HVT-003 The Short Victorious War

Welcome to the third book in the Honor Harrington main series. Let’s continue our journey into the Honorverse!

“The Short Victorious War” is 376 pages of pure military adventure. It was published by Baen Books in 1994. The events in this story take place approximately a year after the events that occurred in “The Honor of the Queen”.

Of note, the title of the book is a historical reference to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. The quote the title originated with Russia’s Minister of the Interior V.K. Plehve, on the eve of the war, who stated, “What this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution.”

For the history fans out there, at times it’s also attributed to Czar Nicholas the Second, although most references attribute it to Plehve. For fans of military history, you’ll see similarities to the war in this book as compared to the real war between Russia and Japan. Don’t look for a tight coupling though; Manticore and Haven aren’t directly mirroring Japan and Russia. This isn’t a history book. David Weber is clearly using Russia’s historical error to fuel the context of his own story. An authoritarian government manufactures a war to justify assuming a tighter control of the population, and to blame the crisis for the discomfort of the people, who may otherwise be poised for revolution. These people lack basic freedoms, they’re oppressed subjects rather than citizens, and things are going from bad to worse with their economy after hundreds of years of abuse by the authoritarian government.

In this story, the People’s Republic of Haven is suffering a self-inflicted economic disaster based on how they’ve set up their economy. We would recognize the economy as a picture of the old Soviet Union’s (or Russia’s) approach to their domestic economy’s role in how to handle their domestic population. In this case, Haven is a welfare state. With their inflation and debt causing domestic economic problems, unrest is erupting and growing worse among the people living on the government’s dime, or on the dole (bluntly called “Dolists” by their own government). With discontent on the rise, and the threat of domestic instability or even violence, the government decides what they need is a short (and assuredly victorious, because they’ll control the circumstances) war they can point at and blame for the economic crisis and related domestic problems the Dolists are experiencing. Easy! Problem solved.

Or is it?

This isn’t a new situation. Haven has been preparing for an eventual war with Manticore. However, for all the reasons major powers don’t go to war in the real world, they continue to work for the necessary advantage they feel they need to win. This includes some very discrete (and some not so discrete) military actions that the Havenites conduct to shape the posture of Manticore’s Navy, gather intelligence, and then provoke the Manticorans to strike. With Manticore throwing the first punch, they now have their justification for the short victorious war and believe they can stand on the moral high ground publicly. Manticore sees the Havenite posturing and sends a diplomatic mission in an effort to establish an alliance.

As the Manticorans and Graysons work through significant cultural differences while acknowledging they share a common problem, the war breaks out. Honor Harrington and her unit follow the direction and intent of the Queen and defend Haven at great expense, including the apparent death of Admiral Sarnow and Haven’s senior Admiral as well. In the midst of the battle, Captain Pavel Young, also a ship’s captain within the assembled task force, flees the battlefield against orders. As a result, Honor’s ship the HMS Nikeis severely damaged, and Honor almost loses her life. With Manticoran reinforcements arriving at the battle, Haven’s navy ultimately suffers unacceptably heavy losses and retreats.

Three important things wrap the...

Loved this book

I really appreciate the knowledge you all bring to the cast. I’m not military. I’m not a history buff. (Though I have been enjoying Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History lately.) So every time y’all take a moment to go into the nuts and bolts is deeply appreciated. Makes my experience that much richer.

Looking back to my first read, I also had some trepidation regarding Honor’s blooming relationship. I think that’s intended. Upon this book, Nimitz’s ability to read people is relatively new and a new reader people lie doesn’t have a good handle on how reliable’s it is. It’s takes pretty much the entire mini arc for you to be sure things are well.

One of the things I like about this series is how things keep developing. Honor makes enemies. And we slowly see them meet up with each other and… we don’t get much more. But over the long term we get to see a lot of consequences from previous decisions. It’s great.


Another great thing was the battle escalation. We saw light cruisers in book 1. We saw destroyers, heavy cruisers and battle cruisers in book 2. Then we took the next step here. I noticed that Weber took the time before the big battle happened to show off a dreadnot. The Peep admiral had the bad luck to run his battle cruisers into a single misplaced dreadnot. Very cool that he demonstrated that before things got too hairy.


Foreshadowing: I loved how the admiral declared himself a casualty and leaving honor in command durring an exercise, then it happens at the final battle.

It’s funny. My entrenched memories of the series comes from the books after this. So I always forget how I was initially cheering for the revolutionaries. I was Not a history buff, I had no idea where this would go.

Honestly, the series almost could have ended here with a rather upbeat ending. Good guys win the important battles. Bad guys overthrown. That must have been such an interesting time to begin reading. Really only have the details and historical knowledge to hint where things would go.

I love this book. Seeing how larger battles work is j this setting was amazing. Watching them work the strategic layer at multiple scales, then getting the tactical layer after the set up was great. (Though I do kind of wish we got more details from the other tactical situations. But that probably would have bloated the novel.) Watching the tech slowly branch out with the each book is also gratifying.

I give this book, 5 missile-pods out of 5.