Shadow of Freedom

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and international best-selling phenomenon David Weber delivers the next book in the multiple New York Times best-selling Honor Harrington series.

There are two sides to any quarrel... unless there are more. Queen Elizabeth of Manticore's first cousin and Honor Harrington's best friend Michelle Henke has just handed the "invincible" Solarian League Navy the most humiliating, one-sided defeat in its entire almost thousand-year history in defense of the people of the Star Empire's Talbott Quadrant. But the League is the most powerful star nation in the history of humanity. Its navy is going to be back – and this time with thousands of superdreadnoughts.

Yet she also knows scores of other star systems—some independent, some controlled by puppet regimes, and some simply conquered outright by the Solarian Office of Frontier Security—lie in the League's grip along its frontier with the Talbott Quadrant. As combat spreads from the initial confrontation, the entire frontier has begun to seethe with unrest, and Michelle sympathizes with the oppressed populations wanting only to be free of their hated masters.

That puts her in something of a quandary when a messenger from Mobius arrives, because someone's obviously gotten a wrong number. According to him, the Mobians’ uprising has been carefully planned to coordinate with a powerful outside ally: the Star Empire of Manticore. Only Manticore—and Mike Henke—have never even heard of the Mobius Liberation Front.

It's a set-up... and Michelle knows who's behind it. The shadowy Mesan Alignment has launched a bold move to destroy Manticore's reputation as the champion of freedom. And when the RMN doesn't arrive, when the MLF is brutally and bloodily crushed, no independent star system will ever trust Manticore again.

Mike Henke knows she has no orders from her government to assist any rebellions or liberation movements, that she has only so many ships, which can be in only so many places at a time... and that she can't possibly justify diverting any of her limited, outnumbered strength to missions of liberation the Star Empire never signed on for. She knows that... and she doesn't care.

No one is going to send thousands of patriots to their deaths, trusting in Manticoran help that will never come.

Not on Mike Henke's watch.

©2013 Words of Weber, Inc. (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

The usual platitudes and cardboard characters

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

Maybe

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

Not copied and pasted from previous books.

Any additional comments?

It's a "Honor Harrington novel" - it says so right on the cover picture, trouble is, she's not in it as an active character and is just mentioned in passing once or twice....I gave it an overall rating of two stars because it held enough of my attention to actually finish it.

miss listed as a Honor Harrington novel

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Depends, if they had read all the other Saganomi and Harrington series books then maybe but only if you're dying to know what all actually happened in the talbot quadrant, otherwise no. The book does not advance the main story line at all.

Any additional comments?

If you started off with On Basilisk Station and fell in love with Honor Harrington, then just skip this book entirely. This book was long winded and overly complex, with too many new characters, situations and places to keep track of. After the 1st quarter of the book I stopped even trying to remember who was who or keep straight what place had who in it doing whatever they were doing. It was listed as Honor Harrington book 14 so I bought it but that is not the case. It takes place in the Talbot quadrant and Honor isn't in the book. I wasted a perfectly good credit on a story that I had zero interest in and wasn't really a part of the main story.

Garbage, returned for credit

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

The worst book in this series, terrible narration

What do you think your next listen will be?

Not this series

Would you be willing to try another one of Allyson Johnson’s performances?

No, she is terrible

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Boredom

Any additional comments?

A great series has been ruined

Good but confusing to me.

I'm super glad that Allyson Johnson read this book. I've really liked her narration for the other Honor books. The big problem I had (and maybe it is just me), is that it had been a couple of years since I read 'A Rising Thunder' so I kept getting lost due to references to the other series which I had forgotten about. It took me quite a ways into the book to place when this book took place. My recommendation is to read 'A Rising Thunder' before starting this series.

Long-winded, frequently boring and confusing...

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Less 'bad-guy' ruminations, more actions, and tying up loose threads. Maybe I drifted off where he let us know what happened to the two kids whose dad is in jail? I can't bear to go listen to the last half of the book again to find out if I fell asleep thru some of it. Also, I wonder if his contract says he is getting paid by the word? This book at best would have been a novella for the usual writer.

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

He needs to go re-read Basilisk station and some of his earlier books to remind himself of how he used to write. I was one of the ones who waited impatiently for his books to come out and always purchased them in hard back. I was one of the fans who helped make him so popular. Now he seems to feel as though he can sit back and rest on his laurels and we, mindless sheep that we are, will continue to buy his repackaged placeholders.

He probably should have just stopped this series when Honor made Admiral. He has lessened her involvement and gotten much more fascinated with all the politics he has conjured up. So, he extends the story arc further and further, but not in a good way. Honor is a ghost of herself even in the books that supposedly center on her.

In our day and age, Honor would have been elderly or dead by now and the story could have been picked up with one of the young ones - adding youthful enthusiasm, mistakes and derring-do back in the mix. But with pro-long, Honor keeps on keeping on and what else can he say about her? He had to find something else to write about to keep his sheep buying the books so he turned to politics. But, David, politics should just be a short part of the back story - not the main story. We buy them because we love the humanity, compassion, decisiveness, and actions involved in the conflicts and space battles. It is good to know why they are fighting, but we want less rambling on about the thoughts that this bad guy or that bureaucrat has and more of the actions that make a book exciting.

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

I always like Honor and Mike.

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

Most of the bad guy scenes, every other word whenever we are in the mind of a bureaucrat or bad guy.

On the other Hand, I'll take a deep breath

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Anyone under the age of 15.

Would you ever listen to anything by David Weber again?

Yes, but only because I got hooked on Honor Harrington early.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Disappointment. Has no one told Mr. Weber that all of his characters are from the same mold? All of them talk the same. "On the other hand", so and so "took a deep breath". Really, with how much heavy breathing was going on, I felt like I should have been reading a romance novel.

I hope DW is foreshadowing.

Well, all I can say is that I truly hope that this book of conversations, conversations and conversations is building up to a fantastic book 15. ON THE OTHER HAND...

Good Story, Quiet Narrator

This is fairly standard Weber stuff, though certain weird issue that involved military supply lines seem to be oddly ignored in this book. I only note it since Weber usually seems aware of this sort of thing. While generally a good read the narrator's volume changes radically, sometimes from moment to moment. It doesn't make for pleasant listening.

Recommending this book should be unconstitutional

I’m coming to the conclusion that to recommend David Weber’s Honor Harrington series is illegal for the reason that it breaks the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

When I was about halfway through this book, I seriously debated whether to finish listening to it. I was so incredibly frustrated I had to restrain myself from throwing my iPod against the wall. For my taste, Weber has always spent far too much time with the bad guys onstage plotting their evil deeds. But in the early books, it seemed like there were just a few locations and groups of bad guys. So maybe you got a half-hour of the good guys doing their good guy stuff, and then you got ten minutes of bad guy stuff. But in this book it seemed like there were a couple of dozen groups of bad guys all in different locations. So you got maybe ten minutes of the good guys, then 15 minutes with bad guy #1, 15 minutes with bad guy #2, .... until you finally got to bad guy #37, and then you finally got 10 more minutes with the good guys.

Also, there are WAAAY too many characters and locations to keep track of them with ease. I imagine there were maps if you bought the hardcover, but us second-class citizens who listen to our books don’t get maps. There is an Honorverse wiki site on the internet that has clickable character bios that you can use to figure out who is who and where they fit into the story. But should it really be necessary for readers to have footnotes in order to follow what’s going on?

Most of the time up to the halfway point in this book, I truly felt like I had almost no idea of what was going on. In the second half of the book, all that set-up began to pay off, but it was still too wordy. (Nobody ever comes straight to the point in a Weber book.)

And then it ended on a cliffhanger. I actually shed a couple of tears when this book came to an end. Not because I was sad that it had ended; not in sentimental happiness at the wonder I had just finished reading. It was combined rage and frustration, because Weber has sucked me in again. I need to know what is going to happen in the next book. I hope that with a year to cool myself off, I will be able to resist buying the next book. This series has stopped being fun. It’s more like drug addiction. I’ve got to have my fix, but there is no pleasure in it anymore, just the degrading feeling of being out of control.

Love Weber, but this book was boring

What would have made Shadow of Freedom better?

Story line jumped around a lot and was hard to follow through audio book. Overall the story was pretty boring