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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3 monthsthis book starts before the beginning of the last book, and ends after moving the time line only 3 months. it was 90% people i didnt care about, doing things that don't matter in places with hard to pronounce names, was not fun. i loved this series when it was fun.
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standard Weber, but so frustratingThis book appears to be a collection of 70 chapters of somewhat material that mostly belonged in or even PRIOR TO the previous Shadow book, and about eight chapters that extends the ongoing story. The writing is at Weber's usual level of competence with all the normal quirks... but as a new book, described as as sequel to the existing material, this is a complete failure. Frankly it puts me in mind of obsessively canon-compliant fanfiction: most readers don't really need an additional three planets worth of backstory in the Talbott sector surroundings where essentially the same setup as in the last book took place. Most readers might be interested in the the dozen chapters of additional character layering around the main characters of all the series. But what everyone really wants to read is about what happens next, and honestly there are no more than four chapters at the end of this book which truly move the plot at all.
I do not regret buying this ARC because I do enjoy the Weber mode of storytelling. But I also have no sympathy for Mr. Weber - it's time to crap or get off the pot in terms of telling the story he's set up in this universe, and this so-called book is more than 90% crap in that metaphor. Given the progress he's making in his Safehold setting we know he knows how to do this, so I don't understand why he is failing so badly.
The really crazy thing is I may not buy the final book now - I don't see the point.Posted on
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Disappointed but hopeful..Firstly, I'm sick of nibbling around the edges. I want a full up Harrington story! I can see that Weber is setting up for the greater Manticoran Empire after the Alignment and the Solarian League gets smashed by making a lot of new friends, but he only advances the story timeline by about a week. My other problem with this one was that based on what was going on, the endings for some of the events, while somewhat satisfying, were contrived at best. Far too much luck was involved. A lot more people should have died than actually did. He is also starting to try to humanize the Alignment, but he has written himself into a corner. Allowing any of these Supermen to survive would be a huge mistake. Not sure how he is going to get around committing outright genocide after what the Alignment has done.
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Not as useless as expected [Spoiler Alert]I found this book to be a lot better and less useless as "Cauldron of Ghosts" (What exactly did Cachat and Zilwicki actually gain in terms of extra intelligence?). Again, Weber is indulging in one of his own fancies: Introducing political terms in Polish or Czech, without any help as to pronounciation. This is doubly frustrating because as a Honorverse fan you already know that trying to keep these terms straight will not matter one bit for the actual story line.
There is even a Macedonian word for the name of a ship (I think it is pronounced "Phaken" and means Torch, according to Google), without even bothering to transliterate or translate it. Again, it doesn't matter for the story line.
So, why do I think this book is less useless? First, I think it tries to develop some characters from Saganami Island. Ginger Lewis is getting a ship, and following a support ship is one of the things which hasn't been done in the Honorverse yet. When the Solarians are promising commerce raiding (which we've had enough already, thank you) as the height of their strategic thinking, and we've been waiting for any way to use spider drive vessels beyond the Yawata Strike for a couple of years now, that's actually significant progress!
Secondly, "Cauldron of Ghosts" already established Henke would arrive in Mesa. Back then, I was surprised the Alignment didn't fake an Eridani violation. As it turns out now, they actually did.
This is an extremely important point in the story line, because so far, the league members weren't united or remotely interested in opposing the Star Empire. With this Eridani violation, this is about to change. Up to now, the Grand Alliance is in a very comfortable and utterly boring situation: No enemy has the technological means to threaten them, and the Solarian League lacks the will and unity to exert their economical weight to change or at least compensate for this. Honor's plan to shatter the Solarian League was about to come to fruition on its own, now it looks as if our heroes have to actually do some work to make it happen.
To me it feels like the Honorverse was stalling. This book makes me hope Weber is getting over his little writer's block and finally make some progress in the main story line.Posted on
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A disappointmentI'm not sure if this book was intended to "add depth" to the series, or work as a setup for the next book, but in any case, it was a deep disappointment. Full of scattered story-fragments that went nowhere, and none of the main story arcs have notably progressed. Can be safely missed.
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It's a Long ReadMany of the reviews of this book complain about it being a rerun of earlier books in this series. Perhaps they should remember Mr. Weber has a habit of looking at the same events from other perspectives. This series is an entire lifetime long. So, yes it is a reprise in many ways. No, it does not advance the core story of Honor Harrington. No, it does not tell much of what is going on from the standpoint of the overall conflict.
Also, it just stops. Now, the question becomes what happens next and to whom.
Overall, other the the sudden ending, the book was more than acceptable. I agree there could have been less of the other languages used. (Or atleast some other than Czech. Even Polish would have been easier to read.)
Having said that, I no longer read for retention after 46 years of having to read and retain. I read for pleasure, so I don't worry if I cann't pronounce all of the names correctly. I just read and let the words go in one eye and out the other.Posted on
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It's a long slogThe first 75% of this book felt like a long slog through a swamp in unpowered combat armor. Tedious storylines of folks who aren't central to the storyline, the Czech and Polish segments were painful to read. I'd read a section and then put it down for several hours. I'm very displeased that this entry doesn't tackle the central storyline more than it does. The only reason I'm giving it more than one star is because as usual, David's characters and storytelling are quite enjoyable and had me LOL-ing several times during the read. "For a centicredit and a cold cup of coffee ..." indeed.
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Authorial FlatulenceCome on David, You can do better than this! 300,000 words to advance the story by two days? I can only hope that both you and I have the projected Lifespans of a PICA so that that some time in the 22nd century PD I can find out what finally happens.
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Live MicStoryline caught in quicksand.
Adds little from Shadow of Freedom.
If you must read start around chapter 50.
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