Uncompromising Honor

Honor Harrington is an unalloyed heroine everyone needs to emulate for her focused sense of DUTY - a very powerful but underrated word.

A very good ending to a great tale.i like how she has changed over the course of the series as a great character

After 25 years, David Weber finally completes the main story arcs for his character Honor Harrington with one of the better books in the series.Although it is a long book this is more tightly edited than some of his recent novels and manages to cover a huge canvass while maintaining dramatic tension. The Solarian Republic opponents who the Manticoran Alliance good guys come up against are a lot cleverer than in some recent books and the Mesan Alingnment bad guys come up with more dastardly tricks, leaving the reader in much more doubt about how some of the battles and the overall story are going to go rather than the outcome being obvious.This is the 21st of a group of novels set about two thousand years from now in the future which David Weber initially created for his character Honor Harrington. Of these "Uncompromising Honor" is the fourteenth novel in which Honor Harrington herself is the most important character.Currently (as updated in November 2021) there are 22 full-length novels set in the same universe at the same approximate time, and that may well be it for this group of stories, but there will almost certainly be a new story arc set a few years down the line and at least one more book is on the way set in the era of the two prequel series set five centuries before (e.g. only fifteen hundred years in the future) featuring respectively Travis Long, and Honor's ancestor Stephanie Harrington.The reason for the length of this review is that I'm trying to set out, without any significant spoilers, how all these books fit together to help potential readers decide in what order they might wish to tackle them.The first 11 books of this series are a "Ms Hornblower in Space" series with the main character, Honor Harrington, representing a cross between Horatio Hornblower and Horatio Nelson.The preceding Honor Harrington book but one before "Uncompromising Honor," which was called " Mission of Honor: Honor Harrington, Book 12 " concluded with a handshake between Queen Elizabeth of Manticore and President Pritchard of Haven which marked the final end to the series of wars between these two star nations which dominated the first eleven Honor Harrington books.This was followed by "A Rising Thunder" which was a sort of "bridge" novel, because it more or less completed the transition or bridge from the "Ms Hornblower in Space" storyline about the conflict between Manticore (clearly inspired by Britain at the time of Nelson) and Haven (an enemy power which has elements inspired by nazi Germany and soviet Russia but is mainly equivalent to Revolutionary/Napoleonic France), to a different story arc in which the sinister Mesan Alignment is trying to manipulate pretty well the whole galaxy into a gigantic series of wars, including one between Manticore and the vast "Solarian Republic."During the past few books the situation between Manticore and the Solarian Republic, which is the biggest star nation in the galaxy, has been getting worse and worse. The reader knew, but at first most of the characters didn't, that they were being manipulated by the sinister "Mesan Alignment." One of the sub-plots in both this book and "A Rising Thunder" is that a small group of relatively junior officers in the Solarian Republic are gradually coming to realise that the Manticorans may actually be right when they say that the Star Empire of Manticore and the Solarian Republic are being tricked into war by a conspiracy hostile to both. Those officers are in a race against time to assemble enough evidence to convince those of their superiors who have functioning brains but are not part of the conspiracy.The story of how two super-spies discovered an outline of what the Mesan Alignment are really up to was told in the book " The Torch Of Freedom " but although the author gives the reader some idea what the Mesans are doing, nobody else in the galaxy fully understands their aims or plans.It has been clear for some time, however, both to the reader and to many characters in the series, that the entire galactic order is in danger of collapsing into war and chaos.A number of the "Honorverse" books are organised into linked but distinct sub-series which portrayed unfolding events with the focus on three different perspectives of the galactic situation, but "Mission of Honor," "A Rising Thunder" and "Uncompromising Honor," while telling the story from Honor Harrington's perspective also give a "helicopter view" of the whole galactic picture.If you have not read any of the Honorverse books and are interested in doing so, do not start with "Uncompromising Honor" as these stories work far better if read in sequence. Start with the first book, which is " On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington) ." You will not get full value from "Uncompromising Honor" if you read it without having read most of the previous novels.For example, there are two short references in this book and the latest book in the "Crown of Slaves" sequence, "To End in Fire" (which is set just after this book finishes to a breakaway group called the "Renaissance Factor" which would appear like a fairly minor detail to someone who hadn't read any of the previous novels. To anyone who has read chapter 39 of "Mission of Honor" these references tell you something extremely important about where the bad guys are with their plans, and what the good guys know - or rather, don't - about them, which has huge implications which will probably be the subject of an entire new successor series of books set a couple of decades down the line.As hinted above, the first eleven "Honor Harrington books, despite the futuristic setting, exhibited 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, particularly 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 diplomatic storyline and to naval 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, missile cruisers and stealth ships.Before the tensions between Manticore and the Solarian Republic led to actual hostilities, those tensions could be seen as equivalent within Nelson-era parallels as imposing similar strategic considerations on the Manticoran navy that the threat of war with the USA (which, of course, eventually happened as the war of 1812) had on the British Royal Navy prior to 1812. But the relative size, wealth, and apparent power of the Solarians and Manticorans and the British and Americans is reversed: the Solarian Republic in this story is so much more relatively huge, populous and wealthy relative to Manticore than the infant United States was in 1812 relative to the British Empire, that the Nelson era parallels are no longer helpful.If you are trying to work out in what order to read the "Honorverse" books, here is a description of the sequence of the 22 novels. The sequence of 14 novels including this one which follows the career of Honor Harrington herself consists of1) On Basilisk Station2) The Honor of the Queen3) The Short Victorious War4) Field of Dishonour5) Flag in Exile6) Honor among Enemies7) In Enemy Hands8) Echoes of Honor9) Ashes of Victory10) War of Honor11) At All Costs12) Mission of Honour13) A Rising Thunder14) This book, "Uncompromising Honor"The "Torch" or anti-slavery sequence (with Eric Flint as co-author) focusses on the battle for freedom of people who have been held in slavery by "Manpower," which at first appears 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").(iii) Cauldron of Ghosts (Set at about the same time as "A Rising Thunder")(iv) To end in Fire (Begins shortly AFTER "Uncompromising Honor."The "Shadow" or sequence consists of four books which focus on the "Verge" on the edges of the Solarian Republic and particularly on the Talbott Quadrant, and particularly on the rapidly worsening crisis between Honor Harrington's home star nation of Manticore and the Solarian republic. The books in this sub-series 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.)(c) Shadow of Freedom (set at about the same time as "A Rising Thunder")(d) Shadow of Victory (overlaps "Mission of Honor" and "A Rising Thunder")I ought for completeness to add that besides the volumes listed above 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. It doesn't matter in what order you read most of these, but I do recommend that if you are about to tackle "Ashes of Victory" and have not read "Nightfall" from "Words of Honor 3: changer of worlds" you may want to be aware that "Nightfall" describes in detail a very major incident in that book of which only the causes and results are described. To read the full story in sequence, get the two books together, and start with "Ashes of Victory." When you reach chapter 33 of that book, which begins with St Just's secretary saying "Citizen General Fontein is here, Sir" you put down that "Ashes of Victory" turn to "Nightfall" in "Words of Honor 3" which begins with the same words, and read that story through to the end. Then you can go back to "Ashes of VIctory" and start again at chapter 34 - chapter 33 is the same as the opening of "Nightfall."In addition to the stories set during the lifetime of Honor Harrington's, there are also two prequel series set four or five hundred years earlier. One of the short stories was 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 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.The three books in the Stephanie Harringon/Treecat series are:1) A Beautiful Friendship2) " Fire Season (Star Kingdom) "3) "The Treecat wars."The second prequel saga, set in the same century as the Stephanie Harrington books but so far without any direct link to them, is the "Manticore Ascendant" series of novels about the early days of the Royal Manticoran Navy in which Travis Long is the main hero. This series so far consists of1) A call to duty2) A call to Arms3) A call to VengeanceThe Fourth book in this series, which is called "A call to insurrection" is due out on 3rd January 2022 and at the time of updating this review I am eagerly awaiting it.By the way, if you hate spoilers I advise you not to look at the product descriptions of this book on the websites of the publisher or several booksellers who ought to know better - the Amazon page is not too bad but some idiot at the publisher appears to have included in the press releases/product information a couple of spoilers which give away the outcome of two issues which David Weber deliberately left hanging at the end of "A call to Vengeance."Finally there is an Honorverse companion book, "House of Steel."I can recommend "Uncompromising Honor" and indeed the entire Honorverse series. Mission of Honor: Honor Harrington, Book 12The Torch Of FreedomOn Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington)Echoes of Honour (Honorverse)Flying ColoursA Beautiful FriendshipFire Season (Star Kingdom)

For reasons more to do with habit and compulsive completism, when my friend Rob mentioned last week that he’d picked up the new Honor Harrington book UNCOMPROMISING HONOR, I got onto Amazon and picked up the Kindle version.This is the point where I should mention that I’m probably not going to get through telling you how much I loathe this book without some serious spoilers. If you haven’t read it yet and anticipate getting any pleasure out of it please skip this review until you have. If you’re looking for reasons not to bother read on.The earlier novels about Her Grace Dame Lady Admiral Honor Stephanie Alexander-Harrington, Duchess and Steadholder, were fun enough in a gung ho military fashion that I could ignore the political agenda in the background. They were about Our Heroine commanding a single ship or a handful of ships and thwarting the other side in high style.I think the last one I really enjoyed was the prison breakout story in ECHOES OF HONOR but even there the dread disease of high command was waiting in the background. The viewpoint of the novel was split between the genuine derring-do of getting her and everybody else who wanted to come off the prison planet and the developments of the war among everybody who was left behind.It only got worse as time went on. In the latest one we’re jumping around between Honor’s viewpoint, the viewpoint of other people on her homeworld, the viewpoint of people among her allies, the viewpoint of her chief overt enemies the Solarian League’s bureaucratic overlords, the viewpoint of the people in the League who are secretly investigating the hidden secret enemies who are manipulating both sides,the viewpoint of the said secret enemies, the viewpoint of the smaller states caught between the two big navies…Attempting to give us an overview of the development of the war renders any sort of coherent or comprehensible narrative impossible. And Weber has a terrible habit of giving us named characters whose viewpoint and tragedies are on stage just long enough for us to form some sympathy for them before they die horribly along with millions of others. The slaughter in this one is astounding! It makes me wonder that anyone can build up any sort of civilization at all when weapons striking from space can do so much damage. And the Nasty Sneaky Tricks of the Hidden Enemy are there to add a cherry on the top of all the destruction.The worst bit is when Honor is given her excuse to go all vengeful (it doesn’t really last: she gets a deus ex miracle for the core part of her loss and she’s not the only character who gets that) so that she can struggle against her murderous impulses and her staff can look at her appalled as she only at the last moment decides to accept an enemy’s surrender.She does this in the course of pulling something off that if she had done it about four books back would have brought the war to an end: it seems to bring it to a victorious end in this one except for mopping up the Nasty Hidden Enemy. I don’t recall any technological or strategic development that makes this only possible after the previous books but that said the weapons R&D stuff is the second hardest bit of these to get through, the mass slaughter in the battle scenes is worse.But the worst thing about this book is the nature of the Open Enemy which is the ‘unelected bureaucrats’ of the Solarian League government. It seems plain to me that this concept, meme, slogan, catchphrase or what you will is one with ‘communists’, ‘globalists’, ‘international financiers’ and others. It is an excuse to hate people on principle. At the climax (REALLY BIG SPOILERS HERE) Honor forces the Solarians to arrest the ‘Mandarins’ and hand them over to Manticoran justice. This happens as the result of what I can only describe as a military coup: it is plain that the servants of the State in uniform are the only servants of the State that have any decency in the Honorverse and the rest are petty bullies, out for what they can get, corrupt, perverters of the Constitution and general nogoodniks. Military officers who break their oath of allegiance and rearrange the government to their own satisfaction are just patriots doing their jobs.(Oh, and she tells the Sollies to go and write a new Constitution and if Manticore doesn’t like it she’ll come back and beat them up some more.)As a retired low level bureaucrat I am alarmed by this depiction of the grey-suited, grey-minded paper-pushers I once found myself among. As a citizen I am much more alarmed. I see a growth of authoritarianism under the guise of populism, a determination that anyone who disagrees with or advises against the current fashion in politics needs to be dismissed at best, put on trial and shot at worst.There’s nothing easier for a politician to do than blame his own folly and shortcomings on the permanent staff. When Weber was going on about how his made up nations proved that ‘Socialism!’ (1) was a bad idea I thought it quaint and ignorant. But the diatribe against ‘unelected bureaucrats’ is an active force in the world and an inimical one.It’s all a big pity. As I said, I enjoyed the early books.(1) ‘Socialism!’ with the exclamation mark is the thing that American right wingers fear. It has more to do with the inside of their heads than it does with actual political policy in the world.

I could rant about this book for ages. How he casually slaughters characters for no apparent reason. How the fundamental strategy that we were lectured "is exactly what they want us to do and would be a disaster" is the one they then adopt and which mysteriously apparently works perfectly. How their enemy spent years and billions developing radical sophisticated new space drives for its surprise attack on Manticore ... and then achieves the exact same result using 3 old shipping containers...[On which note I've lost count of the number of times Weber has written that "a squadron of battlecruisers getting in energy range of the space station undetected would have done as much damage" without anyone in this universe apparently realising that a squadron of Q-ships could do just that, but I digress.]On the plus side, there are two moderately entertaining space battles, if only because both are set up to deny Manticore most of its advantages ... the fact that it still wins both by massive margins only goes to show how ridiculously unbalanced he has now made things.I think the best course of action with this book would be to pretend it was never written. It is a sad sad let-down to a series that was once great. I just wish someone would write a better version...

I started reading this series with On Basilik Station and have loved the excellent characters, ship designs and the world Weber has created. Like many, some of my favorite books are those from earlier in the series with At All Costs being the last of the mainstream books I truly enjoyed.It is from there that Weber's story telling has gone down hill. The entire Solarian League story arc clearly wasn't thought through nearly as well as the war against Haven and it shows. There are few if any characters on the League side that you want to root for and the whole thing feels forced. The Mesan Alignment in particular feels like it grew beyond what he had originally intended and seemed to become more of a hindrance as each book passed.And while there was a steady build-up to the Havenite war in the first number of books that we got a satisfying conclusion to, the build-up to the conflict with the League is so drawn out that the story loses any sense of tension. The various pitched battles against Haven were exciting, with real impact on the heroes on both sides that made you, as the reader, emphasis with the losses they suffered. Yet despite Weber constantly reminding the reader how powerful the League is, the Manticoran alliance swats it aside with absurd ease. The battles feel like an after thought.This book, the last in the mainstream series, does close off a few story arcs, but it does so clumsily. Honor herself is hardly present for much of the book and while there are a couple of expertly done combat scenes that do much to redeem some of the books faults, it feels like too little too late. The final battle scene left me, as a long-time reader, feeling cheated out of seeing the mighty Solarian League go toe-to-toe with Manticore in a steadily escalating series of sprawling conflicts, but alas, it was not to be.Other than Shadow of Saganami, there is little to recommend any of the books after At All Costs as it was at this point that Weber had planned to kill off Honor's character in a Trafalgar style finale. Given how bad some of the books have been since then, and some have been very bad, he would have done better to finish on a high note.

The good news is that after a lengthy and frustrating period where we kept getting books that filled in backstory or expanded on side plots without advancing the main storyline, "Uncompromising Honor" finally provides some actual movement on that front for the first time in years. Without wanting to spoil too much, the ongoing conflict between Manticore and the Solarian League does *finally* receive some sort of a conclusion.The bad news is that at least 60-70% of the book is wasted on minor events and minor characters, so you have to wade through all of that to make it to the important stuff. Weber's combat scenes are usually very well written and I think he manages to do that again here, but there are only a few of them to act as rare islands of interest in the narrative. And even the combat scenes are becoming pretty repetitive, with the Manticorans still stomping all over any opposition unless the odds are ridiculously against them.My biggest individual complaints:- The final "battle" is laughable... it's literally crammed into the last 30 or 40 pages, and the entire multi-book long concern the characters have had over how an entity as large as the League could possibly be defeated is resolved in a ridiculously simple and implausibly tidy fashion. For something that's been built up over such a long time in so many books, it's a massive letdown.- If you were hoping for any resolution to the Mesan Alignment storyline, forget it. A (sort of) followup to "Oyster Bay" plus some plotting in the background is about all you'll see of them in this book. Even Honor (who previously seemed far more intent on dealing with the Alignment than the League) seems to have forgotten all about them by the end of the book despite the fact that they killed a bunch more of her family and friends. It really does seem like Mr Weber got bored and tacked on the ending just to get it out of the way and move on to writing something he's more interested in.- Weber needs an editor, badly. One willing and able to get him to stop writing needless potted biographies of every single minor character he introduces, one who can get rid of the seemingly endless side plots that never go anywhere interesting, one who can force him to focus on the parts that he does well (basically military-focused stuff with a dash of politics, as in the first few HH books). This is exactly the same problem that has led to his "Safehold" series becoming a chore to read after an exciting and intriguing start. I'd guess it's going to take him at *least* another 6-8 books to fully deal with the Alignment plot, and while I'll probably read them just to get some closure I'm not anticipating enjoying the process very much.