New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and international best-selling phenomenon David Weber delivers book #18 in the multiple New York Times best-selling Honor Harrington series.
Wrong number? There are two sides to any quarrel . . . unless there are more.
Queen Elizabeth of Manticore's first cousin and Honor Harrington's best friend, Michelle Henke, has just handed the "invincible" Solarian League Navy the most humiliating, one sided defeat in its entire almost thousand year history in defense of the people of the Star Empire's Talbott Quadrant. But the League is the most powerful star nation in the history of humanity. Its navy is going to be back—and this time with thousands of superdreadnoughts.
Yet she also knows scores of other star systems—some independent, some controlled by puppet regimes, and some simply conquered outright by the Solarian Office of Frontier Security—lie in the League's grip along its frontier with the Talbott Quadrant. As combat spreads from the initial confrontation,the entire frontier has begun to seethe with unrest, and Michelle sympathizes with the oppressed populations wanting only to be free of their hated masters.
And that puts her in something of a quandary when a messenger from Mobius arrives, because someone's obviously gotten a wrong number. According to him, the Mobians' uprising has been carefully planned to coordinate with a powerful outside ally: the Star Empire of Manticore. Only Manticore—and Mike Henke—have never even heard of the Mobius Liberation Front.
It's a set up . . . and Michelle knows who's behind it. The shadowy Mesan Alignment has launched a bold move to destroy Manticore's reputation as the champion of freedom. And when the RMN doesn't arrive, when the MLF is brutally and bloodily crushed, no independent star system will ever trust Manticore again.
Mike Henke knows she has no orders from her government to assist any rebellions or liberation movements, that she has only so many ships, which can be in only so many places at a time . . . and that she can't possibly justify diverting any of her limited, outnumbered strength to missions of liberation the Star Empire never signed on for. She knows that . . . and she doesn't care.
No one is going to send thousands of patriots to their deaths, trusting in Manticoran help that will never come.
Not on Mike Henke's watch.
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Just lazyIf you've read A Rising Thunder and A Cauldron of Ghosts, you've already read 80% of this book and the new content is just old content from a different viewpoint without advancing the plot. The new content in here would have been better placed taking up 30% of an Anthology. I honestly thought I was rereading Cauldron of Ghosts on accident and had forgotten some parts at first. Inexcusable. I've read almost every book David has written and this is by far the most disappointing.
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Product ReviewI enjoyed this "installment". Adds to the rich background of the series arc. Yes, some character development takes a while, but (assuming we ever see those characters again), the background's good. As is becoming unfortunately more typical in the HH universe, too much re-used verbatim from other books in the series. I did enjoy the read, I thought it did advance the storyline, albeit not a huge amount. Wish the next installments would happen a little faster and/or each advanced the story more rapidly. The super-detailed political descriptions and "intrigue" get a little old after a while. Nothing worse than excitedly waiting for the next installment only to find it doesn't really advance the story much! I stopped paying the premium for the eARC because of this. I recommend the book, but don't expect major revelations or rapid storyline advancement in this one!
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Product ReviewThis should have been severely edited. It's not bad, just way too long for the character development and the plot. And yeah, it does repeat some things verbatim from other books, but you can skip that easily enough.
Many of the new characters that are added could be potentially interesting, but are not really developed enough for me to care all that much, and they seem too scattered.
It also barely advances the main plot, except for the very last chapter. But you can get the same idea from the repetition of that part in Cauldron of Ghosts, which in my opinion was a better book.
On the other hand, it certainly held my attention; I stayed up a *lot* later than I should have reading it.Posted on
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Product ReviewIt is problematic that so much of the book was extracted via cut and paste from earlier works. That said - I have no problem focusing on other characters. However, many new characters seem underdeveloped and appear to be added to conform to length requirements.
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Product ReviewLoved the book!
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Product ReviewI would say more disappointing then bad, the story was simply an extension of what we saw in rising thunder. I also found myself skipping over much of the content around the doomed resistance movements. I am a huge fan of David Weber and the Honor series
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Product ReviewI love the Honor Harrington books and I have to say this was a fair expansion. I didn't give it 5 stars because it kind of felt short, but I couldn't put it down, I did get upset about the 2 chapter repeats but that is standard with the Shadow novels to help place them exactly in the timeline and to tie actions together. Sure they could have been told from a different perspective to make them New but this way since they are exact copies if you recently read the other book with them you can just skip to the next chapter and get back to the new story. I'm not going to yell at the price increase because I know that there were a lot of reasons for that, they had to raise prices because everyone else did, it's a problem with the industry itself, not Baen. Also because it was a Shadow novel I knew it was solely about Mike Henke and the Talbot Quadrant and that Honor would not be in it when I bought it. I like the fact that he split the narrative because it is a Big universe he's writing with spread out reactions and seperated plots so this keeps it all running forward at a trackable place. I just wish it had been longer.
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