Review: Honor Harrington and the Honorverse

I’m a longtime fan of David Weber, and especially of his Honor Harrington series, which I’ve been reading since it was a much shorter series than it is now; but I’d let my interest lapse for a few years, and I’m now several books behind the most recent. And so a few weeks ago I embarked on a project: to re-read all of the “Honorverse” series to date. I’m now into Storm from the Shadows, the 18th book (according to one count), and so I’m ready for a recap.

The series concerns the career of one Honor Harrington, a captain in the navy of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Manticore is small as star kingdoms go, having only three systems, but is technologically advanced over its neighbors and quite wealthy due to its commanding position at the junction of seven wormholes to other parts of the galaxy.

For most of the series Manticore is opposed by the fleet of the People’s Republic of Haven, a much larger (but decadent) star nation which is in the habit of conquering adjacent star nations to loot them of their wealth. The capital of Haven is the planet of Nouveau Paris, and the comparison of Manticore and Haven with England and France in the days of sail is intentional. Honor Harrington is patterned to some extent after Horatio Hornblower; the Queen of Manticore is one Elizabeth III; and the government of Haven passes in the early books from the Legislaturalists (the ancien regime) to the Committee for Public Safety led by the absurdly named Rob S. Pierre. (In Weber’s defense, he had no idea how popular the books were going to become.)

Nowhere is this England/France focus more obvious than the space drives used by Weber’s spaceships, which are quite detailed and quite clearly contrived to make space navy tactics somewhat similar to those of Nelson’s navy. Weber’s dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts form in the “wall of battle”, and so are called “ships of the wall” instead of “ships of the line”; and the nature of the impeller drive protects his ships above and below and to some extent to port and starboard but leave them vulnerable to raking shots for and aft.

And then, of course, the arms race begins…

The initial books in the series are great fun; as time goes on, though, they get larger, and thicker, and the number of characters swells, and, well, upon finishing At Any Cost (the 17th book), I was minded to put my comments in the following suitable form. Yes, it’s somewhat of an exaggeration; but (alas!) only somewhat.

* * * * *

Admiral Harrington gave the order and HMS David Weber, the Royal Manticoran Navy’s latest supersuperdreadnaught of the Author class, rolled pods and fired a broadside of a stunning 735 pages in the space of one volume. The massive wave was aimed at a single enemy ship, RHNS Constant Reader, the flagship of Havenite Admiral Yours Truly. Admiral Truly was one of Haven’s more experienced commanders, having survived numerous encounters with Admiral Harrington throughout the course of the war; but today he found himself overmatched. He immediately deployed his electronic warfare decoys and released a wave of counter-missiles, but to no avail.

Of the 750 pages, 250 concerned strategy discussions between bad guys Admiral Truly didn’t care much about reported at chapter length and beyond. These were deflected by the Constant Reader‘s Attention Span, lost lock, and exploded harmlessly. 100 more contained detailed strategy discussions between the good guys. Many of these pages lost lock as well. 125 pages more were data dumps about new Manticoran weapons technology. These made it past the Constant Reader‘s AS but, their drives expended and cruising in on ballistic trajectories, they were easily targeted by the Constant Reader‘s counter-missiles. 75 pages were data dumps about new Havenite weapons systems, but as these had already been thoroughly perused by Manticore’s Office of Naval Intelligence they had no lasting effect one way or the other. Another 60 were sketches of minor characters introduced on one page and blown to pieces three pages later. And 50 were formula descriptions of how massive broadsides were whittled down bit by bit, by one defense after another and sometimes just by dumb luck. Those were easily stopped by the Constant Reader‘s sidewalls. In all, 673 pages were destroyed.

77 pages got through.

The Constant Reader reeled in space as 77 character-pumped pages exploded directly in front of her bow sending lancing emotions of excitement, joy, rage, horror, and entertainment through her battle steel carapace, destroying her beauty but leaving her forward alpha nodes and fusion bottle intact. The Reader picked up speed, crossed the hyper-limit, and was gone.

Admiral Truly sighed. Once again, against all odds, he had survived. But he knew, in his heart of hearts, that it wasn’t over. He was doomed to go on and read the next book.

* * * * *

And I will, and what’s more I’ll enjoy it. Well…parts of it.