The Honor Harrington series (spoilers)

So I finall started reading the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. I got really hooked and plowed through them at an incredible pace, until I got to all 800+ pages of War of Honor, which I really felt was a slog.

The new prime minister is corrupt. And evil. And stupid. And short sighted. And amoral. And every single person associated with him is also corrupt and idiotic. We get it already.
Anyhow, I’m curious whether it’s worth trying to get the newest book (At All Costs) even though it appears to only be out in hardcover. Is it a return to form?

And do other people agree with my assessment?
(Overall, I like the series, but I wish David Weber would stop with the politics. Yes, communism is bad. We get it. Oh, and liberals are idiots. We get it.)

And conservatives are jerks. We get that, too. Except that the Manticoran liberal party is now under new, non-idiotic management, but the Conservatives are still jerks.

But considerably less powerful jerks. With certain events in At All Costs, they’re virtually eliminated as a power in Manticoran politics, and Willie Alexander is now P. M.

As for the book in general, there’s plenty of hard-hitting space combat. I think he went a touch overboard with the gee-whiz new weapons systems in this one, but that’s pretty much par for the series. And there are strong indications that the entire galactopolitical and military situation is going to get a lot more… interesting.

As an aside, have you read the parallel books to the main series? There are four short story collections written by various authors (Worlds of Honor, More than Honor, Changer of Worlds, and The Service of the Sword), plus two full novels intended as the starts of their own series (Crown of Slaves, which is expected to see a sequel soon, and Shadow of Saganami). The novels are contemporaneous with the main series (there are a couple of shared events between Shadow and At All Costs, and the events of Crown are mentioned), and the short stories are set in the same universe, but span a time from the first human settlers on Sphinx to contemporary with the other books.

I’ve been meaning to give this series a try. They’re sort of Horatio Hornblower-in-space, right? Should I start with the first one, On Basilisk Station? If the books are full of politics, though, I probably won’t like them.

Is the heroine as miserable as Hornblower? I got tired of his angst after a while.

Well, she starts off somewhat socially awkward, but she gets better on that score, and has dealt with the worst of her personal problems by about the fourth book, or so. After which, of course, she develops an entirely new set of personal problems, but those eventually get resolved, too. As of where the series is right now, she has no more problems than you’d expect for a famous, high-ranking war hero (I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that she ends up famous, high-ranking, or heroic).

There is a fair amount of politics, but I don’t find that it maps too closely to anything in, say, 20th century America. The Star Kingdom of Manticore is a parliamentary monarchy, with the Queen holding a bit more than the figurehead power she has in current England. The main domestic political antagonists are the Conservative Party, which basically stands for the clear and obvious privelidge of the nobility at the expense of all those insignificant commoners (not surprisingly, they have no representation at all in the House of Commons, only in the Lords). The main foreign antagonists are the Republic of Haven, which lives up to the maxim that any nation with “republic” in its name isn’t, and is basically a case study of socialism run amok. And the political struggles on both sides mostly center on what is the proper role and best usage for the military (unsurprising, given the focus of the books).

Dang, where are all the other Weber fans? I know we have a lot of them on the board, somewhere…

I’ve only gotten about 4 or 5 books in, I find it hard to read series just all at once and need a break in between. I really should pick up where I left off (now I just need to remember where that was…)

I read the first four or five books in the series, but stopped because it felt like the same novel recycled over and over. IIRC, the use of warship jargon was really overloaded in the first one…

Starting with the first is best, I think. War of Honor is unusually heavy in politics, but their are a fair amount of them in the series. Most of the books lean heavily towards intrigue and combat and explosions however. Also, like a lot of Weber stuff it tends to go into a fair amount of detail about the technology and background material. Basically, read the first one, and you’ll get an idea of whether of not you like the series.

Not having read Hornblower I can’t directly compare. However, she usually doesn’t wallow in misery too long before some crisis comes along to distract her, and most of the people responsible for her problems tend to end up humiliated or splattered or vaporized.

Nope. Weber himself said that WOH was something of a necessary interlude between the wars, and he’s going to be focusing more on combat again. AAC has a lot more fighting, including the biggest space battle in all the books. Several long term named characters get killed, including one who’s been there since the first book.

As far as the spin off books go, I recommend them, as well as the short story collections. From the short stories I especially recommend From the Highlands and Fanatic, by Eric Flint, since they introduce one of my favorite characters, Victor Cachat. He’s also seen in Crown of Slaves and At All Costs.

The series started well. It got very good in the middle. It has become bogged down by ridiculously long polemic explorations with side digressions into the psychology of tree cats. I’m to the point now I just read them in the library, without bothering to purchase them. :frowning:

Another Weber fan checking in. Haven’t read At All Costs yet, so there may be more to what I’m putting up.

Some (expanded) background on Manticoran politics (Chronos has done a good job of filling in the basics, but here’s a bit more):

Liberal Party: the worst of “moonbat” Liberals for a long time. Heavy on “Social Theory,” short on practical application. Would like to turn the Star Kingdom into a welfare state. Recently, they’ve had a bit of an internal shake-up, and will probably come back down to “reality” quite a bit more.

Conservative Party: The Nobility First! Isolationists, protectionists. Since the House of Lords is, by definition, comprised of the nobility, they are disproportionately powerful for their numbers. The proper place for the peasants is bowing and scraping for their betters. Real sweethearts. “Kneejerk” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Centerists Party: the best of liberal and conservative thought blended into pragmatic solutions. Government oversight where necessary, but fairly “open market” driven. Strong on defense, with an emphasis on Realpolitik.

Crown Loyalists: God Save The Queen! Or King! Whatever the Queen (or King) says is good. Since Queeen Elizabeth tends towards the Centerists Party, the Crown Loyalists typically vote with them. Almost exclusively comprised of the nobility, and may have some leanings/symathy with the Conservatives.

The New Men: opportunistic jackals, out for themselves. Will vote for anything as long as it benefits them. Very small party, but occasionally useful for clubbing together those few crucial votes necessary to pass a Bill, as long as they get something out of it.

Der Tris, your favorite character is…interesting. As is the fact that he’s your favorite character. Personally, I’m more a “Anton Zilwicki” kinda guy. Shannon Forraker was pretty interesting, too.

I’m curious – do you bring a sleeping bag and enough rations for three or four days to the library?

Briefly, WOH sucked. Between the first three pages and the last ten pages there was approximately zero space opera and a whole lot of boring conversation. Someone’s editor fell down badly on the job there.

The latest one was slightly better, except that we don’t really give a rat’s ass about HH’s personal life and would rather Weber either spent more time on the space battles and occasional action sequence or just cut 300 pages or so off the book.

But the real flaw in At All Costs was the rapidly escalating improvement in technology on both sides. Instead of Honor winning because of her intelligence, perseverance, guild, and moral fiber, she wins because she’s on the side with the best technology at the end. It just doesn’t seem reasonable how each side can keep topping the other with what seem to be unrealistically fast improvements in tactics and doctrine, not to mention an apparently unlimited number of fancy missiles.

Nope, she won because she happened to be the last of the of the three fleets that the Havenites smashed. If she had happened to arrive first or second, she would have been annihilated ( in her own judgement ), and I expect Manticore would have lost the war right there.

Actually, I think your last sentence there is almost completely reversed. A lot of commoners, especially on Griffon, support the Crown Loyalist party because they see the monarch as being a buffer against the power of the nobility. And I think it’s explicitly stated that the Crown Loyalists are considerable stronger in the Commons than in the Lords.

And yeah, ExTank, Anton Zilwicki is a lot more sympathetic character than Cachat, and Forraker is one of the many literary characters with whom I’ve fallen in love. “Oops.”.

Could very well be, Chronos; it’s been a while since I’ve even seen them mentioned in the books, and while the ol’ memory is still fairly reliable, odd bits and pieces go missing, or get transposed.

“Oops,” indeed! :smiley: Quite possibly my favorite line in the whole series.

One of mine too, along with “Good-bye, Citizen Chairman.”

That one has made it to T-shirts. So has “I have only one question. Do you wish this man crippled, or dead?”

You know, even though the word “spoilers” is in the therad title, when the OP specifically says he has not read the most recent book, and asks whether he should, it seems a bit thoughtless to suddenly and with no warning start inserting massive spoilers about who wins and how.
Oh well… guess I should have been a bit more clear in the thread title.