Shadow of Victory - Quality of the Story / Plot?

Larry wrote:Hey guys! Stop with the doom and gloom already, after all we still have to hear the same section of time told from the perspective of the folks out in the Silesian region. At least that would be new material and let David feature several newer, different heroes to throw into the mix.

Plus we haven't heard anything from the Anderman Empire in a while, so I'm sure we need a sub story about what they've been doing during the exact same period of time. And what the heck possibly add to it one from Bolthole about developments in the early collaborations between Manticorian Boffins and Havenite Boffins.

So stop whinging, there are lots of other sub stories we could be enthralled with until David finally remembers where he means to go forward on the mainline. Myself i think he may have painted himself into a bit of a corner with his enemy having undetectable ships and the full might of the Solarian league to throw Cannon fodder at Manticore while the Renaissance Front builds up a hay maker to throw at Manticore, who doesn't even know where their evil enemy is or how large it actually is.

And we get the next book when we get it. Hopefully after David has had time to rest, recuperate, tend to whatever health issues he's facing and get well.

Larry

This book if it had been on its own could have held up decently. The problem was it basically is a ground hog day novel we keep going back over the same stuff over and over. This book had more background and build up of revolutions on planets that were already resolved in the previous one. They have build up again but the pay off for the build up already happened so it comes off as mostly pointless. Had this build up happened in the previous book it would have worked better and made total sense but having the payoff and end of a revolution happen and then writting another book about the start of it just seems weird.

I honestly liked the last 2 books even though they were going over a lot of the same ground but they had interesting stories build up and then pay off. This book rehashes a lot of stuff and the payoff such as it is gets largely blunted by the fact we already know how a lot of this stuff got resolved and it is lacking in any real drama for any main character we give actually care about or any danger to them and given the now established ineptitude of the SLN any conflict is along the line of drowning bunnies for danger level to the manties.

Larry wrote:Hey guys! Stop with the doom and gloom already, after all we still have to hear the same section of time told from the perspective of the folks out in the Silesian region. At least that would be new material and let David feature several newer, different heroes to throw into the mix.

Plus we haven't heard anything from the Anderman Empire in a while, so I'm sure we need a sub story about what they've been doing during the exact same period of time. And what the heck possibly add to it one from Bolthole about developments in the early collaborations between Manticorian Boffins and Havenite Boffins.

As interesting as some of that might be, this was 1 of the last 2 Honor Harrington novels - and wasn't clearly positioned as mostly book 4 of the Talbott series. I was hoping to see more of Honor's actions.

The very next book is supposed to wrap up everything, at least for now. David has even talked a bit about what other works he might slot into the publishing slot that has been reserved in each year's publishing schedule for a new Honor Harrington book.
So he seem pretty committed to the next book ending things for a while.


At least for me it's partly that knowledge that things are ending that make me impatient about covering all these new people involved in the various revolutions in detail. Hopefully that'll all pay off in a big way in the final book; but at the moment they seemed like adding a bunch of bit players right at the finale -- I'd have rather seen more of the characters I've been enjoying already.

I am up to page 300 and, for the first ten chapters (or so) I was not liking the "going back in time" aspect... That was before I saw things from Harahap's POV and I really like what he thought in chapter 23 with our added perspective.

If Damien Harahap had a credit for every government which had decide to “send a message” and, in the fullness of time, been handed its collective ass, he could have bought himself a nice little planet for his retirement.
Whoever this” Mesan Alignment” of Bardasano’s is, it is not a system government, he decided… Bardasano is way too smart to be involved in something as ham handed…

For all the people in power who think they are the smartest one in any room they enter... HA HA.
Every Nixion has it's Watergate... every Watergate has its’ ‘Deep Throat’ moment… where the wheels start to come off. You or I would have gone to prison, a democrat would have been impeached, others get to resign with lifetime pensions... but the wheels will come off.
I suspect that Harahap will turn the balance... but, hey, I have been wrong before


I do hope that we find Helen's friend Paulo and Ginger Lewis or Wonderman were off the stations when Oyster Bay happened as their fates were not mentioned (that I recall) in that other time line.

SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





Nice book, his Webberness takes a number of characters, perhaps invented by other authors out for a spin, doesn't advance the plot much.

I was disappointed that the Anderman Imperial fleet did not beat Admiral Gold Peak to Mesa. They should show up soon and helpin the investigation. A number of the nukes were no doubt underground (if there was a Gamma center then there is at least an alpha and beta center, and no doubt delta and epsilon at least) not much left in the underground blasts, but who sets off underground nukes for terrorism. Most likely to find pieces from the space nukes. Lots of heat, but no shock wave without air or water or earth to transmit it.

I expected the "Battle of Beowulf" in this volume, which puts it and "The Battle of Darius" in the next volume, as well as the crash of the Sollies. Should make for a busy book.

I suspect that the Authorial Note, at the beginning of Storm From The Shadows still rings true. The canvas has become quite large. Larger than even the author himself had imagined...

An Authorial Note

Many readers will notice that some of the earlier chapters in this book retell, or fill in between, events which occurred in At All Costs. The retold material constitutes a very small portion of the entire book, and there is a definite method to my madness in taking this approach.

Once upon a time, in the simpler days of yore when I first began the Honor Harrington series, I hadn't quite visualized the scale of the project upon which I'd embarked. I always knew the story that I wanted to tell, and I'd always intended to arrive at the portion of the story line of which this book is a part. What I hadn't really counted on was the degree of detail, the number of characters, and the sheer size of the canvas I was going to end up with.

It isn't often that a writer is blessed with the response the Honor Harrington books have generated. When it happened to me, I was deeply gratified, and that's still true today. I also think that when readers are kind enough to support a series as strongly as these books have been supported, the writer has not only a special relationship with his readers, but also a special responsibility to them. At the same time, when a series extends through as many novels (thirteen, including Shadow of Saganami and Crown of Slaves) and anthologies, the writer sometimes finds himself forced to consider taking the storyline in directions of which not all of his readers are likely to approve. There's a fine balance between going where you know you have to go with a book and worrying about how you meet that special responsibility to your readership. And, to be honest, the Honor books reached that point about two novels ago.

-snip-

Bolded text is mine, not the author's.

I've reserved myself to trust his driving from the back seat and enjoy the scenery.

"Are We There Yet?"

Almost!

No details, but I suppose parts of this could be considered to be (vague) SPOILERS, so...

cthia wrote:I suspect that the Authorial Note, at the beginning of Storm From The Shadows still rings true. The canvas has become quite large. Larger than even the author himself had imagined...

<quote snipped>

I've reserved myself to trust his driving from the back seat and enjoy the scenery.

I don't know about anyone else, but at least for me the dissatisfaction with this particular book isn't specifically because of the direction or pace of the main story or the size of the canvas, but rather because the particular piece of canvas covered in this book just isn't interesting.

After all, Shadow of Freedom and Cauldron of Ghosts similarly didn't advance the main storyline, yet I personally have nothing major against them, and I don't recall seeing anywhere near this level of complaining about them here on the forums either. Why? Well, for me anyway, while they didn't advance the main story they still were about characters I cared about, places I enjoyed visiting, and events I actually found interesting. For Shadow of Victory, on the other hand, those things were pretty thin on the ground.

You could cut probably 2/3rds of the book and not remove any scenes I actually cared about. There are only so many rebellions I can keep straight (or care about), particularly when they're all so similar, when we already know how several of them turn out, when I can't keep straight half of the names, and especially when one of them has almost literally no connection to anything else that happens in the book. And I'm sorry to have to say it, but mister bland james bland just isn't interesting as a character to spend so many chapters with. Philosophically he's an interesting character as a commentary on 'banality of evil' type issues, but in a *narrative* sense a character for whom 'bland' is practically the only defining trait is just not a good viewpoint character to hang 2/3rds of a book on. Most of the villains in the Honorverse are emotionally engaging. Pierre, Young, Ransom, Detweiler, etc - they all have interesting emotional 'hooks' to hang pieces of story on. They *care* about things, and so I care about them. Firebrand doesn't, and so I don't either. (It may be a commentary on that, that the reason I called him Firebrand is because I can't remember how to spell his name.)

In a nutshell, the problem is that 2/3rds of the book can be summed up with "I don't care what happens to these people." The parts of it that don't focus on Firebrand and the rebellions are fine, and indeed often quite engaging when they focus on the emotional reactions and interactions among characters we know and love. If the whole book was like that, I would still be impatient to learn where the main story was going, but I wouldn't complain about this side trip any more than I did about Shadow of Freedom or Cauldron of Ghosts.

Normally I do trust his driving and enjoy the scenery. I just didn't find this particular bit of scenery very engaging.

MuonNeutrino,

Interesting "in a nutshell" comment... I think that 2/3 of the people you see every day "don't care what happens" to anyone but themselves and a few close friends.

The degree of selfishness and the callousness of people who are either "in power" or "climbing the ladder" is astonishing to me.
I believe that David has populated this and his other books with such "larger than life" examples to serve as parables or as allegorical reference points which are so realistic that we cannot wait to see the Pierres, Youngs, Ransoms, Detweilers, etc, get "what they deserve"... we may not gloat over them but I for one, feel a degree of satisfaction when these "smartest man in the room" types, who, by their every action show that they think they are better than the rest of us, get caught and face the music.

I recall a TV show from when I was a kid that opened with the words "The story you are about to see is true... only the names have been changed to protect the innocent" and there are people in the news today that look a lot like these villains.
How many innocent will suffer before they "get what they deserve?"

I suspect that the work in CoG and SoV set the stage for the high and mighty to be exposed and destroyed though I haven't finished SoV and I have been wrong before.

C. O. Thompson wrote:Interesting "in a nutshell" comment... I think that 2/3 of the people you see every day "don't care what happens" to anyone but themselves and a few close friends.

Quite true, I imagine. Unfortunately, as an *author* that's not the sort of reaction you want out of your readers. If they don't care about your story, will they keep reading it?

MuonNeutrino wrote:

C. O. Thompson wrote:Interesting "in a nutshell" comment... I think that 2/3 of the people you see every day "don't care what happens" to anyone but themselves and a few close friends.

Quite true, I imagine. Unfortunately, as an *author* that's not the sort of reaction you want out of your readers. If they don't care about your story, will they keep reading it?

Given that this apparently is the second to last book in the main honor harrington line and we either see a time jump or generational leap if they do more books introducing a ton of new side characters who it is hard to see how they have much if any impact on the larger overall near term story conclusion and probably will be old to have much impact if they do a time jump makes for a lot of characters whose overall influence is minimal.

Combined with at least two of the main rebellions we already knew how they would end as we had already seen their build up and conclusion. It is hard to really invest much in reading chapters where you either know they are all going to die horribly from KEW shortly or that in the end the manties come in and save them in a big stunning conclusion that happened a book prior to this one. Had this book taken place before the last couple books it probably would have been fine but it coming out after a lot of the pay off had already occurred leaves it in an awkward spot. When I eventually get around to rereading it I probably will just switch up the order which likely helps the overall readability of it.

Muon,
I suppose it depends on why you are telling your story... I have been wrong before, but I think that David tend to the Anthropological Allegory to help direct us to a conclusion that he has reached in his own spiritual trek. His characters are developed in realistic (if we strip away the FTL stuff and use ships and airplanes) that they could be the CEO, Cabinet Member, Senator etc., of today.
He gives us a What If platform and then shows us the fundamental... crime doesn't pay, you can't take it with you and no man has a good enough memory to be a liar... and yes, way too many people that you know and love don't care about anyone but their selves and a small circle of friends.
I wish it were otherwise and, I think David does too so, he shows us that "good things happen to bad people... but only for a while"

MuonNeutrino wrote:

C. O. Thompson wrote:Interesting "in a nutshell" comment... I think that 2/3 of the people you see every day "don't care what happens" to anyone but themselves and a few close friends.

Quite true, I imagine. Unfortunately, as an *author* that's not the sort of reaction you want out of your readers. If they don't care about your story, will they keep reading it?