Mission of Honor: Honor Harrington, Book 12 (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

This is the 16th full length novel in the science fiction series set two thousand years in the future which David Weber initially created for his character Honor Harrington. Where the last six books in the series were organised into three linked but distinct sub-series which portrayed unfolding events with the focus on three different perspectives of the developing crisis, Weber appears to have abandoned that approach with "Mission of Honor" and this book covers the whole picture.

Mission of Honor gives you the initial outcomes of the attacks launched but not resolved in "Storm from the Shadows" which gave that book a "cliff-hanger" ending. But only the initial outcomes: it appears that the galactic order is starting to collapse into a catastrophic series of wars and chaos so vast and devastating as to make the wars which dominated the first eleven books look like a vicar's tea party.

This book is more disciplined in style than some of the recent volumes of the series, reminding me of Tom Clancy in the way it jumps between the perspectives of a very large cast while ruthlessly maintaining a clear storyline. Weber appears to be determined to eliminate the large-scale overlaps which were a consequence of the arrangement of the preceding books. He does this by restoring a clear chronological sequence, so that all the events of "Mission of Honor" follow on from the conclusions of all the recent books and you no longer find a battle or conversation which has already been described from the perspective of, say, Honor Harrington described again from the perspective of, say, Michelle Henke.

If you have not read any of these books and are interested in doing so, do not start with this one: these stories work best if read in sequence, so start with the first book, which is "On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington)."

Up to now, despite the futuristic setting, there have been strong parallels with Nelson's navy. Assumed technology in the stories to this point imposed constraints on space navy officers similar to those which the technology of fighting sail imposed on wet navy officers two hundred years ago. Similarly, the galactic situation in the novels up to the eleventh book. "At All Costs" had marked similarities to the strategic and political situation in Europe at the time of the French revolutionary wars. However, after the gigantic battle at the end of that book, which roughly corresponds to Trafalgar, the story has started to go in a wholly different direction.

This divergence applies to both the political and naval history and to the technology: for the first few books you could see close parallels for the characters, nations and ship classes with those in C.S. Forester's "Hornblower" series or the real history of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. E.g. Manticore was Britain, Haven was France, Honor Harrington was a mix of Horatio Nelson and Horatio Hornblower, Rob. S Pierre was Robespierre, the Committee of Public Safety was the Committee of Public Safety, "ships of the wall" were ships of the line with superdreadnaughts as first rates, etc, etc. One book, Echoes of Honour (Honorverse) was even an almost exact parallel to the Hornblower book Flying Colours.

However, as the story diverges from that of the Napoleonic wars, so the parallels with 20th century naval warfare or with space battle games like "Starfire" (of which Weber was one of the creators) have become stronger than those with the age of fighting sail. First he brought in Q-Ships, then spaceships which correspond to aircraft and carriers, and a ship type introduced in this book could be seen as equivalent to submarines.

If you are trying to work out in what order to read the "Honorverse" books, here is a description of the sequence of the first 15 novels. The main sequence of 11 novels prior to this one follows the career of Honor Harrington herself, and consists of

1) On Basilisk Station
2) The Honor of the Queen
3) The Short Victorious War
4) Field of Dishonour
5) Flag in Exile
6) Honor among Enemies
7) In Enemy Hands
8) Echoes of Honor
9) Ashes of Victory
10) War of Honor
11) At All Costs

The "Torch" or anti-slavery sequence focusses on the battle for freedom of people who have been held in slavery by "Manpower," which at first appeared to be a huge and corrupt company corresponding to the slave trader interests in Britain and America some two hundred years ago. The books with this focus are

(i) Crown of Slaves (set at about the same time as "War of Honor"), and
(ii) Torch of Freedom (set at about the same time as "At All Costs").

The "Shadow" or Talbot Quadrant sequence consists of two books which focus on that area of the Galaxy, and particularly on a rapidly worsening crisis between Honor Harrington's home planet Manticore and the most powerful nation in the galaxy, the Solarian republic. These books are

(a) The Shadow of Saganami (overlaps the 1st half of "At All Costs"), and
(b) Storm from the Shadows (overlaps "At All Costs" but starts and finishes later.)

This latest book, "Mission of Honor" begins shortly after the end of "Storm from the Shadows" and takes forward the characters and stories from that book, "At All Costs" and "Torch of Freedom."

As a sort of position check, David Weber builds into "Mission of Honor" at least a cameo mention of almost every major character in all six of the previous books, including those who were killed in those books. Those who are still alive at the start of this book get at least one scene from their perspective, telling you what they are up to at the time of this book, and whether they survive it (some don't.) The major characters who died in the last few books also get a mention which covers how they died: for example through having a ship named after them or because surviving characters who were close to them discuss or remember them.

The next book in the Honor Harrington series after "Mission of Honor" will be called "A Rising Thunder" and is due for release in 2012. Weber says that he is about half way through his origanal storyline and expects another five to ten books in the series - but he adds that it was originally expected to take eight books and has already taken fifteen so "It's entirely possible that I may be just a bit off."

Having listed the other "Honorverse" books I ought for completeness to add that there are several collections in the "Worlds of Honor" series of short stories by Weber and co-authors set in the same universe, and featuring a range of characters, some from the main series of books, others new. One of these short stories has just been extended to form the first of a new Honorverse series for young adults, with the eponymous novel "A Beautiful Friendship" released in October 2011. It features Stephanie Harrington, a member of an earlier generation of Honor Harrington's family, who lived about 500 years before Honor and was the first human to be "adopted" by a "Treecat," a member of the planet Sphinx's native intelligent species. The Treecats are telepaths among themselves and can read human emotions, and some of them form a lifelong telepathic bond with humans: for example Honor Harrington has been adopted by a treecat called Nimitz.

"Mission of Honor" is slightly shorter than some of the recent books in this series, and is probably a better book for it. I noticed the humour a bit more than in most of David Weber's books - for example, at one point a character is seen to be reading a book about the psychic detective "Garrett Randall" by the author "Darcy Lord" (If you don't get the joke, look up Murder and Magic.)

The "Mesan Alignment" behind Manpower, who have been moving other characters in the story around like chess pieces for the past few books, begin to act more openly with devastating consequences in this book. We already knew that the Mesans will accept the deaths of billions to create what they see as a better future for humanity, and in this book Weber begins to give us an idea of what that means.

The best way I can think of to give a potentially interested reader a hint to help you decide whether you want to read about these guys, without spoiling the story, is to say that their leader Albrecht Detweiler is what you might get by combining

* Dr Soong from Star Trek Enterprise (Link:Star Trek - Enterprise - Series 4 - Complete (Slimline Edition) [DVD]) but without the scruples,

* the rulers of Lois McMaster Bujold's Cetaganda but without the humour, and

* the arch-villian from the James Bond stories, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, without the cat. Honor and some of her friends are the ones with cats - or rather treecats - in this series.

I can recommend this book. My biggest concern about David Weber is that with four major series already on the go (The Honorverse, the Multiverse series which begins with Read more ›

Lets get the bad out of the way first. This is not the best Honor Harrington by a long way. The complexity and multiple story lines of the Honorverse have really come home to roost - and not in a good way. The major flaw with this book is that in order to tie off lots of interacting plot lines between the main HH series and the 2 spinoff series - Saganami Island and Wages of Sin, events from those 2 series have to be rehashed and take up probably 1/3-1/2 of the book. Anyone who has read Storm from the Shadows or Torch of Freedom will be overfamiliar with much of the background exposition. Certainly Storm from the Shadows and Mission could have been merged and lost a few hundred pages in the process. It also suffers from having far too many characters to track as a result.

Its quite unfortunate - the 300+ pages involving Honor and the core Oyster Bay plot are vintage Weber, the rest drag the score down.

However you can see why Weber was forced into this approach - the Honorverse has become too sprawling and complex, hopefully this is the end of his attempt to introduce a bit more segration into the Main and Sub series. If you read any Weber interviews part of this stems from Weber planning to finish the HH series with a Nelson-like Death for Honor during At All Costs, but deciding not to go ahead thus having to come up with a different way of putting a full stop in this section of the series.

This book is meant to be a closing chapter in the Havenite Wars and to sow the seeds of a new start. The book accomplishes this well with an excellent mix of Diplomacy and Action. In particular the ending of the book - though a kind of cliff hanger is handled very well indeed giving a sense of satisfaction whilst still making the reader eager for the next installment.

It still confirms Weber as at or near the top of the Space Opera tree - just not quite firing on all cylinders. A Weber 3 star review should be considered a 4 star review for most others - his previous high standard affect my overall judgement of him.

Weber's long series of books set in the "Honorverse" is thoroughly enjoyable if you like "military science fiction". That is, if you like mind-cheese with lots of stuff blowing up. Unlike most other authors in this sub-genre, Weber even manages to make his characters believable and sympathetic, to sometimes have realistic conversations and motivations. And the universe he creates is, on the whole, consistent.

The series went through a bad patch a few books back where there was lots of "jaw jaw" and very little of the "war war" that made the series so exciting. But I'm pleased to say that with the previous installment (At All Costs) and this one, he's back on form.

I have three criticisms. The first is that the books will make little sense unless you've read the previous installments. That's fair enough. Authors writing series have to strike a balance between making later works accessible to newcomers and annoying their established customers with repeated material. In a short series, a bit of repetition won't do any harm, but in this one - 12 books so far, with at least two more in the pipeline and quite probably more to come - it would be actively harmful.

The second is related to the first, but is, I think, rather more important. There are several spin-off series, also set in the same universe, which some readers may not have bothered with. Unfortunately one of them, the "Wages of Sin" series, turns out to be of vital importance, and the "Saganami Island" series is also of some relevance to this book and, to a lesser extent, to the previous one. Keeping track not only of a long main series with several parallel interacting plot threads (but at least they evolve alongside each other in a single series) but also of at least one and potentially several other series at the same time is hard. It's worth doing, but hard.

And finally, remember how I said that the universe Weber has created is mostly consistent? The big economic inconsistency is beginning to bite, hard. He knows it - he even has some characters talk about how it makes no sense. He tries to justify it as being a front for a huge conspiracy, but huge conspiracies just don't work. The one he's written involves literally millions of people, at least thousands of whom are scattered all over the place amongst other polities and societies, and they're actually multi-generational sleeper agents. He expects us to believe that the children of sleeper agents will be content to be brought up as normal people (you can't trust young children with such secrets, after all), to form friendships, perhaps fall in love with members of the host society, and, when you inform them of their family's hidden role for them to just accept it. Even if somehow most of them held it together, all it would take would be for a handful to blow the whistle and, given how many there are, this must happen - and yet it doesn't for hundreds of years, not until narrative imperative compels it. I can ignore this, I read lots of sci-fi, much of it in the "bad but entertaining" mould, and so my suspension of disbelief muscle gets a regular workout. But even so, it is irritating.

Those last two niggles, plus the entire series's utter lack of anything approaching literary value means it gets only three stars. I recommend it for those who are already Honorverse fans (not that there's much point in recommending it as you'll all buy it anyway) and I recommend the Honorverse as a whole to all sci-fi fans, but I have to insist that you read the books in order. Specifically, in publication order, so that you get the other series at the right time.