A Call to Insurrection: Book IV of Manticore Ascendant

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A Call to Insurrection: Book IV of Manticore Ascendant Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

David Weber (Author), Timothy Zahn (Author), Thomas Pope - contributor (Author),

4.6 2,095 ratings

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Book four in the nationally best-selling Manticore Ascendant series, set in the world of David Weber’s multiple New York Times best-selling Honorverse series.

Yesterday, the Star Kingdom of Manticore was a small, unimportant interstellar backwater. A quiet little star nation, only recently recovered from the devastating blow of the Plague Years. More affluent than some, perhaps, but with little to attract trade or interstellar commerce, it had little need for a navy...and even less interest in paying for one.

But Manticore has now become a target. The Star Kingdom isn't certain who is attacking it, or why, or what its mysterious foe can possibly want, but Queen Elizabeth I knows she has to find out. And she knows that whatever some of her subjects think, Manticore does need a navy. And it needs allies, friends like the dynamic Republic of Haven and the Andermani Empire. It needs their trade...and to learn from their more experienced and powerful navies.

It is the job of officers like Travis Long and his wife, Lisa, to acquire that experience. Of utterly inexperienced diplomats like Travis's brother Gavin, Earl Winterfall, to build those alliances.

They have been sent to the powerful Andermani Empire to do just that, for the Imperial Navy is one of the most potent and experienced fleets in the galaxy. But the Andermani have problems of their own. Their Emperor's death is the trigger for insurrection, and now that powerful and experienced navy is locked in civil war.

The Manticoran visitors find themselves squarely in the path of the storm, and before Travis, Lisa, and Gavin can accomplish anything else, they first have to survive.

Listening Length

14 hours and 11 minutes
Author

David Weber, see all
Narrator

Eric Michael Summerer
Audible release date

6 Dec. 2022
Language

English
Publisher

Audible Studios
ASIN

B0BN2NVY7X
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	14 hours and 11 minutes
Author	David Weber, Timothy Zahn, Thomas Pope - contributor
Narrator	Eric Michael Summerer
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.co.uk Release Date	06 December 2022
Publisher	Audible Studios
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B0BN2NVY7X
Best Sellers Rank	38,119 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 638 in Military Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) 3,014 in Military Science Fiction (Books) 25,646 in Fantasy (Books)

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4.6 out of 5

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Jules

Just east expected

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 March 2023

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Just what expected and great delivery too

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MNV

Great SF story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 September 2022

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This is the fourth in the Manticore Ascendant series. These tell the story of Manticore before it was a prosperous multi-wormhole junction system. The main protagonist is Travis Long, a member of the Royal Manticoran Navy.
As usual with David Weber, and his associates, the plot is twisted and the action sequences are brilliantly written. I can’t wait for the next one in the series.

Well worth reading.

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Markham

The Manticore Ascendant continues on form.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 February 2022

Verified Purchase

As with the rest of this series a return to the form of the earlier HH stories, IE. less long technical explanations and more action. The writing is tighter and more concise. That said this episode is a little less focused that the earlier ones though none the worse for that.

There is a (so far) unrelated murder investigation, a diplomatic mission to the Andermani Empire, a rebellion and a battle. The main threads of the series still run through in the shape of Mr Llyn and side references to the state of the RMN but the story remains mostly self contained with only a few threads to carry on in (I sincerely hope) book V of the series.

I shall wait impatiently for that to arrive!

2 people found this helpful

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Deimos

another magnificent piece of heavyweight space opera

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 February 2022

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David Weber was my introduction to serious, high quality science fiction and his work never disappoints. This one continues the early history of Manticore but is also based in the early years of the Anderman empire.

As such it uses quite a lot of “high German”, probably the same language used in the British Royal family. It makes the manners and courtesies of Gustav Andermans people come to life and as such it definitely adds to the storytelling.

An excellent read and there is definitely more to come, I look forward to the next book in the saga.

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Bernardus

An excellent part of what's turning into an interesting series.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 May 2022

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I find the series addictive. The hero is sufficiently flawed to be more believable than many of the other Weber Honoverse's heroes. There are several plot lines that are well written and interplay well with the central plot.

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Kindle Customer

Heating up to action

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2022

Verified Purchase

I read this very quickly want more, the book as with the other builds up to an explosive finish. And is filling in the background to the Honor series.

One person found this helpful

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Jonathan

Amazing story.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 March 2022

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Amazing story that us hard to out down.
Nice continuation of the series.
Good to have background that adds to main honor series

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Marshall Lord

Fourth in the "Manticore Ascendant" Honerverse prequel series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 January 2023

This book, "A Call to Insurrection" by David Weber, Timothy Zahn and Tom Pope, is the third in the "Manticore Ascendant" naval Science Fiction series which is set in the same universe as the "Honor Harrington" books but about four and a half centuries earlier. It follows on from

A Call to Duty (Manticore Ascendant series Book 1)
A Call to Arms (Manticore Ascendant series Book 2) , and
A Call to Vengeance (Manticore Ascendant series Book 3).

Those who have read any of the books about Honor Harrington or her contemporaries will know that in this series the Royal Manticoran Navy must eventually defeat both the internal political opponents who want to close it down and various external bad guys who are plotting to destroy the independence of the Star Kingdom. Both the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Royal Manticoran Navy are still around in Honor Harrington's time four and a half centuries later.

However, you don't know exactly how they will win, or which of the characters will survive, so there is still plenty of tension.

A very broad outline of the events described in this series can be found in the companion book House of Steel (Honor Harrington Universe Book 1) in the section on Manticoran history (ancient history as of Honor Harrington's time). However, the authors are starting to "Retcon" some of this.

I understand that "Manticore Ascendant" was originally planned as a trilogy but after four books in the story obviously isn't finished yet, so I now presume there will be at least one more book in this series.

The Honor Harrington stories are set about two thousand years in the future, this "Manticore Ascendant" series begins approximately four hundred and seventy years earlier in 1529 PD by the Honorverse calendar (3632 AD.) This book, "A call to Insurrection" has a prologue set in 1542 "Post Diaspora" in the Honorverse calendar with the main action about 1545 P.D. to 1546 P.D. - add 2103 to convert these dates to Anno Domini/Common Era.

That puts this series in the same century as the "Treecat" trilogy featuring Honor Harrington's ancestor Stephanie, which begins with "A Beautiful Friendship" and starts in 3521 AD/CE by our calendar.

Hence the main character of this series ,Travis Long, and all the other characters of this series would be alive at the same time as Stephanie Harrington and the other characters of the Treecat stories, but the most recent Treecat series novel, "A New Clan" is set eleven years before the first of the "Manticore Ascendant" novels and so far there has been no overlap at all between the two series or any indication that Travis and Stephanie ever met, or indeed that any of the characters in either series ever met anyone from the other.

The primary hero of this series, Travis Long, was put onto the track for promotion to be an officer at the end of the first book in which he appeared, "A call to duty." At the start of the main action of "A Call to Insurrection," about ten years later and fifteen years after joining the Royal Manticoran Navy as a teenager, he is a Lieutenant-Commander and is about to marry his long-time friend, Lisa Donelly.

Meanwhile Travis's half brother Gavin, who is no longer part of the now-discredited faction of misguided politicians who were trying to shut down the navy, is Manticore's Foreign secretary - and trying to turn the position from a sinecure to a real job.

The mercenary group who attacked Manticore a couple of books ago has been almost entirely wiped out, and the Manticoran characters suspect - correctly - that this was partly because the people who hired them subsequently set them up. Manticoran intelligence does not, know who was behind this, or why, but they know that somewhere out there they have powerful enemies and they are looking for allies to counterbalance this threat.

So Manticore leaps at the opportunity to establish better relations with the "Anderman Empire" founded by Gustav Anderman, a half-mad military genius. What they don't know is that the same people who attacked Manticore have put weapons into the hands of a new mercenary group headed by a commander with a grudge against Gustav Anderman, pro-independence rebels in the most recent system he conquered, and some more allies you will have to read the book to find out about, and the Empire is about to face not just insurrection, but civil war.

And in one of the shifts in genre which Dave Weber so often uses, there is a sub-plot of a quite different kind: while three of the main characters of the series are light-years away from home and caught up in evens where an old enemy has stirred up someone else's civil war, another major character is banished to a remote countryside area and ends up playing Miss Marple and trying to solve a murder.

This series fills in a lot of the backstory for the Honor Harrington Universe. At this time the Haven system has not yet become the "People's Republic of Haven" and they are still friends with Manticore. The series also charts the early history of the relations between Manticore and their sometime allies, sometime rivals in the Anderman Empire.

There are a number of encounters in this series with people who are apparently the distant ancestors of characters from Honor's time - many of them show similar characteristics to their descendants but quite a few do not.

Anyone who has read the "Honor Harrington" books already knows that the Manticore system contains a wormhole junction of immense strategic and commercial value, but at the time of the first two books in this series those wormholes have not yet been discovered and nobody on Manticore suspects what will become known as the Manticore Wormhole Junction might be there. Which is why they don't realise they have anything which might make it worth anyone's while to invade them.

But at the end of the first book in this series, a scientist working for a very powerful, wealthy and greedy corporation called Axelrod worked out that there might be one or more wormhole termini in the Manticore system. This part of the story is now being retconned and the potential reader should not assume it goes quite the same way here as was briefly outlined in the Honorverse companion "House of Steel."

The reader knows throughout the second, third and fourth books that Axelrod is behind the attacks, not just on Manticore, but on several other star nations in the sector. But none of those star nations have any idea what's going on. Alexrod's representative, a master spy called Jeremiah Llyn with a thousand faces and a capacity for killing anyone who gets in his way which makes Ernst Stavro Blofield appear squeamish, always seems to be one step ahead of them.

As readers of the second book will already know, he has just one weakness: Llyn doesn't realise, and therefore does not try to hide, that he has a very distinctive and recognisable smile. That smile is burned into the memory of certain key Manticoran characters so that they can identify it even when he is heavily disguised.

The book is Space Opera rather than romance or comedy but there are gags scattered through it which I found to be laugh-out-loud funny.

I enjoyed this book and the first three books in this series. I think Zahn and Pope have brought some good ideas and storytelling ability to David Weber's "Honorverse", hope that I'm correct in assuming there will have to be at least one more in this series and look forward to reading it.

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