(SPOILERS) Uncomprisingly good

Torlek wrote:

clancy688 wrote:[uote="Torlek"]The MA after the Yawata Strike again provides evidence that there is a third player by destroying Mycroft and SL ignores it.

Um, actually they don't. But they were in the middle of a battle when something unexpected happened. They scarcely could just call up a pause and figure out what the hell was going on.

Filing the graser fire away under "To be looked into later" and continue struck me as the prudent thing to do. And Kingsford did put some thought into this later on.

If anything, I think it's a bit too crude for the Malign. Especially the nuclear bombs in the space stations. They made it crystal clear that it wasn't the SL which had planted these things, so why would they count on them inducing and overreaction against the SL? Hm...

I can kinda accept it as a knee-jerk reaction after the Gamma Center bombing and the loss of the older Dettweiler, though. Lots of level-headed decision-makers gone and the successors emotionally compromised.

Fair enough. Kingsfort toke the very last exit ramp of the nothing to see here highway. Kinda hard not to if you have people dropping dead in your office. Still ignoring the Yawata Strike in all previous discussion of paranoid Manty conspiracy phantasies was stupid.

Any marginally competent Admiral could have executed that turkey shoot.

She basically demanded their unconditional surrender. You're not doing that with "any marginally competent General". That's like... some unknown three-star admiral sitting on USS Missouri in September 45 instead of MacArthur. Nah... it was the right thing to send Honor. And be worried.

That MacArthur was in Tokyo was important for the Americans, not the Japanese. I find it hard to imagine that the Japanese would have decided to not surrender because the General they surrendered to was of an insufficient statue.[/quote]
There was two 5-stars on board USS Missouri, the other was Nimitz. FYI there were no carriers and no new battleships except Missouri in Tokyo Bay. All of the old battleships had their guns locked and loaded and the carriers had full deck loads and the CVE's were up with full bomb loads.

I don't know that I really agree with the Alignment that "Honor should be one of them". Sure I can see the argument that she started out as an Alpha Line. But that was hundreds of years ago. Sure parts of that heritage are passed on, but that ignores the fact that Honor is just as much a product of the unaltered genes which have been added since as the Alpha Line has reproduced outside the Alignment.

I found this book to be a better and easier read than
SOV. I really like the Raoul mental abilities thread
and hope we get, perhaps a short story/novella about
he and his sister's development.
The thread about the 'cats possibly being able to impart
memory songs to two-legs is also fascinating.
These, and twenty tears of development for the TQ & RH
etc. make for excellent opportunities for further
speculation.

I finished the wee hours of this morning. Followed by a long day at work... Some thoughts...


First this was a shockingly big nail biter, I was incredibly emotional about the survival of a little girl and her cat. The defense of Haptia was an incredible plot thread. Would have liked to see Petra reunite with Mikey, or some of the "fallout" when the Haptian's realize admiral Kutouc made it through. I imagine he is a weee bit of hero there. A stand worthy of Saganami himself.

I was already emotionally numb at the point the Beowulf strike happened, and it was tough for me to even process all the deaths of characters I loved, like Caparelli or Givens. Judah Yanakov particularly hurt.


I was frigging shocked when I found out that not so much that the Harringtons were a lost alpha line, but that Richard Harrington of all people sounds like he was part of the MA. That being said I suspect the MA then was a slightly different organization then it is in the now. I may have spent a solid 5 minutes going, "Holy Shit". I could also see why telling Stephanie wouldn't have been a good idea.
Something that disappointing me was that Emily died

Barrageos was AWESOME and his speech had me cheering. He is awesome.

Things that disappointed me... First no Aivars Terekhov. I suspect there is another book coming out involving Eric Flint and Mesa before the time skip, and I am hoping Aivars is in it. There are way to many things going on in that neck of the woods that this is the conclusion.

Second, and the biggie. Emily's death. I was UTTERLY convinced that her father was going to find a cure for her. It seemed perfect, and I believed it until the line, "her mind glow dissapeared forever". I was sitting there going, wait what? I truly felt confused and saddened by what just happened. Maybe it was my preconceptions, my faith in how much of an amazing neurosurgeon Alfred Harrington was billed to be, but I was really expecting him to step in and save the day. Coming in to this book I figured the happy reveal at the end was that Emily could walk again, and yet here we are...

The annoying bit about the sudden reversal is that I saw it coming. They're conveniently separated? When an out-of-order snippet revealed people close to Honor are going to die? Obviously it's not going to be quite as awful as it first seems.

Then there were three giant explosions and I forgot. ****ing avalanche. It's one thing to foreshadow major twists in the cascade of events at the end of the book. The real trick is to set it all up and then suck the reader into the moment-by-moment excitement so they don't have time to put the pieces together.

First, glad to have the book!

Second, pulser armed tree-cats! Where are the armored stiltie marines?

Lots of fore-shadowing in this book that let the perceptive reader know what's coming. When I read about who was going to be at the summit, I wasn't in the least surprised by the bombs. When I read about how the SLN was still going to go after Beauwolf, I wasn't shocked to know the MAlign was going to help stack the deck.

I wasn't surprised by what happened to Emily, either. There was too much talk about her health and it's precarious nature. Sending Honor off on a last brutal fire in her eye ride was sort of expected and she'd need the motivational emotional reasons to get there.

If anything, I was surprised by the book not being longer and that there wasn't more implications of what the future holds.

Fireflair wrote:Lots of fore-shadowing in this book that let the perceptive reader know what's coming. When I read about who was going to be at the summit, I wasn't in the least surprised by the bombs. When I read about how the SLN was still going to go after Beauwolf, I wasn't shocked to know the MAlign was going to help stack the deck.

I was pretty surprised that the MA both chose to go after the habs and that they did it so blatantly. I was expecting some 'poorly programed' 'accidental' 'malfunctioning' weapons that could be reasonably blamed on the SLN, not a blatant "the MA hates you, die now, ha ha ha."

And also surprised that David had the SLN accomplish so little in their strike. It was actually very clever. I think they should have fired off a bunch of missiles at the shipyards, even if they planned to self-destruct them short of the planet, just to keep the defensive planners busy and not thinking about what else could be going on.

Slower than many, I finally finished, and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Thanks, RFC.

I always wondered if masses of blindfired missiles could be effective. Thanks SLN. The debate about D'Orville's tactics at First Manticore will rage once more.

This has probably been said, but I do hope whoever is doing editing passes makes sure to break out their slide rules, because there are quite a few inconsistencies in the space battles, dealing with accelerations (KPS^2 reported as G or vice versa) or ranges of things (65 million km reported as the 6-minute endurance of a Mk23 at one point, when that is the full 9-minute endurance). I understand it's an earc, and that's a nit, but it did make me backtrack a few times through space scenes to get things properly placed in my head. Especially in the climax when 19 light-minutes was reported as "almost twice the range of the improved cataphract".

Given that the whole book dealt with the Eridani Edict, it did seem odd that it was somewhat inconsistently described, in comparison to earlier books. The Yawata Strike was described as an Eridani violation in this book a couple of times, and has been described as absolutely not a violation at other times. Honor erased all of the orbital infrastructure at several Havenite systems in At All Costs (Theisman says that explicitly when reviewing the damage), but when the Sollies did it (the one they did responsibly, early in the novel, Capriotti's attack at a system whose name escapes me), the analysis at Manticore was not quite so glowing. When they compared it with Honor's attacks, they noted how hers were less drastic. It seemed inconsistent, but that might be on me.

I felt like Harahap might have gone through one too many interviews "on-screen" as it were. Especially the Mike Henke one felt like piling on. At that point, wouldn't she have had dispatches from Honor? It didn't seem like that portion of the scene was particularly necessary. The reunion with Cachat and Palane felt like a better dramatic beat, and the rehash (albiet with a bit more catharsis) of people not trusting Firebrand but being talked around felt a little like it detracted from that.

For what it's worth, I wasn't entirely comfortable with the whole psychotic-break Honor episode during the climax. How does a responsible government let someone in that emotional state rush off to engage in an operation of that magnitude? I understand that we've established before that Honor has difficulty processing grief (at least without someone to process it on), but that's a thing that most of her superiors and friends know about her. Minimal intervention on that point seemed questionable.

And, one last tiny quibble... I thought the climax might have been more effective if, after having forced the Sollies to abandon their orbital infrastructure, after having granted a time extension, they'd just shown restraint one last time. I felt like her final speech might have had that much more impact without the explosions on empty platforms. "I've demonstrated that I CAN do this thing. Unquestionably. Once again, I choose not to." Although, I guess if she had, that wouldn't have been very uncompromising.

Anyway, thanks again, RFC. A thoroughly enjoyable conclusion. Aside from my obligations to put in time with family over Easter, I didn't put the book down.

***Heavy Spoilers!!!!!!!!---------------- WARNING**

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I loved the book in every way except, we never got to see what the newest lorelei barracade keyhole 2 defenses would do. Every single battle excluding the ending decisive unconditional solarian defeat they didnt have the full systems capabalities of a mass fleet defense protocol. All we saw were hybrid defenses using Keyhole 1 and Mark 16s and a small amount of mark 25s and even situations with only Mark 14s with no keyhole. They also talk about using hermes buoys as conduits for ghostrider to supliment lack of keyhole 2. But STILL NO USE OF Lorelei and Barracade seen in SOV or even Defense Plan Thermopylae which utilized Lorelei in a different way in Rising Thunder. The only mention of Lorelei in the entire book was a battle simulation. They still kicked major ass but honestly the tech imbalance was actually even worse, David Weber had to make the ships Manticore had in each of the battles to be Saganami Bs and only very few Saganami Cs to force the downgraded defenses. While I understand after Yawatta Strike, Lorelies were in a short supply; but they were with Tenth Fleet and clearly in the Grand Fleet per the simulations. Also they were Alice Truman's Beowulf Task Force.

But as I said this book was absolutely awesome otherwise. I just dont see the full defense protocol of Barricade being used again in at least the main story line. Unless something drastically happens I expect new tech out of now permanent Bolthole tho.

I am glad the esclations of death ended after Beowulf though, it was getting way to high and was turning into a ALL or Nothing situation that can only end with hate on both sides no matter who wins.

This is clearly going to lead into the next book with Admiral Gold Peak and now Firebrand searching for Mesa Alignment unless they come out of hiding to hit Manticore again.

I expect the next Honor mainline book to be her as First Space Lord though. The Empress allways eventually gets her way.

kzt wrote:

Fireflair wrote:Lots of fore-shadowing in this book that let the perceptive reader know what's coming. When I read about who was going to be at the summit, I wasn't in the least surprised by the bombs. When I read about how the SLN was still going to go after Beauwolf, I wasn't shocked to know the MAlign was going to help stack the deck.

I was pretty surprised that the MA both chose to go after the habs and that they did it so blatantly. I was expecting some 'poorly programed' 'accidental' 'malfunctioning' weapons that could be reasonably blamed on the SLN, not a blatant "the MA hates you, die now, ha ha ha."

And also surprised that David had the SLN accomplish so little in their strike. It was actually very clever. I think they should have fired off a bunch of missiles at the shipyards, even if they planned to self-destruct them short of the planet, just to keep the defensive planners busy and not thinking about what else could be going on.

!!HEAVY SPOILERSSS!!!!
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I think as I stated in my post above part of the reason was he already had to limit the ships Manticore had to less advanced Saganami Bs and such a limited amount of Saganami Cs, to make the fights even a battle. If all the ships had been Cs and Mark 25s with Keyhole 2, Admiral Koutes force would of even had a chance to survive their suicide charge. Blind missel fire even in the hundreds of thousands only worked because they didn't have the Battle Fleet Defensive protocol using Lorelei as in Rising Thunder and Simulations and or Baricade as seen in SOV. With those protocols even 4 ships could of devastated the attack with keyhole 2.

Because of that he had to make the Beowulf solarian attack useless once it faced Beowulf defense that had full keyhole 2 capabilities even with Mycroft destroyed. Those Block Ships were only supposed to be the failsafe defense of the shipyards, they werent Thomas Cap's first plan of defense but it ended up being all he had after mycrofts destruction by MAlign. The whole purpose was to emphasize MAlign's attack on helpless civilians not the Solarian Navy. And I think David Weber pulled it off masterfully to be honest.