War of Honor

Honor Harrington, Book 10

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 35 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

No one wanted another war.

Thomas Theisman didn't. Not after risking his life to overthrow the Committee of Public Safety's reign of terror and restore the Republic of Haven's ancient Constitution.

Baron High Ridge didn't. The Prime Minister of Manticore was perfectly happy with the war he had. No one was shooting anyone else at the moment, and his government could continue to milk all those "hostilities only" tax measures for their own partisan projects.

His Imperial Majesty Gustav didn't. Now that the fighting between the Star Kingdom and the Havenites had ended, the Andermani Emperor had his own plans for Silesia.

Protector Benjamin didn't. His people had made too deep a commitment to the Manticoran Alliance to risk seeing it all thrown away.

And Honor Harrington certainly didn't. The Salamander knew too much about how much war cost.

Unfortunately, what they wanted didn't matter....

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.

©2003 David Weber (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"With War of Honor coming in at over 800 pages, Weber has room to expand subplots and secondary characters and bring to the reader a feeling of depth and completeness seldom seen in science fiction novels. Favorite characters from past stories return, many of them growing in stature from unimportant secondary characters to major players in the 'Honorverse.' Weber serves up trouble in Silesia, the excitement of a new wormhole junction, scheming in Manticorian politics, strange events deep in Peep territory, and plenty of exploding spaceships - and, as publisher Jim Baen says, "We like exploding spaceships." (Amazon.com review)

Weber got ahead of himself.

One assumes you have been reading the series and didn’t hop into this book by accident. The issues that dropped this book from a 5 star to a 3 star have been creeping in over the course of the series and much like his antiheroes Weber falls prey to a bit of hubris. None of this critique will surprise those who have read the prior books in the series.

1. names: His names are pulled out of a hat. There is no coordination to them as there were in prior books. Also you have a number of people with the same name, or similar. It makes it incredibly confusing, especially in an audiobook. What is worse, is that he is now naming ships after people. The kluge of names is worse than G. R. R. Martin.

2. Pacing is way off in this book. Weber loves to dangle an idea then make you wait for a while as he dangles it over a few chapters. His characters even do it in their dialogue:
A: I have something to tell you.
B: Oh, what?
A: It’s going to blow your mind.
B: Oh my. Tell me.
A: I will, but first let me make a sandwich.
A: Where did B go?
He left to put sugar in the gas tank of your car. Weber, stop messing about.

3. We have seen all of this before: Stupid ppl get into power for no understandable reason. Bad stuff happens. Good and also stupid people die. Good people get into power for 5 minutes. Population gets bored and elects new stupid people. Dude, find some new material. There are so many ways you could have taken this series, and you decided to go with reruns.

Narration: Not her fault, but she gets confused in some places and has to duplicate voices, which sometimes leads to the same voice for two or more people in a scene, which is weird. Or French accents for Manties and Scottish for Peeps. No blame, but the job was beyond even such an accomplished person.

A fine book

While brilliantly read, I can't help but feel that this book is far long than it needs to be. There is unnecessary repetition of information and it, as a consequence, drags as a story sometimes.

turning too much into a soap opera.

while trying to develop the characters too much time is spent now on the relationship between honor and whoever

ZZZZZZZZ

A total bore. Found it a real boring narration. I don't remember the books being so boring as I have read a number in the series.

almost jumped the shark

I just want to say that I've really enjoyed the series up to this point. I found this installment to be boring and contrived, and in some cases unbelievably wrong.

David Weber is in his element when starships start to blowup, otherwise his story telling is mediocre.

I have trouble believing that the oppostion would form a coalition government. Conservatives and Liberals don't get along. A more likely scenario would have been a government of the Centrists and either the Liberals or Conservatives. Based on that fact, the entire ineptitude of the High Ridge government would have been averted or curtailed. Weber must have wanted to bring drama back to the series so unfortunately we had to listen to 25 hours of contrived ineptitude which leads to an unsurprising military disaster at the end of the book. Throughout all of this, it is boring as hell too. If people give this book 5 stars with a plot setup like that, they are just sycophants.

Also, can you imagine what the diplomatic email chain must have been like between two star kingdoms, it had to be huge, with dozens and dozens of high ranking people involved. They send correspondence not just to the ambassador but to the military attache, the local intel guy. Many people. I was insulted that the author expected us to believe that official diplomatic correspondence could be altered by two people. It was just another contrived situation which led to the resumption of war.

Boredom:
I'm running around the track, and for 27 minutes I subject myself to a miserable conversation between Honor Harrington's mother and Lord Alexander's wife which was about nothing. After that I had to hit the fast forward button to bypass all meaningless dialogue, and there was copious amounts of it.

Stupid Pills:
Theisman started to overdose on stupid pills. They can destroy the entire fleet at Trevor's Star, but they decide that they will take on two fleets, one of them, way the hell over at Sidemore. This has been a theme in this entire series. For a military that has overwhelming numerical advantage, they sure do like to pussy foot around with elaborate, intricate, and overly complicated plans, when they should act like a sledge hammer.

Treecats:
It is my own personnal opinion, but they should be eradicated, same as ewoks.

Tired of the Alliance:
Even though mostly French, the Republic of Haven is a democracy and I like it more than a constitutional monarchy or worse yet the religious fruitloop world of Grayson.

Finally:
Honor Harrington is now a very boring character, actually has been for a long time. There is a list of accomplishments that start to add up to the rediculous. Overly capable is not a strong enough description. I can list everything, but we are in the 10th book, so I shouldn't have to. There are big Honor Harrington fans out there, but really can't stand her anymore.

Politics

This story is much more political than many of the others in the series. It also jumps around a lot between a number of different storylines. Still it's a worthy addition to the Honor series.

Very slow.

This book is a transition book and it is very slow. All the main characters are only side notes to the most boring political dialog I have listened to.

HORRIBLE

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

What? Stupid question again audible.

Would you ever listen to anything by David Weber again?

Absolutely not.

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

All of them. The book was dreadful.

Any additional comments?

Don't buy this book.

Allyson Johnson couldn't save this book

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

Only for fans who don't want to stop reading the series. Otherwise, its like hiking through mud up to the ankles. Cold and rainy.

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

Mr. Weber is bored with his own series. This really has no heroes. Nothing to cheer for. Its like taking a paper pushing job in some government job with no future, no hope, no thrill, and no sense of accomplishment.

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

Johnson never fails to deliver, even though she is constantly asked to deliver two view points from the same characters in succession like "on the other hand" or "yes and no". I wish she would do other authors books.

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

I would have sent it back to the author. 60% of this book is continuous droning and descriptions of how bureacratic, incompetent and corrupt the star kingdoms goverment has become and how fresh and redeeming the revolutionary Peep goverment , yet gullible and hoodwinked into starting a war by the acts of one man who no one trusts. Ridiculous plot and boring.

Any additional comments?

I've read the first 10 books then put them down. Since that time I've purchased the first 10 on audio to "get caught up". Now I realize why I stopped reading them. THIS BOOK.Avoid at all costs. Maybe the series changes in book 11. But book 10 is a millstone around the neck of Honor Harrington and this whole series.

A good 12 hour audio book crammed into 35 hours

Here is how this book works:

1) endless conversations between evil bad guys and noble heros.

2) A very brief space battle

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