Ashes of Victory: Honor Harrington, Book 9

"10 years,war continues?"

Reconstruction surgeries took along time,
meanwhile Honor Became a teacher on Saganami island

While she is on a medical leave, Sonja Hemphill doesn't sleep.
New SDP's
New LAC's which have more defensive and offensive capabilities than old style destroyer
LAC Carriers
Multi-drive missile system with increased target envelope
EW Ghost Rider system
FTL Fire control system

8'th fleet is finally ready for Operation "Buttercup"

Everything else is as usual:

1.Revolutions in PRH
2.Shannon Foraker rocks!!!
3.Queen Elizabeth Visits Grayson
4.Question of treecat's intelligence is resolved

PS
Honor will have to make one of the hardest choices in her life, and that choice will decide the future of Manticoran Politics.


NEXT BOOK IS
"The Service of the Sword" Worlds of Honor book 4

I could not put this book down. Honor comes back from 2 years at a prison camp and rebuilds her life. She is moving from an battle action person, except at the end of the book to flag command. The interaction with her Mother and the increasing role with the Queen is interesting. Enjoyed the parts with the tree cats. Nemitz injury and all the cats learning to communicate by other than telepathy was great. The ending makes me want to start on the next book in the series right away.

Suspense.
Loss.
Victory.

This series has been quite a pleasure — the physics and realism of the space battles (in the context of this SF world) — is great. In general, I enjoy Weber's exposition, but there are a few instances in this book where it goes a bit far on some non-military topics. It was appropriate to the plot, and interesting.

Allyson Johnson’s performances are great. There are so many characters in these tales that her accents, intonations, and personalities are very helpful.

Yes, I read the book at least 2x I find the entire series fun and buying the audio has been worth not listening to teen music in the background at home or blaring whatever muzak is on nearby cars on the way to work.

I have not read the print edition

How the war was being driven to a successful conclusion. The long-running nature of it was causing unconscionably large casualties.

The varied voices, inflections and accents help differentiate the large cast of characters.

The loss of still more of Honor's past comrades-in-arms is a sad part of the story, but inevitable given the long-running heavy fighting and their propensity for being where the action is.

The re-emergence of characters from Masada brings a note of extremism and intolerance that is unpleasant. Sort of matches the real world in a sad way.

This book is good and Johnson is also good. The story is always getting big and with more charecters and it is geting handfull to remember all of them.

Having started at the beginning, and loving the Honor Harrington series, it was very disappointing to find the last couple of books less than I had hoped for, but I had to speak up with this one. I agree with an earlier reviewer about the use of "on the other hand". It occurs so often in this one, that I find myself rolling my eyes every time it occurs. That is bad enough, but the use of other cliches is simply so glaring! For example: "sitting ducks", "half-cocked", "million-dollar question", "smoking gun", if you can think of one, it is probably in there - literally dozens and dozens of anachronistic cliches that have no place in the far future, particularly when Allyson Johnson has chosen to give nearly everyone except Honor a bad accent. What is with the French accent?...it is awful!--please stop! Mr. Weber went a bit overboard in the ruminations of the characters, to the detriment of the story. He DOES tell a very, very good story, and it is in there...but it is being buried by too much of what is on the characters minds or excruciatingly long descriptions of motivations or explanations of the inner workings of this or that. Get back to the STORY, man... you are certainly capable of it. Please lose the cliches and the accents They do not advance the story and are irritating in the extreme. The three stars is generous, overall, but because I like so much of the actual story, it was fair.

For anyone who's read the first eight, you'll like this. It progresses the story and delivers the same sort of tale. This was the first audio I'd purchased for the series, and I'll avoid doing the same until I get to the other narrator.

Buy the book. Read it.

Why does Honor sound like a schoolgirl? Even with prolong that makes no sense. No steel in the voice.
Why does Alyson Harrington sound like a surfer dude? Nothing about the performance says "impish and brilliant geneticist".
Did the Graysons come from Ireland? No. Their traditional music is "Country Western", and I think they came from Idaho.
Scotty Tremaine...sounds like an idiot.

I really don't think the narrator has payed attention to the material. I regret that some of my purchase price has gone to support so poor a performance and wonder that she's been given so many books. Recommended only if you have no other way to access the story.