Storm from the Shadows Reviews
Product DescriptionRear Admiral Michelle Henke was commanding one of the ships in a force led by Honor Harrington in an all-out space battle. The odds were against the Star Kingdom forces, and they had to run. But Michelle’s ship was crippled, and had to be destroyed to prevent superior Manticoran technology from falling into Havenite hands, and she and her surviving crew were taken prisoner. Much to her surprise, she was repatriated to Manticore, carrying a request for a summit conference between the leaders of the two sides which might end the war. But a condition of her return was that she gave her parole not to fight against the forces of the Republic of Haven until she had been officially exchanged for a Havenite prisoner of war, so she was given a command far away from the war’s battle lines. What she didn’t realize was that she would find herself on a collision course, not with a hostile government, but with the interstellar syndicate of criminals known as Manpower. And Manpower had its own plans for eliminating Manticore as a possible threat to its lucrative slave trade, deadly plans which remain hidden in the shadows.
I, too, have been a Weber fan, more specifically a Honor Harrington fan (I've enjoyed the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien, and the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell: not science fiction, but great historical military novels). I get the feeling Weber is feeling the same pressure that O'Brien had when he began his naval series, found it popular, and began running out of room for more books as the Napoleonic Wars drew to a close. I'm not sure that excuses what Weber very clearly says he is doing here, recycling the same materiel, albeit from another viewpoint, in multiple books in an effort to expand his room to write more stories in the Honor universe. His bugaboo may be his desire to satisfy the fixation some of his readers have about consistency and continuity: I wonder that he may lose his larger audience to satisfy that minority. I'm not saying he should lower his continuity efforts to the level of, say, Meluch's U.S.S Merrimack series, but he should not let absolute consistency get in the way of telling a good story (with, as others have said, a lot less interior dialogue,aka preaching). When I think about it, what I like about this series is the heroine and the strong plot line: I skim over a lot of the monologues to get to where the story starts again. If the story is the same, even if it is from different points of view, I'm going to be skimming the whole thing. what's with that?David Weber is the science fiction phenomenon of the decade. His popular Honor Harrington novels are New York Times best sellers and can’t come out fast enough for his devoted readers.
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