And David Weber’s Honor Harrington universe marches on with Echoes of Honor, like an army of undead, unstoppable and thirsting for brains. This time, we get to follow several distinct story segments as Honor and her team struggle to take over Hades and ultimately escape. The action this time around is almost unrelenting, and probably more importantly, relevant to the current story and future engagements.
Weber has a thing for political intrigue, and of course it’s no stranger here.
When I’m reading multiple books simultaneously, it’s usually because I’ve relegated one to my “before bed” pile. Absolution Gap, the conclusion of Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space series, was one of those. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the longer books I’ve attacked in a couple months, and half an hour per night hardly pays quick dividends. Even worse, Reynolds’ writing style is copious and unrelenting; I felt every single one of those pages.
I took a break from the Honorverse for a while and dove into John Ringo again with the third book in his Posleen War series, When the Devil Dances. All in all, it was much different from the previous entry, and an enjoyable one, at that.
Part of the issue I had with Gust Front came primarily from the author’s propensity for excessively detailed military maneuvers. Given a map of the United States and an Axes and Allies game centered on US territory, one could easily plot out each action and counteraction for hours.
I read a lot, but even good authors get caught in the deluge of published novels, and nobody can really keep up, so I depend on recommendations. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi was one of those books I’ve never heard of, yet nonetheless maintained critical acclaim in the SciFi community.
Much like The Forever War, which concentrates almost primarily on how war would be shaped by relativistic effects, we’re given an intriguing and rarely explored theme to ponder.
Am I done with David Weber’s Honor Harrington series yet? Sadly, no. After finishing In Enemy Hands, I still have many more to go, but it’s not a struggle I dread.
Fittingly, this particular installment is more about Haven than Honor or Manticore. The first half of the book is almost purely setup, and considering the title, it’s not exactly a surprise that our heroine is eventually captured. But that’s fine in this context, because Haven has historically received the short end of the stick.
