Mission of Honor: Honor Harrington, Book 12

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington's entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she's achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She's prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor's worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality. But Manticore's enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won't be going alone.

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.

©2010 David Weber (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Weber… combines realistic, engaging characters with intelligent technological projection and a deep understanding of military bureaucracy in the long-awaited 12th Honor Harrington novel….Fans of this venerable space opera will rejoice to see Honor back in action.” ( Publishers Weekly)

mission of honor

David, where did you hide Honor...you ve lost the feel...you lost the story...and you have lost me...I always buy the Honor series...but its not the same...this book drags so badly you could eat the pages...and have something better than this book...the plot would have been great if only you had known what you were doing...you buried it under needless words...forgot the action...when I finished it..and it was hard to do so...the last page was the only good part of the whole book...it said...THE END.

Didn't like it

I'm really not sure what all the buzz is about this book?!? I tried twice to get into it & just could not follow the plot like. Maybe it's me, but this was a complete waste of time & money...

Hack space opera

Would you try another book from David Weber and/or Allyson Johnson?

no

What could David Weber have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

come up with a more original plot line with a logical end to the series.

Which character – as performed by Allyson Johnson – was your favorite?

none in particular
The reading was outstanding. Too bad the narrator didn't have better material to work with.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Mission of Honor?

They all work together but that doesn't make the final product any better

Any additional comments?

It reminds me of a SyFi channel series. It has to keep coming up with more plot twists with each one being more outlandish than the previous one until the series is cancelled because it becomes becomes unwatchable.

Mad as H.ll

First of all I want to say that I have loved all of the authors books and it is likly that I have read or listened to them all. I was looking forward to this book so much that instead of waiting for a credit to be applied I used cash. I regret it so much that had I purchused the book in a book store I would have brought it back for a refund.
The monolog and descripitions when on so long that I found myself getting very angry and turning off the book to keep from throwing it out the window. Very little of the very long monologs had any character or plot building elements. The sole purpose must have been to add word count. I will not buy any more of Webers books

Honor dishonered

I have enjoyed the Honor Harrington series for a long time. I do not know how many of these ebooks I have -- but a lot. I also enjoy David Weber's writing (usually).

Having said that, this could well be the worst book to which I have listened in over a year. It is very poorly written. The ruminations of all the characters goes on for hours. Arched eyebrows are everywhere, and there is zero action.

I will admit that I stopped after eight hours. The total audiobook is about 24 hours long, but the pain was just too great.

If someone makes it to the end of this terrible book, I would just like to know (out of curiousity) if anything ever happens. I am curious, but not enough to put up with the literal physical pain of an inappropriate reader reading a poorly written book well.

More magic than SF

This book is waste. The complete Manpower story line is just magic. By Weber’s own description is they are a small but wealthy system who specialize in biotech. I can buy they are the galaxies leader in biotech. So having 2 super advances in that field makes sense. The genetic upgrades they have done is major and I can believe they can control politics. The bio-virus that controls people is believable if your are that deep into genetics. It stays within their expertise. For me at this point it is still SF.

It starts to become magic when they come up with 3 non-biotech advances that are all undetectable.
1) They made a drive that takes them well into the higher hyper bands.
2) New sub-light drives that are undetectable using a totally new propulsion system.
3) A grazer that keeps its’ power but can fit into a missile.

That becomes unbelievable. It would be hard to believe they came up with one of these technologies. You have two naval empires that can not create these technologies with all their research. Then to add insult, Mr. Weber has them create a navy without anybody noticing. Not even the Ballroom!

If they were capable of all this on top of their biotech everybody in the galaxy would be watching them. This has lost its' SF taste.

He tries to compare it to Japan in WWII. No match. Japan did not have any super weapons. They had advances the US did not have. Great Britain had similar technology. They convinced the US they were not advancing their navy, but everybody knew the Japanese had navy. The surprise was where it was located.

I suppressed a mental grin, but on the other hand,

Weber's already unintentionally funny overuse of the "suppressed mental grin" and similar expressions of olympian stoicism ring a cringe-making crescendo in this book. All of the characters use almost the exact same word choices and expressions and almost every single entry in the serial monologues includes one of the phrases, "on the other hand", "to be fair", or "to be honest". The forced descriptions of a dozen new characters was so uncompelling and boring that it took an effort not to skip it. Of course, they are all workaholic superpersons with superhuman attentions to detail, yet not one of them was remotely human, nor did Weber establish any reason at all why we should care who the hell they are individually.

The narrator was effective, but her habit of giving every other character her version of a thick accent was grating. Her talent for accents is impressive, but the accents were unnecessarily difficult to understand. I've worked with people from around the world and I can parse accents fairly easily, but without being able to see the face, a thick French accent, for example, is far more difficult to understand than a lighter touch would be.

I've hungrily gobbled up the entire HH series and many of the auxiliary sets of stories. I accept and even revel in the pulp elements of Weber's writing because his approach to speculative fiction is so inventive and workable that his reverence for workaholia and expressionless faces can normally be overlooked as minor flaws of a brilliant tale-spinner. As much as this book disappointed me, I still like reading David Weber and I will read, but probably not listen to, the next entry in the HH series.

Judge a book by its cover

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. this books is worth its cover. Look closely and you will know if this is the book for you. Check out the hat; it makes it all worthwhile.

Ok, but longwinded and confusing

Story was apparently not a direct co tinuation of the previous book, but based on events from the Saganami series it seems. So as I hadn’t listened to those it was a lot of confusion.

Also, there was a horrendous amount of dialogue compared to actual things happening. Somewhat understandable since the story is now on the diplomatic scale but my god was it thick at times.

Allison does an ok job, but her accents don’t sound believable. Still she’s great for the continuity feeling.