I’m just beginning “Flag in Exile” and my enthusiasm for the series is kind of running out of steam, as it seems to be getting progressively more padded, over written, and the character is is veering from “stubborn and focused” to borderline bone headed.
Does it pick back up at some point?
As far as I’m concerned the second book in the series was the best and there’s been a continuous slide in quality ever since. Unfortunately, I’m hooked and will be reading till the end.
I don’t really remember any decline in the writing… the books all seem more or less the same on that front. The only change that comes to mind is that Weber does eventually realize that Honor’s political enemies don’t need to all be incompetent, irrational assholes… but I’m afraid that change is a number of books after where you are.
I’d probably be a little more charitable in my description of the change, but yes, that’s how they all are from here on out. If you don’t like lots of scenes of 4-5 people discussing political scenarios in excrutiating detail, with dozens of names to remember, you may want to bow out soon. Still lots of fantastic combat in the future though.
Of course, at some point some of the other characters “good” characters begin to point out how boneheaded Honor is, such as when (spoiler for upcoming books)
she’s taken over the prison planet, and rather than just capture the first ship that comes by and leave for Manticore, she refuses to go anywhere until they can capture enough ships to get every single prisoner off the planet. Tens of thousands of them IIRC.
I’ve been rereading myself and am up to 7, In Enemy Hands, and it’s pretty bad fanfic. Seriously, it reads exactly like all the mediocre trash I used to settle for on fanfiction.net in grad school when my brain was so fried I couldn’t handle anything else. I can’t believe I read this in college - it’s pretty unremittingly awful. I enjoyed the first few, though.
No, I don’t think the writing gets any better. After finishing book 9 I downloaded the electronic copy just to search and verify that his repetitious phrases were actually as bad as I thought they were. My god, the chuckling and grinning! The smoothing out of rough edges! The rubbing of chins and pinching of the bridges of noses!
I think * War of Honor * (#10) is probably the worst, at least of the ones I struggled through. Seriously, Weber needs to stay away from political intrigue and romance (oh god, especially romance) and stick with space opera. The only time he’s remotely readable is when super dreadnaughts are being hammered into space dust by even bigger super dreadnaughts. And even then, sometimes it gets a bit “Can you top this”, what with each side continually making implausible leaps in technology and tactics.
Anyway, War of Honor had about 10 pages of climactic space battle after around 800 pages of really dry space politics. A lot of quibbling over who killed who, as I recall.
Weber, let it be said, needs to make a big technological jump in editors.
Oh, and if you hate people sitting around discussing things in great detail (while occasionally patting themselves on the back for being so clever), stay far, far away from Weber’s “Oath of Swords” books. What’s somewhat tolerable but annoying in space opera is utterly unbearable in fantasy. Gods shouldn’t come down from the heavens and explain the reasoning for their divine behavior in great detail to their worshipers. They should just reward the faithful & smite unbelievers.
Learn to skim and they’re still ok.
The spin-offs aren’t quite as bad. Crown of Smut and Torch the Planet were fun reads. Sadly, you won’t know who anyone IS or what the frack is going on unless you’ve slogged through all the other hot mess he has going on, but still, those are at least somewhat faster paced.
I’m holding out hope that the new YA reboot with grandma Steph will be much tighter. YA doesn’t usually suffer pointless political blathering well.
If you like the characters and the world, but are just getting slogged out on the tedious pacing, you might try the short-story anthologies. Those are all pretty good, and have lots of action. Some are even quite funny.
Despite the tone of weary sufferance, I have enjoyed them for many years, and still read them all as soon as they’re released, and still like the new ones for the most part (I have recently started skimming some of the back-patting conversations however. There’s only so many hours in the day.)
Amen to all of this. The lead character especially is straight out of fanfic: Honor is an expert at anything she feels like doing no matter how far out of her experience it might be (katana dueling!) even extending into flat out superpowers (telepathy!) and every person in the universe either thinks she’s the greatest thing since sliced bread or harbors an irrational sexist/jealous hatred of her.
The political sections are especially painful. There’s little pragmatism or nuance to them and the whole thing comes off feeling like a transparent setup for the author to bludgeon people with conservative philosophy rather than a remotely believable setting. That’s par for the course in military fiction, but most don’t spend nearly as much print on it.
That said, I also liked the first few books, but the downhill slope to the series is severe.
I was a huge fan of the series at first, but I started reading right after the second book came out, so I had to wait for each subsequent one. I learned to skim huge sections of the exposition and dialogue to get to the worthwhile parts. I’m still keeping up with them, although I’m sure I’ve skipped over more than half of the text (at least!).
Weber seems intent on hammering his personal politics relentlessly, though. The irredeemably evil arch-villain of the Safehold* series is named Clyntahn, for instance. It’s eye-rollingly stupid, and he just bludgeons away until you can pretty much draw out his personal political views in excruciating detail.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a main character described as “not pretty - only beautiful” is, in fact, a Mary Sue.
The writing doesn’t change that I’ve noticed; then, I never noticed any chance between the first and the one you are reading.
“Mary Sue” at this point pretty much means “a character I don’t like” - I’ve seen the term applied to a ridiculously broad variety of characters for mutually contradictory reasons. I regard the term as having degenerated to worthlessness. It’s a doubly useless term in fact; the meaning has been hopelessly diluted since it became such a popular way to slam characters, and it doesn’t even consist of a valid argument that the character is bad. One person’s “Mary Sue” is another person’s larger than life hero or tragic figure.
So it isn’t a “universal truth” acknowledged by me - I wouldn’t call anyone a “Mary Sue” at this point.
Yes, “Mary Sue” has become something of a pet peeve of mine at this point.
The short stories are sort of good. Can’t remember which book of it has it, but there is a decent one with a kid as a protagonist that is trapped in an avalanch.
I suggest that you move on to the Belisarius series [Drake/Flint] I am pretty certain the first book is free in Webscriptions.net.
Yup, 4 are in the free library -
[ul]
[li]An Oblique Approach (1998)[/li][li]In the Heart of Darkness (1998)[/li][li]Destiny’s Shield (1999)[/li][li]Fortune’s Stroke (2000)[/li][li]The Tide of Victory (2001)[/li][li]The Dance of Time (2006)[/li][/ul]
It is pretty entertaining alternative history, if you like Mississippiennes As the Kommenoi World Turns, you might like this series.
And because I can’t resist:
Honor Harrington is so duty-bound, she doesn’t eat Funyuns, she eats Responsibilityuns.
Frankly, the “leaps” in technology I see in the Honorverse are tiny, incremental improvements.
The war between Haven and Manticore lasted for decades. By comparison, World War II lasted only for 6 years. Yet, compare the military technology available at the start of WW2 with the end of WW2, especially in the major players’ air forces. At the start of the war, we were still employing biplanes as torpedo bombers. By the end of the war, Germany was flying jet fighters. We saw the top-secret invention of the codebreaking computer, the proximity-fused anti-aircraft shell, and the atomic bomb.
If you want ridiculous leaps of technology, read E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series.
I too read the first few books – I think six or seven, actually – and then gave up. Honor was being written as, basically, perfect; and perfect characters are boring. The last book I read (don’t recall the title), I found that I was skipping over the Honor scenes to try to get to something a little more credible.
That was the point where I realised that the series was no longer for me.
Honor’s only character flaw is that she doesn’t realize how awesome she is.
I still love these books, though. Admittedly, Honor isn’t that interesting of a character, but Webber still writes two things really well: brutal space battles, and irredeemable assholes getting their deserved comeuppance. Reading about Honor winning a sword duel is worth an eye-roll, but reading about Steadholder Burdette getting a katana through his chest is immensely satisfying.
Oh, good, it’s not just me. I’ve felt guilty for giving up years ago.
But life’s too short not to put down an OK Book and move on to an Awesome Book.
Personally, I thought that Honor among Enemies (the sixth one, not to be confused with #7 In Enemy Hands) was actually one of the better ones, so you might want to keep on at least that far. And the spin-off series seem so far to be relatively fresh-- They probably benefit from bringing in co-authors. But yeah, they do seem to be getting kind of tedious and drawn-out: Resolve the whole Haven nonsense and show us Manticore vs. the Solarian League, already! I’m invested enough in the series by now that I probably will keep on reading them, though I’m not looking forward to the main series nearly as much as I am the spinoffs.