The Mesan Alignment is revealed, and, for Honor Harrington and the Manticoran Star Kingdom, this means war!
Unintended Consequences
Sometimes things don’t work out exactly as planned.
The Mesan Alignment has a plan—one it’s been working on for centuries. A plan to remake the galaxy and genetically improve the human race—its way.
Until recently, things have gone pretty much as scheduled, but then the Alignment hit a minor bump in the road called the Star Empire of Manticore. So the Alignment engineered a war between the Solarian League, the biggest and most formidable interstellar power in human history. To help push things along, the Alignment launched a devastating sneak attack which destroyed the Royal Manticoran Navy’s industrial infrastructure.
And in order to undercut Manticore’s galaxy‑wide reputation as a star nation of its word, it launched Operation Janus—a false‑flag covert operation to encourage rebellions it knows will fail by promising Manticoran support. The twin purposes are to harden Solarian determination to destroy the Star Empire once and for all, and to devastate the Star Empire’s reputation with the rest of the galaxy.
But even the best laid plans can have unintended consequences, and one of those consequences in this case may just be a new dawn of freedom for oppressed star nations everywhere.
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This book is about Expanding "Universe" with little plot movement.I would get this book a higher rating but like many I was hoping for some plot movement. For those that like the expanded universe and not just the main storyline this is a good book. However I think it may have gone over better as an anthology "book of short stories" instead of a full length novel.
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ConcernedIs Mr Webber well?
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Slog like late HeinleinI'm luckily a fast reader but this was a slog. It reminded me a lot of the later Heinlein books, which is not a compliment.
I have read he was so successful that the later books had far less editorial control. I don't know if that's happening here but someone needs to be cracking down - either words go or readers will.Posted on
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poora rehash of previous happenings, it is not as billed. I think D Weber is struggling to move the story forward
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Just...BadThe best reason I can think of for why this book is so much worse than the last three or four Honorverse novels (which, sadly, had already set the bar pretty low), is that David simply doesn't know where the story is going anymore. This would explain why he keeps righting the SAME DAMN THING over and over and expecting people to buy it because he's David Weber, its Honorverse, there's a few pages of new material, and it has a different title. That worked for a while, longer than it would have for an author with a lesser track record, but now, well, two stars is probably pushing it for this book.
Maybe I'm not being fair. A lot of the material in this book is actually 'new' in the sense that the words don't appear in previous volumes. And these vignettes from the Verge aren't all that badly written.
On the other hand, this is supposed to have been the next Honorverse novel, and instead its a giant set of flashbacks about characters and events that no one cared about when he briefly introduced them before. Its almost like David wanted to publish another anthology, but couldn't convince any of his past contributing authors to play along and decided that maybe no one would notice if he did it all himself.
That whirring noise you hear while reading the book is Jim Baen spinning in his grave.Posted on
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What was he thinking?!I have read all of the Honor Harrington books, the anthologies, the related series, everything. I've read them all several times. I've tremendously enjoyed the series and the building of characters. I read the reviews before buying this book, but could not believe that a Weber book could go so off the rails as described. I was wrong. The reviews were right: it really is that awful. The seemingly hundreds of new characters with unpronounceable names were both utterly forgettable and interchangeable. The setting switched planets without warning or explanation. It was a huge challenge to recognize when the same planet came up again in the story. I HATED it. I managed to slog through to the end, but it had perhaps 8 pages (30 story minutes?) of actual new material that was worthwhile. The rest of it was painful to read, with no new characters or story lines. For diehard fans, I recommend reading the last 10 pages and skipping the entire rest of the book.
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I enjoyed all the side stories in the Verge as the Alignment 'pushed' several star systems towards independence from the Solarian League. The story lines seem to be converging to a showdown with the Alignment and a reconfiguration of the Solarian League. Plenty of storytelling yet to do.
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revised reviewI could not see where I could edit my previous review. Because of a review that said the book improved, I took an hour or two and scanned forward through abt 2/3 of the way (completely skipping the thread with the names that had the odd diacritical markings), and was able to pickup enough background to enjoy the rest of the book.
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Angry and DisappointedA lot of bulk with little reward. This was like getting a huge gift-wrapped box, but upon opening the box it's full of packing peanuts with a $10 gift card in the middle.
I already read this book as it rehashes story line that was released years ago, that's been rehashed several times in several previous books. You could skip to the last 10% of the story and read everything new in the book.
I don't know who came up with this idea that you can string along readers for years by re-writing the same story repeatedly from different viewpoints but it's the reason I stopped following Flint's "1632" series.
If Weber does this again, I'll probably stop following this series also...Posted on
