I am always of two minds when starting a new Honor Harrington novel. On the one hand, I want to dive into it headfirst, let its densely-packed prose wash over me in a flurry of ship specifications and weapons capabilities and intense interpersonal drama, interwoven with fraught internecine politics. On the other hand, I want to savor it as long as possible, drawing out every moment of mounting tension and surprise humor, each lovingly detailed description and assorted inner-monologue as much as I can, because I know that the next book in the Honorverse could be years away, and I want to make the wait seem that little bit less interminable.

But no matter how good my intentions, I never can manage to hold off. With Honor, like Pringles, once you pop, you can’t stop. And you really don’t want to.

Mission of Honor comes after a series of major tribulations for Honor’s home system, the Star Empire of Manticore. Their decades-long war with the Republic of Haven (addressed in most of the twenty previous Honorverse publications, including four anthologies and two “sub-series”) resulted in a battle the likes of which the galaxy had never seen, as these two advanced space navies decimated each other in an all-in roll of the dice that Haven, ultimately, lost. But with their homeworlds’ security compromised, and sinister forces at work determined to undermine any fragile peace they might broker, plus the added complication of trouble in several other regions of space -- most notably, the former slave planet, Torch, and the annexed Manticoran protectorate, the Talbott Cluster -- now is not a time for complacency amongst Manticore’s rulers and policy-makers. Events complex and arcane are underway, a millennia-old plan to conquer all of humanity is being brought to fruition by evil genetic slave traders (I hate those guys!), and now the grand Solarian League has Manticore in its belligerent sights, determined to teach the “neobarbs” of the galactic backwoods a lesson in proper obeisance to their might and splendor.

Of course, it’s easier to teach someone a lesson if you are, in fact, mightier and more splendid than they. But when their weaponry and doctrine outclasses yours by several orders of magnitude, and you refuse to admit it, then you are -- as Honor might say -- going up against a hexapuma with a vibroknife. (Yeah, good luck with that, Solarian League!)

So, we have the vast, if outdated, Solarian League Navy on the warpath. We have the dastardly Mesan Alignment Navy, whom no one even knows exists and who have implemented new, as yet undetectable, propulsion and weapons technology, nursing a hatred of Manticore in their black hearts. And we have two missing intelligence agents (Haven’s Victor Cachat and Manticore’s Anton Zilwicki, last seen in Torch of Freedom) who we know are the possessors of very important information and where are they already? And then we have carnage the like of which even the Honorverse has yet to inflict, the kind of shocking, soul-searing wholesale slaughter that leaves you wide eyed and gasping, not entirely sure you can believe the evidence of your own eyes. Did he really just do that? Did that really just happen? Oh, my God. OH MY GOD!

I think I can now claim a real understanding of what it is to have an apoplexy.

There are often times in these (and David Weber’s other) books, where even when we win, we also lose. The cost of victory is frequently awesome and terrible, and the only way we can bear it is that the cost of defeat would be even higher. And Honor Harrington, Admiral and strategist and feudal magnate and billionaire and wife and mother and -- here -- diplomat, but, above all, Manticoran loyalist and kick-ass combat commander, is always in the thick of things, always there with the last-minute save or the brilliant, insightful innovation that turns things around. This time she isn’t able to thwart our newly-minted Enemies of the State and their cold-blooded first strike, but for all that, it is because of Honor that, as this almost 600-page installment comes to a close, we are left with a lighter heart. We all know that when things are the darkest, Weber’s ray of hope, the direct result of Honor’s unflinching honesty and the trust that she unfailingly commands in others -- even her hereditary enemies -- suggests that a new dawn may be peeking over the horizon in Manticore’s near future. No, it’s not an unexpected dawn, but it is no less satisfying for its long foreshadowing, and it is definitely a dawn I am most eager to witness.

David Weber books in general, and Honorverse books in particular, are always a rollercoaster of emotions, as we see inside the heads of many a character from every side of the conflict that divides good guy and bad guy, from Just Following Orders and My Country, Right or Wrong to Knowing Accomplice and Unwitting Pawn. Mission of Honor takes that rollercoaster and makes it one of those death-plummet Towers of Terror, where you are slowly raised high off the ground and then sent crashing to the Earth at breakneck speed. It is a gut-wrenching experience, and one that goes against all reason, but one that you willingly paid for, enjoyed greatly, and would give anything to do all over again.

  -- Rachel Hyland

---

Further Reading

No One Gets a Free Pass, an interview with David Weber, this issue
The Top 13... Genre Heroines Who Kick Ass, Literary Division, this issue
Geek Speak's On Basilisk Station review

---

< BACK

NEXT >