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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Too long...agree with other reader too much Filler and not enough plot movement
I have noticed David tend to get very long winded ... i grew up with David book but now i have a baby of my own and this book was too much time invested to read it with not enough return on investmentPosted on
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Good - butIt was well written, it dealt with characters I wanted to see more of, it brought the fate of several characters 'up to date' with the current timeline. It basically ordered up the universe and set the stage so that the main plot could go forward. As a fan of the universe I can appreciate this and I do not regret buying the book and will certainly continue to follow the series.
But I was disappointed that it advanced the timeline only incrementally from the end of 'Shadow of freedom'. Its a tempered disappointment, but still there and I can understand the perspective of those who are more annoyed by this than I am.Posted on
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waste of money
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Complete Rip offUpdate to previous review
When I saw this book was being released as an e-arc. I was in the process of ordering it when I realized that I already had the book, I bought it three years ago. This is blatantly misleading advertising. How in the world can Baen publish an "advanced readers copy" of a book that was published three years ago. Not only that but Baen is selling this E-arc for 15 dollars when it is selling the final written version for 6.99. That is wrong on every level.
Book is a filler ends about two days further in the time lime than last book in chronology no real interesting developments if you want to read anyway like me because you love the series you will be disappointed if you can't resist try to hold out til available post arc cos definitely not worth the $15.00Posted on
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Total RehashLarry stop patting yourself on the back the issue people have with the book is that this is the same as the last shadow book if you had the attention span of a gnat you would realise that almost all this material was covered in other books and that the story line ends almost exactly to within a few days of where that last Shadow book ended!! For all the expanded universe detail what particular details do you think have any relevance to any future book that hasn't already been covered in previous books?
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Why all the funny czech letters?Reading along OK then i encouter a section with long czech names. Don't have any idea how they're supposed to pronounced.
Is david ill? beside reuse, odd words he's never used before in any of his book.Posted on
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One day of plotWe had already understood that everything in this book, except the last five hchapters or so had happened. This book is a filler to meet contractual obligations OR the author has no idea what to do next and needs some income. Well written as always, although it seems disjointed from following multiple plotlines.
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MESAN ALIGNMENT better named MORON ALIGNMENTThis book took me a long time to read. Not because of the page count either. The first half of the book, I didn't skip and it was very hard to read. I'll agree with another reviewer who'd noted these chapters belong in previous books. Not sure why we needed to know about all these rebellions in so much detail. In the first few books, Mr Weber covered the opposition's machinations in the first chapter or first few chapters and then we were off on an adventure with Honor as she raced towards the confrontation that the enemy's machinations make inevitable. That worked very well. This hundred view point characters - exaggeration but not by a lot - thing does not. It confuses, makes it harder to connect to the characters and doesn't advance do a damned thing towards advancing the plot.
On the other hand, this book was much more enjoyable than the previous few for all that the first half dragged. The second half of the book reminded me of the early Honor books. And even though it does not move the timeline by much, I'm satisfied.
I will note the whole MA plot against SKE strikes me as something an idiot would dream up rather than an organization that has been acting secretly behind the scenes for centuries. I would expect such a conspiracy to use minimum effort to avoid exposure. Instead, while using corrupt solarian admirals to create a war between SKE and SL, they also have another far ranging plot to discredit SKE on the Verge by using spies to forment rebellions in SKE's name, thereby ensuring their secret conspiracy will be brought to light of day thanks to the attention it'll garner from anyone with two brain cells. Certainly the sollies don't need the rebellions on the verge to go to war with SKE because the key players in their navy are corrupt as sin and unwittingly in MA's pockets. So why do it when MA engineered Monica, byng, Crandall and filareta? If SKE and SL are supposed to destroy or weaken each other, what does it matter if their reputation remains golden or mud? If the MA plotters are such sociopaths - they are directly responsible (as in pulled the trigger) for better than 20 million deaths by the end of this book and are willing to sacrifice billions/trillions more of mundane humans/slaves to advance their cause - why couldn't they have not done yawata but rather let the manties crush haven and the sollies with their newfangled weapons and then used planetary strikes to destroy manitcore and Grayson and Beowulf and blaming it on the now destroyed sollies instead of going after the orbital infrastructure? Without the population and the technology base to sustain them in war, the manty navy could have been hunted at leisure in a galaxy with no superpowers. This course of action would also have created the ideal outcome they desired. So, while the book was satisfying, I'm ashamed to say that for a bunch of super intelligent psychopath superhuman a bent on universal domination, the MA Morons come across as imbeciles and shitheads.Posted on
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