Una guerra breve y triunfal (1994)

Trying to pacify the people , the rules of the People's Republic of Haven, hope a short victorious war against the Star Kingdom, will be just the thing to pacify the people. Little do they know that there is a war brewing at home, and Honor Harrington is aboard to worry about.
We get our lengthy introduction to the Peeps and how they operate. I like their short shortsightedness. Honor continues to be the best part of this series. ( )

Not my favorite Honor book so far. I read these for fun military action and a kick ass protag. What I got was a lot of side action (relevant, but long), and a lot of telling about what happened instead of showing. I appreciate brevity in books, but I felt like the wrong parts were summarized. ( )

The People's Republic of Haven is in trouble. Their economy is tanking because so many of their people are on public assistance. They can only support their economy and the privileges the wealthy enjoy by continually adding new star systems to their Republic. So they have the wonderful idea to start, or pretend to start, a war with Manticore.

Honor Harrington has completed her long complicated recovery from the injuries sustained in the previous book and has been assigned as Flag Captain to a new ship named Nike and sent with a task force to a frontier repair base. The only problem is that that Admiral in charge of the task force doesn't like Honor whom he sees as hot-tempered and reckless which causes some problems for her despite the support of her immediate superior who is also in the Admiral's bad books.

Since the Peeps are conducting all sorts of feints into neighboring star systems, the Admiral decides that he needs to defend one of the more populous systems and leaves Honor and her boss to defend the repair facility with very little help.

Haven has been secretly watching the whole area with stealth ships and knows when the largest part of the force leaves the repair facility and knows that it is time to take it and bring the war into official existence. It should be easy as their ships and armaments vastly outnumber those left with Honor. But Honor and her boss have done all the tricky planning they can to get their system as safe as it can be and can hope to hold out until help arrives to support them.

Meanwhile on Haven, Rob Pierre is planning a revolution which will take down the current government and put himself and his own supporters in control. And he is planning to use part of the Navy he hates to accomplish his goals.

This was another exciting episode in the Honor Harrington series. It was filled with action and adventure. ( )

Mostly okay, but pretty thin. ( )

I have no real complaints about these books other than the fact that they're straight space opera that are entirely mil-SF. In the first book of the series, I was thrilled to get to know all the misfit characters and see how Honor won them over by being just plain awesome and win actual fights at super-long odds, but the same kind of formula doesn't quite work for me a second and third time.

She's already an established badass. Even when super-wounded in the previous one, she got up and led everyone to victory. In this one, she turns a whole predatory society that aimed for a short victorious war into a quivering embarrassed mess. Nothing short about it, and far from victorious.

I like the idea... in theory. Who doesn't like an underdog story? Uh... wait... the brass are contriving her into underdog positions. She's not an actual underdog now.

Still, she pulls a rabbit out of her hat again, so all's fair in love and war.

Except, I'm not quite sure I'm a big fan of the writing. I actually like a good amount of exposition, but not always about the same thing. In this case, it's all military and tech and how it all works together, spelled out in great detail and usually the reason why we get our big wins.

Fine, fine. But even I have limited patience for that kind of thing if that's almost all there is. You know, aside from getting some on the side or a petty vengeance from a jerk or the political machinations on either side of the war. They just aren't all that great.

I look at Bujold and then I look at Weber and I just can't compare the two with any justice. I think I'll always prefer Bujold. It's mostly just the writing, I think.

Alas.

I might have to stop the series here. Interest level just plummeted. ( )