it. "Honor Among Enemies," only has one scene like this, but it's set up before hand (unfortunately that setup is a big clunker, having to do with a madman, a nuclear trigger, and an over-involved negotiation that I mostly skipped through.) The resolution was a surprise, using a "Chekov's Gun" that I'd mostly forgotten about.

The "Navy Stuff," is very well done. I served four years in the the US Navy, and the books have a good grasp of what it's like to be in the service. The "lower decks" subplot with Petty Officer Wunderman is sadly a very common experience. My understanding is that David Weber is a naval historian, and it shows.

All in all, this is a much better book than the previous entry of the series, which spent far too little time in space.

The narration is good. I don't know why so many people are annoyed by it, but with the main character being female dictates that a female narrator should be reading the book. The narrator does a much better job with the male voices than almost any male reader would do with female voices, and since Honor Harrington is doing most of the talking it makes complete sense. The one character that, to me, sounded silly died in book four. I can always tell the characters apart, and the foreign accents make sense given that this is the "Napoleonic Wars In Space."

A Decent, though not amazing, Sequel

I recently finished listening to Honor Among Enemies written by David Weber and narrated by Allyson Johnson.

This is book six of the core Honor Harrington series. I will do my best to avoid spoilers, however, it's hard to review a later book in a series without some spoilers. If you want to avoid spoilers I suggest skipping to the conclusion.

In this book Honor Harrington is given a chance to resume her service in the Manticoran navy. There is no such thing as a free lunch, thus she is given command of a squadron of Q-Ships. These are basically merchant ships refitted with tons of armament, but lacking the drives and the armor of a warship.

She is tasked with hunting down pirates in the, relatively lawless, Silesian Confederacy. Merchant raiding has been seriously hurting Manticoran trade in this territory and she is sent in to put a serious dent into the pirates operation.

This is another excellent entry into the Honor Harrington series. Generally this feels very much like the Honor Harrington we know and love. With that being said I must mention that at least one huge decision she made was wildly questionable. In fact it was so questionable that she had given specific orders to her other captains to not do the very thing she did. It felt like this choice was more about creating an interesting situation than following the logic that a captain must follow.

Allyson Johnson is a great narrator. She has her finger fairly thoroughly on the pulse of these books and it comes through in her inspired reading of the text.

Conclusion: This is another excellent book in the Honor Harrington series. I feel this was more plot driven than character driven and thus I don't think it's quite up to Weber's usual standard. Despite it's flaws it's still a fairly good book and the great narration really adds to it.

Another great book in the series!

I truly enjoyed "Honor Among Enemies". The central story was excellent with enough side stories to add to the depth of the characters without taking away from the main storyline. Starting the next book as soon as I can download it!

Mr Weber is a Maestro!

Would you listen to Honor Among Enemies again? Why?

Yes, because the multifaceted story telling brings one slowly to the end in a entralled state gasping for more!

What other book might you compare Honor Among Enemies to and why?

None that comes to mind!

What does Allyson Johnson bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Hmmm, Good Voice, but missing something!

One of the best in series so far

The focus on non-senior officer and some characterization for previous characters certainly made it a note interesting read (listen).

Great Book

This was one of my favorites in the series. Good pacing and kept my attention.

Every book in the series is great.

every book has great character development and interesting battle plots. Well worth your time and cash.