SPOILERS==Shadow of Victory Comments, Queries and Opinions

so... for people who skipped 3rd of "Shadow of Freedom", because of all those characters/stories causing a severe case of "not giving a damn", we could expect the same from this one?

vovchara wrote:so... for people who skipped 3rd of "Shadow of Freedom", because of all those characters/stories causing a severe case of "not giving a damn", we could expect the same from this one?

Yep. Skipping this book won't have any impact on your ability to understand the next book.

Which seems like a fairly strong condemnation of it.

Dauntless wrote:the book was good, though i do agree that a lot of the early sections rightly belonged in an earlier book.

the shanegians in Maya were great but I would have liked info about Sharpshooter and her sisters. not to mention info/vague specs on what the SD(P) will look like when delivered.

seeing Tourville was good and i can definitely see sparks between him and Mike Henke.

what happened at Messa was also intresting and the epilog really makes me wonder if a certain someone is actually going to dig for the truth.

Ginger's command was very intresting to see in light of various threads revolving around Modular ships.

While this book doesn't advance the major main story plot lines, it does illustrate the how far reaching the MAN efforts to discredit Manticore is or was. Additionally it does illustrate vividly how both the naval officers in the Quadrant and the Manticore Goverment approach and reaction to the discovery of the MAN alliance efforts to discredit Manticore's political reputation and stature.

I for one envision that if or when the follow on series gets written many of our beloved and new characters who have been entrusted with new command positions (Captains, and Commodores) in the last few books could have further critical roles to play in the years to come.

I for one am happy with this book as it illustrates the "politics and diplomacy" which in most other series Mil-Sci would happen off stage totally. While there isn't much direct "Boom Boom Today" in the form of direct onscreen battles, I'm not sure there would have been a neater way of bringing closure to many of the plot lines which became apparent in "TSoS".

One reality is the Honorverse has been revealed to us much like a proverbial "Onion"! Much of what we all assumed we understood when we encountered OBS has been upended!

L. F. Esdaille

This book ends at about the same time the last few have and spends very little time on established characters...and when we do see them, their scenes have little of interest and take place before the end of the prior books. I can't keep the various rebellions apart and, frankly, I don't care enough to put any effort into trying. It reads like a collection of deleted scenes that were cut from the last few books for not advancing the plot.

Skip this one.

...I found this book to be very interesting and enjoyable, filling in quite a few of the gaps.
The ending, though... Holy Hell!
The MAlign played their reporter card perfectly!
And the Big Bad... that was a Thanatos Gambit if there ever was one... One he didn't want to use, but...
The Alliance is going to have its work cut out due to how the MAlign ensured that huge amounts of animal-derivative fertilizer impacted the rotary air impeller...
"Clean-up on aisle six! Also Aisles seven, eight, ten, eleven..."

SPOILER!!!


The only part that I would have hoped to see, in this type of book, is an expansion of the Filareta(sp?) battle, and it wasn't even there (1 sentence!!) !!!

With all of the pieces now in one line, will the wait for the next book be as long?

Will the plot advance then?

I was looking at the last page and wondering, well, we finished the tie ins, now where is the story?

Disappointing, and for the first time, I bought the earc. I have the hard copy on order though, so I will read it again, even the slavic worlds, I guess...

lfesdaille wrote:...


While this book doesn't advance the major main story plot lines, it does illustrate the how far reaching the MAN efforts to discredit Manticore is or was. Additionally it does illustrate vividly how both the naval officers in the Quadrant and the Manticore Goverment approach and reaction to the discovery of the MAN alliance efforts to discredit Manticore's political reputation and stature.

I for one envision that if or when the follow on series gets written many of our beloved and new characters who have been entrusted with new command positions (Captains, and Commodores) in the last few books could have further critical roles to play in the years to come.

I for one am happy with this book as it illustrates the "politics and diplomacy" which in most other series Mil-Sci would happen off stage totally. While there isn't much direct "Boom Boom Today" in the form of direct onscreen battles, I'm not sure there would have been a neater way of bringing closure to many of the plot lines which became apparent in "TSoS".

One reality is the Honorverse has been revealed to us much like a proverbial "Onion"! Much of what we all assumed we understood when we encountered OBS has been upended!

L. F. Esdaille

Putting 1.5 agents + a ship for travel and some support for the delivery of some few hundreds or maybe low thousands of tonnes of supplies into the entire Verge to foment rebellions isn't really a very big operation as interstellar intrigue in the Honorverse goes.

Flag showing diplomacy and problem solving could very easily have been shown in a way as to advance the plot into the future.

I'm sorry. I just kept getting closer to 78 and realized more and more that nothing new was going to happen. I'll shut up now so as not to be a Debbie Downer.

Ok, so I bought and read the eARC last night.

I'm probably going to get a *LOT* of flak over this, but I was actually fairly disappointed in the book.

From posts from quite a while back, I thought this volume was supposed to be the last in this part of the saga - that any "follow on" books would pick up further in the future, when Honor's children would be grown and have their own careers (probably at least one of them in RMN).

But now I'm hoping that's not the case, because this book left as many things open and dangling as those it closed.

A few examples:

There's a brief sentence in the small section covering a Mandarin meeting that notes "sending ships to Beowulf didn't work out all that well"; which, from the context, seems to refer to something other than Tsang's fleet in "Operation Raging Justice". More like the fleet the Mandarin's debated sending if Beowulf seceded, which, at this point, is apparently a done deal. Yet no details are given as to what might have happened at Beowulf when that fleet actually arrived.

There's also not much, other than that small section mentioned above, about any further Mandarin meetings or decisions.

There's nothing about what happened to Harahap once he was caught - I would think there should have been some interesting discussions with him.

Also, while it would *appear* that Erewhon and Manticore get back together as allies, we don't actually run across any *confirmation* of this; we leave off with a meeting where Barregos and Rozak are doing their best to *convince* him to support that.

Also, what happens in and to Maya is pretty much left hanging too.

We *do* get closure on what ended up happening to some of the frontier worlds the Alignment was "stirring the pot" in; and we also find out more about the invasion of the Mesa system. But there's really nothing about what the Alliance might have forced Mesa to do, or any aid they might have provided after Detwailer's little "suicide party". Or what might have happened to Manpower or any of the other transtellers based there.

And, for sure, there's a continuation of something that's bothered me for a while.

Namely, *why* did the Mesan Alignment actually *stay* on Mesa so long?

Based on what *has* been told about them, their leaders weren't exactly stupid. They've had a centuries-long plan, the crux of which was that they basically "hid" until they were ready for the final play.

So why didn't the Alignment start moving to Darius as soon as it was found and some basic infrastructure put in place? Surely it should be easier to remain hidden if you're on a planet no one other than you knows about, rather than one that basically *everyone* does; and, for that matter, most revile. *That* doesn't seem smart at all. The "onion" had a lot of layers, but most of that was *because* of the Alignment being on Mesa, and having to hide there from both the galaxy at large *and* the Mesan government. Much of that complexity could have been done away with by relocating to somewhere no one knew to look. The "KISS" rule is usually something most conspiracies should keep in mind; since the more complex it is the more likely something will go wrong.

At a minimum, it would seem a good idea to move your R&D facilities there as soon as possible, if only to keep someone from stumbling over them just like Zilwiki and Caslet did. Also, if that's where you're building things that are *using* the tech from that R&D there, doesn't it make more sense to do so close by? It obviously worked well for Haven during their war with Manticore... ...the Manties never found Bolthole. For that matter, there's no indication that even the Alignment knew where it was.

Plus, they could have had *decades* for Houdini to work in; rather than a mad scramble in the end. Surely moving a few hundred - or even a few thousand - management types that might have had to remain on Mesa for various reasons would have been easier to move in the end, rather than ten's of thousands or more.

Also, some parts seemed to drag. I suspect they were there for what is usually called "character development", but in at least several places it seemed like the "depth" of development was deeper than truly necessary.

What I would have found interesting is more dialog and action on the part of some of the Solly characters in the Intelligence and CID. More about their investigations, more of what they might have found, what pointed them to what they actually did find, etc.

Star Knight wrote:I just hope we get at least some plot development going in the second half. I mean, it looks like the Earc ends about the time of Oyster Bay, thats six months before Tenth Fleet arrives at Mesa.
At the rate this is going, thats more than enough time and stuff to fill the rest of the book.

No, it actually ends about the same place - plus or minus perhaps a day, as Cauldron of Ghosts.

jgnfld wrote:Forgive me for saying this, as I have loved David's work (well except for Out of the Dark) for so many years now. But having just read the book I simply have to come out and say it: I am at a complete loss to know how to feel when well over 300K words advance a plot not so much as a full day and still leaves lose ends galore just hanging around. At the moment I am utterly appalled.

Maybe that feeling will change, I don't know.

I actually liked Out of the Dark, but it, too, seemed to leave off sort of hanging. Like the Dahak and Excalibur Alternative, it begs for a sequel. Unfortunately RFC seems too caught up with some of his other series to write them, however, *sigh* Apocalypse Troll is *almost* complete in itself; but could have covered a bit more of the future; at least enough to see how things work out for the two main characters, anyway.

The only "single" novel of his that really seems a stand alone, complete in itself narrative is "In Fury Born". I'm glad he found the time to re-write and enhance "Path of the Fury"; there were too many "blanks" in the original novel to make it seem complete.