Storm from the Shadows

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Jay Snyder

Length: 31 hrs

Publisher's summary

Rear Admiral Michelle Henke was commanding one of the ships in a force led by Honor Harrington in an all-out space battle. The odds were against the Star Kingdom forces, and they had to run. But Michelle's ship was crippled, and had to be destroyed to prevent superior Manticoran technology from falling into Havenite hands, and she and her surviving crew were taken prisoner. Much to her surprise, she was repatriated to Manticore, carrying a request for a summit conference between the leaders of the two sides which might end the war. But a condition of her return was that she gave her parole not to fight against the forces of the Republic of Haven until she had been officially exchanged for a Havenite prisoner of war, so she was given a command far away from the war's battle lines.

What she didn't realize was that she would find herself on a collision course, not with a hostile government, but with the interstellar syndicate of criminals known as Manpower. And Manpower had its own plans for eliminating Manticore as a possible threat to its lucrative slave trade, deadly plans which remain hidden in the shadows.

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

Good story marred by poor performance and ending

If you could sum up Storm from the Shadows in three words, what would they be?

Talbot, Henke, Mesa

What did you like best about this story?

Nicely developed the story of the Tablot Cluster, including a brief recap of what happened in the prior Saganami book, but from Queen Elizabeth's perspective instead of just from Terekhov's. Expect some repeat (verbatim) from some other Honor books, but at this point it's still fairly minimal.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Jay Snyder?

Allyson Johnson, who recorded all the main-line Honor audiobooks.

Any additional comments?

This book takes place concurrently with mainline Honor 11 (At All Costs) and Saganami 1 (Shadow of Saganami) [and parts of Torch 2: Torch of Freedom, although the things that happen here are generally just referenced, and done in such a way that you can understand what you need to]. It should not be read as a standalone, and moreover, it cannot even be read as just a continuation of the previous Saganami series book, since it makes too much reference to things going on in the Honorverse at large. Finally, it ends on a dramatic cliffhanger that is resolved in Honor 12 (Mission of Honor). Readers should be familiar with the previous works as indicated and be prepared to read Mission of Honor immediately after this for resolution of the cliffhanger.

The narrator should be banned from ever reading any works with female characters again, as his "female" voice is just awful. He does a fine job with the non-dialogue reading, although he does not follow the established (by Allyson Johnson, who reads all the main series for Honor Harrington) pronunciations for certain words. Because the main character of this book is Michelle Henke, and further, has a number of important supporting female characters, this makes for a miserable listening experience. I strongly recommend that you purchase or borrow the print or Kindle (etc.) version of this book, and pass on the audiobook.

Good, with a bit of retread

Top notch novel, with a bit of retread. In a couple of cases whole chapters from other series are inserted verbatim. They make sense in context of the story, but I found that irritating. The book also ends on a cliffhanger. Still not bad all around.

Awesome story, reader took some adjusting to.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Jay Snyder did an awesome job with all the male voices, and all the characters were unique, understandable, and consistent. The only issue (for me) was that I listened to the whole main series read by Allyson Johnson, and the female characters here seemed to be a done in a falsetto that made it difficult for me to focus on the story instead of the voice. This got better as the book went on, and I stopped noticing as much and was able to immerse in the story.

Any additional comments?

I love the focus of the new series', digging into stories that were more glossed over in the main series. This whole universe is very immersive, and I've been very happy with every book so far. I usually walk to work (about 30 minutes each way), and I found myself not only getting upset when I had to drive (not as much time to listen) but also found myself walking more slowly at times so I had more time to listen. :)Excellent story, I was sad when I got to the end. Not because of anything in the story, but because it was over. That to me is often a mark of a good story/series.

OMG - couldn't wait till it ended.

Please couldn't they had got the same great Allyson Johnson to be the narrator. I actually fast forwarded chapters just because I couldn't stand the narration. The story was good just it was let down by the narrator.
You would think that there would be a consistant pronunication with the names of the charactors and place names of planets in this series. There wasn't and all he had to do was listen to any of the other David Weber books in the series. In short it was a big let down.

another fabulous Weber read.

David's ability to create a world that seemingly stretches beyond the story . Allows the reader to feel as though this world is real. That they could take a left turn up ahead and leave the story , but still have an adventure.

Great story for Weber fans; narration so-so

If you are already a David Weber/Honor Harrington fan, this is a great book. I will guess that some of the poor reviews for this book were written by people who have not previous read any of the HH series. If you haven't this is NOT the place to start. The Harrington series is long, complex, involved, and wonderful if you start from the first book and work your way through. It is not shoot-'em-up space action, it has politics, intrigue, plotlines that build on previous novels, and action that takes place at 'realistic' stellar distances, not WWII-style dogfighting. If that's not what you're looking for, this is simply not your cup of tea - but that doesn't mean it's not a good book!

If you ARE a Weber fan, this book takes place contemporaneously with the previous two novels (Shadow of Saganami and War of Honor), so the intertwining plot lines can be confusing if you've forgotten what happened in those books. There is a huge setup/cliffhanger at the end for another novel (or novels) which I suspect may 'wrap up' the Harrington series (but I hope not!).

That being said, I do agree with the reviewer who wished the narrator was a woman. A majority of the main characters in this series are females, so the choice of a male narrator doesn't make sense. Previous Harrington novels were voiced by Allyson Johnson and Barbara Rosenblat, who did a fine job. Jay Snyder is a very good narrator, but is not able to pull off a convincing female voice - all the women sounded like falsetto characters from a Monty Python skit to me (sorry Mr. Snyder, I thought you were great otherwise!).

great book, needs better narrator

This is one of the books I re-read and sync to Kindle. I wish the narrator could do women's voices and pronounce Manticoran right.

Set up book

This book sets up the rest of the series for the war against manpower and the solarium league. Just annoying with the pronunciation of Manticore

great story ; uneven narration

awesome story. Weber's writing is captivating as always. Narrator does an excellent job on narrator passages and male character dialogue but the female dialogue is horrendous. not sure if I was listening to an 8 year old boy doing a puppet show or John Cleese in a Monty Python skit.

Political Space Opera

Perfect... for the 12 year old girl with fantasies of becoming a diplomatic fashion correspondent. Some interesting theories on relativistic space warfare buried under mounds of mind numbing political intrigue and mono dimensional character analysis.
I must admit I am only 5 hours into it and am cheap enough to carry on so far but I wouldn't recommend it to an adult.