SPOILERS==Shadow of Victory Comments, Queries and Opinions

Weird Harold wrote:
We can be shown the battle of Beowulf without going past the mid-October capture of Mesa. We can even be shown some reaction from several places within a month's travel of Beowulf, since the "battle of Beowulf" should happen on or about the same date as the Plebiscite is scheduled -- on 16 September 1922 PD.

Not that I think we're going to get yet another book that ends in October 1922 PD.

Maybe just to tweak the noses of all us here the epilogue of the final book will end with be a flashback to Oct '22 - just to have an excuse to have "October 1922 Post Diaspora" one more time

I was satisfied with book as a whole.
Firstly, I was a bit angry with some, especially early comments, that there is no point in reading this book, because it do not push main storyline forward. Do we really only read books in this series to know how it ends?!
Secondly, I wad disappointed mainly with style of the book. Imho collection of novellas would suit it better.
Than, I was used to more personal approach to characters. So it was kind of lonely space without Helen, Abigail and so on. I know they are part of the book, but their, I don't know, presence is lacking.Only slightly personal view we get is from Harahap and he is too cold bastard to create some emotional link to him.
And then, there are Czech terms. I am a native speaker, but i felt, that words in Czech are improper and they should be in English, too. Not so names of characters. Strangely, Polish do not bothers me, so it can be something with lacking of exotic feeling.

munroburton wrote:True, there's no specific mention of Prescott being awarded a knighthood. But does there need to be? He's certainly earned it several times over by now.

Leaving it to the imagination is a little more fun. Personally, I like the idea that Harkness 'added' Scotty to the Order's roster, so he didn't have to go to formal events without his buddy.

Since knighthoods seem to follow Honor's former underlings like some sort of plague, to paraphrase Mel Brooks, "It's good to know Duchess Harrington!" On the subject of comedy, I found it hilarious that "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" somehow survived and made its way into Duchess Harrington's personal movie collection! "Run away, run away!!!"

I went back through the novel and found that Captain Tremaine is referred to as Prescott in formal settings, such as when he's given command of the heavy cruisers and made captain (senior grade.) When he talks to the Sollies during the battle, he identifies himself as "Prescott," so Scotty is clearly his nickname, although it's what his bridge crew calls him and the name he uses in real life outside of the stuffy formalities of the military. It's nice to see that Harkness is on his staff, so Bupers didn't see any reason to break up the pair - or perhaps Harkness hacked the system and got his orders changed yet again!

So no inconsistencies there - not like "Green Pines" becoming "Green Valley" everywhere, which left us Safehold fanatics grinning. Good for Captain Tremaine, and I'm proud to see him doing so well. It's also nice to see that he doesn't have a bloodthirsty streak, although personally I'd like to see every Frontier Security ship and its crew blasted into their constituent atoms based on the war crimes they commit regularly in the Verge.

I gather that encouraging surrender is official GA policy, and Captain Tremaine says twice, once to the Sollies and once to his crew that he doesn't want to kill off Sollies in "job lots." (That's not my opinion, but we readers have a better idea of what the OFS has been up to than the GA does so we can be pardoned if we're a wee bit more... bloodthirsty.)

Keep in mind that Scotty is the guy who got through to Honor when she was about to murder the captain of the ship whose crew had systematically gang raped their female Manticoran POWs, so he understands the desire for blood vengeance. He just didn't have enough intel in SoV to realize that it ought to be applied wholesale to pretty much any OFS fleet that was trying to put down a rebellion. (Or in my opinion, to every OFS ship and crew!) But since we readers know much more about what OFS has been up to than the characters do, we're a much more bloodthirsty lot, and we don't have to live with the guilt of slaughtering hundreds or thousands of our fellow humans, no matter how much they might deserve it. Scotty will remain a much better person for having avoided that sort of thing...

Of course if the SLN begins the recommended practice of commerce raiding, it's going to be open season on every Solly hull, and I'm not sure that the GA is going to be so accommodating in demanding and accepting surrenders.

Why on Earth would you think that?

OFS has been up to its little tricks, and getting Frontier Fleet [who are the actual owner/operators of the ships you're so cavalier about] to do its dirty work, for what looks like a couple of centuries now. And they won't have been keeping it particularly secret, either. There's no point in having a mailed fist if nobody knows what that involves.

McGuiness wrote: (That's not my opinion, but we readers have a better idea of what the OFS has been up to than the GA does so we can be pardoned if we're a wee bit more... bloodthirsty.)

[quote="Louis R"]Why on Earth would you think that?

OFS has been up to its little tricks, and getting Frontier Fleet [who are the actual owner/operators of the ships you're so cavalier about] to do its dirty work, for what looks like a couple of centuries now. And they won't have been keeping it particularly secret, either. There's no point in having a mailed fist if nobody knows what that involves.


Maya will remain in one piece Because of Barregos et al. Most of the other Sector governors would try to also hold on to their little fiefdoms as long as they cut in their FF commanders in on the profits. IIRC The purpose of everything from ASVW to current was to destroy the Haven, Manticore and League navies, and wreak vengeance on Beowulf. That would put the RF fleet ,with MA stealth ships as Shock and Awe, as the dominant naval force with no one able to enforce the Eridani Edict. Then , let the Final Solution of the wild Human Stock begin.

I don't want to start a new thread with spoiler warnings so I'll just state it here; no way RFC can satisfactorily finish this series in just one more book. Again he has dangling threads to tie up and now a detective story to boot. And speaking of detective stories, what about that thread that includes the murder investigation of Honor's flag lieutenant, Timothy Meares and the other "nanotech" murders?
At least two more books and no earlier than 2020. That would make this series almost thirty years old and I think I have been with it since the beginning. Different websites have come and gone since then and of course the the series has been in lock step growth with the internet. Boy do I feel old...

I'm feeling pretty confident that there is no clean way David can have Darius be found in the next book. He's pretty much ruled out any way for the outside world to discover it, it would pretty much be a deus ex machina at this point. I'm not at all confident where things are going, but at this rate I'm expecting the am Darius won't be found, the RF won't be uncovered, and the focus will be on the unraveling of the SL.

Which again says that the MA OB attack was petty much both pointless and a mistake. I forget who originally brought that up, but you were right.

Someone (Torch) stumbles on a slaver on the way to Darius. Such interceptions are already happening in SoV.
Henke finds info on Darius or the Torch wormhole on Mesa.
Very doable IMO.
I cant see the series ending without Darius being uncovered. The conquest of the System, the destruction of the MA Navy and the breakup of the League are natural plot points to end on.
The RF will stay hidden, there is no way to uncover that part of Detweilers plan and do something about it in one book.

Star Knight wrote:Someone (Torch) stumbles on a slaver on the way to Darius. Such interceptions are already happening in SoV.
Henke finds info on Darius or the Torch wormhole on Mesa.
Very doable IMO.
I cant see the series ending without Darius being uncovered. The conquest of the System, the destruction of the MA Navy and the breakup of the League are natural plot points to end on.
The RF will stay hidden, there is no way to uncover that part of Detweilers plan and do something about it in one book.

Slavers don't make it to Darius. They transfer their passengers at some point to a vessel that goes to Darius. And it's been shown pretty clearly that the vast majority of MA people are hard enough core that they will kill themselves if threatened with capture. And you you can't follow a streak drive ship in hyper.

Star Knight wrote:Someone (Torch) stumbles on a slaver on the way to Darius. Such interceptions are already happening in SoV.
Henke finds info on Darius or the Torch wormhole on Mesa.
Very doable IMO.
I cant see the series ending without Darius being uncovered. The conquest of the System, the destruction of the MA Navy and the breakup of the League are natural plot points to end on.
The RF will stay hidden, there is no way to uncover that part of Detweilers plan and do something about it in one book.

There's a basic problem with taking out Darius and leaving the RF still covered. It's called Felix, and Felix has a connection to Darius.

If they take out Darius, then they've got a direct line to Felix. The decision tree takes two paths: either Mannerheim plugs the bridge on their end, or it doesn't. If it does, it raises the question of who's doing it, which in turn leads to the conclusion that Darius isn't the end of the line.

If they don't, then the GA discovers Felix and finds Mannerheim 10 ly away, and finds a small, permanent Mannerheim colony on the unnamed barely-habitable planet.

The conclusion: finding Darius is the same as finding Mannerheim, which in turn fingers the RF.