#uncompromising honor

[sarnakhwritesthings]

finally read Uncompromising Honor

first of all, how the hell is this book 8 years old

second of all, who gave Nimitz a gun

third of all, LMAO @ Firebrand/Plays with Fire and Clean Killer/Fire Watch. I find it a little difficult to believe that the 'cats wouldn't understand the interplay with their names, but the whole thing really is just perfect from an irony standpoint, and a 'playing-the-game' techno-thriller standpoint

fourth of all, this book only managed to rehash like one or two chapters total out of the books I've previous read, including To End In Fire, which i really liked (and apparently to end in fire didn't come out til well after UH. which, nice)? Novel experience of reading an honorverse book whose contents I have not already read three-fourths of in some medium or another (discounting, of course, the epilogue to Honor Among Thieves which barely, if briefly touches on some of the same final points). And tbh the one chapter of TEIF was one i wanted to reread and didn't want to have to track back down from the library.

fifth of all, im still not incredibly sold on Emily just... giving up the ghost when Hamish is reported to have died, but the consequences...

ough.

Honor IS a killer. The reference to Scotty, and then Honor locking those thoughts up in a box so she can't be distracted from what she needs to do by the memory of how he restrained her... her flaw. Her FLAW! Weber did it pretty darn well.

She IS 'the Salamander', though I'd suggest a re-titling to 'The Dragon'. 'Salamander' doesnt have that killer ring to it.

I'm glad Mercedes was able to serve as her conscience when the Grand Fleet appeared on top of that poor little cruiser squadron, but i did almost believe for a second that Honor wasn't going to listen. That she was going to kill those surrendering ships.

She had the capacity. And she WANTED to.

And she would have, if she'd not surrounded herself with people who would keep her from doing it.

I hope Honor gets serious amounts of therapy during her semi-retirement. She both needs and deserves it.

[jbk405]

Do you ever read one single line and it completely changes your world?

I’ve been reading the Honorverse for more than ten years now, and it started publishing nearly thirty years ago, and all along I’ve always pictured the Graysons speaking with an exaggerated, almost comically parodic Southern accent.  Given how their cult fanatic founder imported his pseudo-American perception of society to their new planet -- with a continent named Idaho and an obsession with Baseball and ‘classical’ music based on Country & Western -- this accent was an integral part of my mental image.  Grayson = The South.

Nope, they’re Welsh.  Llandovery, specifically, based on the accent.

....YOU SPRING THIS ON US TWENTY BOOKS INTO THE SERIES?!?!?

[jbk405]

Sometimes too much is too much.

The Honorverse series has had a fundamental principle throughout its run that protagonists and heroes are going to die.  Not because it’s “edgy”, but David Weber has explicitly stated that writing a military science-fiction story where only the bad guys die isn’t writing action/adventure, it’s writing military pornography.  People in combat die, and saying that your heroes are Just That Good to never lose any friends or compatriots is stupid.  True to that, important characters have been killed in action or assassination -- even a few literal accidents -- because it’s chronicled nearly thirty years of active warfare.  That all makes sense.

But there’s finally a point where it’s too much.  Where coincidence and tragedy are too hard to swallow and it becomes gratuitous and depressing and unnecessary.  After I-don’t-know-how-many mega-kills from terrorist attacks and giant battles, closing out another book with a long tally of the dead is just...ugh.  Especially when it’s presented in such a sadistic fashion, and falls on the characters that didn’t need to die.  Characters who had to jump through a dozen hoops to wind up in this place at that time, and whose story arcs didn’t need to stop.

The series has been struggling for several years now -- dragged down by the combined factors of a repetitive overlapping timeline between novels and a convoluted storyline that mashed together independent plots -- but now I’m just feeling done.

[haveyoureadthisscifibook2]

have you read Uncompromising Honor, by David Weber (2018)?

yes

no

Voting ended onNov 6, 2024

note: this book has been translated into at least 3 other languages: French, German, and Polish. like with the previous Honor Harrington book, the French one was split into 2 volumes (probably because it's over 1000 pages!), so if you read it in French, vote yes only if you read both Tome 1 and Tome 2. this time the German one was not split in two, but it does have a slightly different title, "Honors Rache", which translates to "Honor's Revenge".

vote yes if you have finished the entire book. vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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