Ashes of Victory

Another installment in the Honor Harrington series of books. Which, in general, I like. This one -- not so much.

This book suffers from severe filler problems. As in, way too damn much of it. I understand that Weber was trying to write himself out of a hole when he wrote this one, since the plotline was differing vastly from what he'd envisioned and he needed to catch up. Okay, sensible. As a writer I get that. And the details in it are important to understand what happens in the rest of the series, because the game completely changes from this point. Again, fair enough. However, in my opinion, most of this could have been accomplished in two short stories; one of which could focus on the characters introduced to explain the new technological developments, and one of which could focus on the Queen of Manticore for the sake of the important political changes. If he really wanted, he could have done another heartwarming soliloquy of a short story about Honor at Saganami. The rest of it was, in a nutshell, boring. I managed to drag my sad butt through it by using it as toilet reading, right up to the last quarter of it; which actually was quite good.

If you want to know what's going on but you don't want to drag your brain through this, let me save you the trouble. There you go. Now you don't need to subject yourself to the boredom.

It gets a two star rating because, as I said, the last quarter is excellent, and because Honor Harrington is awesome; and, as much as I hate to admit it, because I really admire the author's desire to be realistic instead of Hollywood about the details (such as Honor's convalescence and the natural progression of politics and warfare.) Still, I wish he'd read more Patrick O'Brian than C.S. Forester; where he might have learned how to navigate that sort of thing without sucking the life out of it.

And yes, I'm going to keep reading the series, which is still worth it overall.