Weber makes several heroes “larger than life” and unbeatable, not just Harrington.
Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki come to mind, for example. (These may not be entirely Weber’s fault. Eric Flint also stuck his fingers in “Crown of Slaves” and “Torch of Freedom”.)
Flint actually created those characters in the short story “From the Highlands”. It’s attributed purely to him, not a co-author deal.
And BTW, for all my criticisms above, I still read all the Honor books as soon as they come out. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
At the end of the last book, the Havenite President showed up with evidence that Manpower has been pulling their strings & Manticore’s strings for decades, and offered to form an alliance with Manticore. Fleets of hundreds of advanced super-dreadnoughts laying waste to the Solarian Navy anyone?
Yeah, Flint wrote “From the Highlands” in one of the anthologies, right?
But Weber has his name on the cover of the two I mentioned, right alongside Flints. I assume Flint did not write “Crown” and “Torch” solely on his own. If Weber’s role was solely as a technical advisor (clarifying the technical capabilities of the various devices in his universe, clarifying the roles of the different people and governmental departments in his milieu, etc), would Weber still get to put his name on the cover?
I enjoy Weber’s series, but I like the cheesy-ness of it all, too.
In response to your spoiler:
[spoiler]Would Haven help Manticore? Seems like a war with the League would be a huge drain, taking away from anything aimed at Mesa. Also, the Solarian League tech level is way behind Manticore’s at this point, and only a few within the League realise this at this point. Manticore may be able to spank the first Expeditionary force without any help. (Although the loss of that shipyard/orbital space station puts a crimp in things. I suspect that other worlds, like Grayson, may be able to ramp up production at this point.)
Is the League getting it’s strings pulled by Mesa, or the shadow “Star Chamber” group? I forget if there were any hints along these lines.
It seems to me that there was some Solly Admiral setting himself up to be the leader of some breakaway province/region for when the crap hits the fan.
What would the Andermani do? 
Do all of the “babaric outer rim” states band together against the Solly’s?[/spoiler]
I’m afraid i have bad new for you Astro. It’s both full blown Rober Jordan and Tom Clancy syndrome. He’s realised he can sell the same series forever and is too powerful to be edited.
Remember those tight 350 page novels? Now you can read half the story in twice the page count. Dear god if you think he's padding by the 5th Harrington book then run a mile from his Safehold series. Which is "What if i rewrote my earlier book *Heirs of Empire*" only make it 10 times longer,and that's a conservative estimate, christ knows how long it'll be by the time he finishes that series.
On a more cheery note, if you like space opera can i recommend *Ian Watson's* new *Star Carrier* series. Interesting take on relatavistic space combat, rather than Napolean in space.
Oh, and since muldoonthief mentioned Oath of Swords, I’ll say that I thought that the first two were great, but that the third was a serious drop in quality. I was especially disappointed at the end when he goes out of his way to put in a Deus ex Machina when he could have much more naturally resolved the problem with the literal arrival of the cavalry. Especially since the main character wasn’t even involved in the former, but was in the latter.
For the sake of the two good books, I’ll give him one more chance to get his act together in that series, but if there’s a bad fourth book, too, I’m done with those.
Grayson’ own Blackbird Yard was also destroyed. But by the end of Mission of Honor Haven, or at least President Pritchard had already decided to help Manticore. Which makes sense, really; Haven is on the same list as Manticore.
[spoiler]The League is definately being manipulated by Mesan Alignment agents at very high levels, including IIRC their chief Admiral. And yes; there is a Rear Admiral Luis Rozsak who is planning to set himself up as either ruler or head of the military for a breakaway Maya Sector; it’s not clear if he intends to betray the Governor or not.
The Andermani are iffy and opportunistic; and the disunited nations outside of the Union are just that, disunited.[/spoiler]
Thanks, DT. I don’t remember some of them spoilers. I may have to go back and read the last couple books.
Pretty much the way I feel about the books. I skim a lot of the material, including all most all of the political discussions and technical “data” on weaponry, but I do enjoy a good space battle, and the POV narratives of self-justifying assholes.
To the OP, I’d say skim if you must, but stick with them. Lots of good story arcs after book 5.
Check this out
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/msg/19bab1f0ff5fbf5d
"So what we need is “Honor Harrington: David Weber’s Classic Tale of
Titanic Battles and Cunning Intrigue (The ‘Good Parts’ Version)”? I
can just see the footnotes now:
“At this point I removed forty-three pages discussing missiles. Yes,
forty-three.”