# \_Shadow of Victory\_, new Honor Harrington by David Weber **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 18, 2016, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904 "2016-10-18T00:24:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/1 "2016-10-18T00:24:58Z")
So the new Honor Harrington novel is coming out soon in hardcover, but has already been released as a digital download from Baen. The reviews on the Baen books forum were scathing… look [here](http://www.baen.com/shadow-of-victory-earc.html), average is 2 stars out of 5. And that’s presumably from fairly dedicated fans who knew to buy the not-particularly-easy-to-locate ebook rather than waiting for it to come out in bookstores or on Amazon. The consensus among the reviewers is that instead of actually moving the main plot forward, and three separate series’ have all arrived at the same point now, instead we get tons of flashback with Russian characters we’ve never heard of before, and only a few new actual events at the end of a very long book. Which sounds all too plausible. Anyone actually read this? Is it truly a stinker? ---
**Author:** ![Tatterdemalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Tatterdemalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tatterdemalion)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/2 "2016-10-18T00:53:14Z")
Yes, I have read it. I agree with the reviews. There’s nothing new in it, it’s 95% Weberian info-dumps, and it’s a stinker. When’s the next one coming out? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/3 "2016-10-18T02:02:16Z")
So is Honor her usual superhumanly awesome self? ---
**Author:** ![Tatterdemalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Tatterdemalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tatterdemalion)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/4 "2016-10-18T02:13:46Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > So is Honor her usual superhumanly awesome self? She’s hardly ever on stage. It really is mostly info dumps. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/5 "2016-10-18T02:25:38Z")
I used to love the series, but gave up on it several books ago. ---
**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/51bf81/32.png) [@Troy\_McClure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/6 "2016-10-18T02:26:06Z")
Isn’t he cranking out about a book a year in each of three different series now? I’ve been reading the Safehold one as they come out, and it’s pretty mediocre, but there’s something about the immortal android angle that I like (even if he is a Mary Sue). ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/7 "2016-10-18T12:05:04Z")
[Previous thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=790737&highlight=shadow). He’s got 3 different series in the Honorverse going (though I guess one is by/coauthored with Eric Flint), this one is in the “Saganami Island” series. Like others in that thread, I gave up when I read the summary of a book and couldn’t tell if I’d read it already or not. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/8 "2016-10-18T13:50:34Z")
I stopped buying his stuff when he started the shameless ploy of re-writing what happens from different perspectives, causing you to buy the same story twice or thrice. I think in reality he’s lost any true interest in the Honorverse storyline, which long ago jumped the shark anyway. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2016, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/9 "2016-10-18T15:31:47Z")
The motivations ascribed aren’t quite fair. I know the guy slightly (he’s from the next city over from me) and he originally planned to off Honor in that last giant climactic battle, but allowed himself to be persuaded otherwise by fans. His original thought had been to have a gap of a few decades and re-pick up the story as new/re-emerging threats faced by Honor’s kids. I get the sense he’s flailing a bit now trying to make that original chronology compress into something quick enough for it to be a coherent and present threat for the now (apparently immortal) Honor. I just wish he’d write (or let others write) more short stories in the universe. It’s such a fun varied world and I liked the multiplicity of focus that the shorts had. Heck, I even liked those YA books with Honor’s gramma and the treecats! ---
**Author:** ![DeptfordX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DeptfordX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeptfordX)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2016, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/10 "2016-10-19T23:03:06Z")
I read it. I’ve abandoned all the other series in the Honorverse years ago but I thought ‘Oh, a new main book. I’ll give it a try’. Total waste of time. Avoid. I’d give more details but the Baen reviews you linked too are on point and I’d agree with them. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2016, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/_shadow-of-victory_-new-honor-harrington-by-david-weber/768904/11 "2016-10-20T00:34:28Z")
I’ve also read the E-Arc (Electronic-Advanced Reader Copy) and in general agree with the consensus. If you’ve followed the Honorverse and have read _Shadow of Freedom_ from a couple years ago, then you can ignore about 75-80% of the book, because it revisits the rebellious planets you’ve already seen and adds a couple more that do nothing to advance the main storyline. It is only in the last fifth of the book that anything new and interesting happens. Honor doesn’t appear at all. The problem (IMHO, and based on listening to Weber last year in Chattanooga) is that he was quite taken with a character he developed (Damien Harahap) and wanted to write more about him…but the way _Shadow of Freedom_ ended, his character was nearly out of work. So instead, he wrote a book starring Harahap and went back in time almost 2 years and added a couple of unnecessary story lines so he would have enough to cover a book. And the bad thing is, it really is a pretty well-written book. It just does absolutely nothing positive with the story line. I’ll probably buy it, just because I want the complete collection, but I doubt I’ll be re-reading it anytime soon.