-SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes

Jacob Zavala wrote:SNIP

Harahap and Clean Killer. I love the fact that Harahap was adopted, and I'm not complaining that it happened. My complaint is that of all the characters in the series, this was the first non-Manticoran/Grayson to be adopted. It should have been Foraker, darn it! Or Eloise Pritchart, or Tom, or Lester, or even someone like Chien-Lu or Stephen Westman. I feel like one of the greatest possible cementings of the Grand Alliance would be an adoption by a treecat of the Havenite President, no? And Shannon would be an even more obvious choice, given the way she risked her life for Nimitz all those years ago. Anyways, I know it's a small gripe, and it's colored by my love of the Restored Republic of Haven and it's top people, but darn it, I'm just a little disappointed.

SNIP

You're mine now. I've just adopted you. No takesies-backsies.

I have been pushing for a Havenite to get adopted for.... literally the last half a decade now, and I fully intend to turn up at Sphinxcon later this year and beg, plead, cajole, threaten, pout, whimper, and possibly cry to get RFC to give me my way on this.

That said, His Celeryness has made it pretty clear that there are more stories yet to tell in this 'verse, so I'm still holding out hope... but GODDAMMIT RFC WHERE IS MY HAVENITE TREECAT ADOPTION???? ::crumples into artistic storm of tears, complete with sniffles::

TL;DR - Honor could have done exactly what she did at the end of this book MUCH earlier and it would have had the exact same effect.

Just finished UH, and the more I think about it, the more frustrated I get. I understand RFC’s points about restraint and a political vs military victory, but ultimately, NOTHING in the book actually mattered or had a material effect on the eventual outcome. HH did exactly what she could have done immediately post BoM (Filareta Edition). Yes she came in full of grief, but in the end, she never went “too far”. The impossibility of the SLN to stand up to her had already been amply demonstrated again and again. The SLN would have surrendered at either point in time. She would have been able to force the constitutional convention either way.

A few specific grumbles:

Truman is not mentioned again after the POV switches to Beowulf in-system POVs. Not even a reaction to Gamma or Beta getting destroyed. No mention of the TF helping cleanup - nothing.

If the MA wanted to send a message with taking out the orbitals in stages, why bother doing it during the SLN attack? Even if the missles went through, everyone on the ground would know it wasn’t them because of the staggered explosions and debris field. The higher ups in the GA would not have blamed the SLN for the destruction.

Silver Bullet seemed very constrained and a touch underwhelming. Not a to-be-feared MA super weapon or anything.

There was 15 minutes between Beta and Alpha going up. And there was no attempt to get the VIPs off? Not even by the fanatical Grayson armsmen?

The Sollie plotlines felt like an attempt at character rehabilitation - especially Kingsford. I don’t remember him being quite so upstanding in previous books and it just seemed like RFC just wanted something in place so named characters could arrest the Mandarins.

Are we to assume that there is omnipresent surveillance EVERYWHERE on Earth? It’s mentioned that Bolton and the fiancée had lunch 7 times at the same table and never said more than hi to each other. That’s some very specific results. I guess it’s one of those “if you want to know, you can find it” kinda things. Just you aren’t supposed to know to look for it.

Why did the Duke’s captain feel it was necessary to take a chance of killing Hamish to get him to Earth? There were no orders to rescind the plan. It in no way affected what HH was going to do. He should have been safe, showed up a day later, and that scene could have played out then. No difference.

I’m confused, has RFC said this is it for the universe, or can we expect a wrap up of the MA in a further book with the Holy Trinity of spies going down the rabbit hole and figuring it all out? I can see this being the end for HH, but this isn’t a minor plot point left undone. It’s the throughline for the past several novels.

Why exactly did we need Hasta? Just to show that they are trying? None of the higher ups in the GA seemed like they were taking the threat of SLN tech advancement lightly anyways. In the end, they were used once and were no more effective than the current missles. They affected the outcome not one whit. After all the buildup, it was a bit of a letdown.

Lots of scenes of GA higher ups and the (good) Sollies sitting around and retroactively figuring out almost EXACTLY what the bad guys were doing or thinking. Any caveats thrown in were kinda limp. Houdini? The Onion, anyone?

The Chekhov’s Gun of literally giving ‘cats guns. Mentioned a couple of times, but never used.

The Maya Sector plot line just kinda fissled out too. I don’t think we even had the Mandarins talking about it very much.

That self-terminate nanotech sure seems to have massively proliferated from previous books. But no more nano-zombies in either the GA or the League.

Once the GA formed, why did the MA think that the League would survive long enough to prevent what eventually happened? Why did they think that any retaliation to Sollie atrocities would be anything less then what happened - an immediate and total capitulation of the League to overwhelming force being brought to bear?

<sigh> I know I am being rather critical and overly negative. I DID enjoy reading it. While in the groove, I was able to suspend my disbelief at least enough to enjoy things like the Death Ride of the Phantom and the Ajay Ambush set pieces quite thoroughly. Taking out the Beowulf orbitals was pretty unexpected, brutal, and impactful - until Jacques and Hamish BOTH survived. HH going to Sol was fulfilling, if a touch anticlimactic.

If this truly the last book to have Honor as a main character, it finished her journey from Basilisk Station to empire-conquering Admiral quite nicely. If RFC takes this as an opportunity to depart for a time or forever from the Honorverse, it’s at least more of a conclusion that’s we are likely to get from GRRM for the ASOIAF books!

MilSF wrote:TL;DR - Honor could have done exactly what she did at the end of this book MUCH earlier and it would have had the exact same effect.

Just finished UH, and the more I think about it, the more frustrated I get. I understand RFC’s points about restraint and a political vs military victory, but ultimately, NOTHING in the book actually mattered or had a material effect on the eventual outcome. HH did exactly what she could have done immediately post BoM (Filareta Edition). Yes she came in full of grief, but in the end, she never went “too far”. The impossibility of the SLN to stand up to her had already been amply demonstrated again and again. The SLN would have surrendered at either point in time. She would have been able to force the constitutional convention either way.

A few specific grumbles:

Truman is not mentioned again after the POV switches to Beowulf in-system POVs. Not even a reaction to Gamma or Beta getting destroyed. No mention of the TF helping cleanup - nothing.

If the MA wanted to send a message with taking out the orbitals in stages, why bother doing it during the SLN attack? Even if the missles went through, everyone on the ground would know it wasn’t them because of the staggered explosions and debris field. The higher ups in the GA would not have blamed the SLN for the destruction.

Silver Bullet seemed very constrained and a touch underwhelming. Not a to-be-feared MA super weapon or anything.

There was 15 minutes between Beta and Alpha going up. And there was no attempt to get the VIPs off? Not even by the fanatical Grayson armsmen?

The Sollie plotlines felt like an attempt at character rehabilitation - especially Kingsford. I don’t remember him being quite so upstanding in previous books and it just seemed like RFC just wanted something in place so named characters could arrest the Mandarins.

Are we to assume that there is omnipresent surveillance EVERYWHERE on Earth? It’s mentioned that Bolton and the fiancée had lunch 7 times at the same table and never said more than hi to each other. That’s some very specific results. I guess it’s one of those “if you want to know, you can find it” kinda things. Just you aren’t supposed to know to look for it.

Why did the Duke’s captain feel it was necessary to take a chance of killing Hamish to get him to Earth? There were no orders to rescind the plan. It in no way affected what HH was going to do. He should have been safe, showed up a day later, and that scene could have played out then. No difference.

I’m confused, has RFC said this is it for the universe, or can we expect a wrap up of the MA in a further book with the Holy Trinity of spies going down the rabbit hole and figuring it all out? I can see this being the end for HH, but this isn’t a minor plot point left undone. It’s the throughline for the past several novels.

Why exactly did we need Hasta? Just to show that they are trying? None of the higher ups in the GA seemed like they were taking the threat of SLN tech advancement lightly anyways. In the end, they were used once and were no more effective than the current missles. They affected the outcome not one whit. After all the buildup, it was a bit of a letdown.

Lots of scenes of GA higher ups and the (good) Sollies sitting around and retroactively figuring out almost EXACTLY what the bad guys were doing or thinking. Any caveats thrown in were kinda limp. Houdini? The Onion, anyone?

The Chekhov’s Gun of literally giving ‘cats guns. Mentioned a couple of times, but never used.

The Maya Sector plot line just kinda fissled out too. I don’t think we even had the Mandarins talking about it very much.

That self-terminate nanotech sure seems to have massively proliferated from previous books. But no more nano-zombies in either the GA or the League.

Once the GA formed, why did the MA think that the League would survive long enough to prevent what eventually happened? Why did they think that any retaliation to Sollie atrocities would be anything less then what happened - an immediate and total capitulation of the League to overwhelming force being brought to bear?

<sigh> I know I am being rather critical and overly negative. I DID enjoy reading it. While in the groove, I was able to suspend my disbelief at least enough to enjoy things like the Death Ride of the Phantom and the Ajay Ambush set pieces quite thoroughly. Taking out the Beowulf orbitals was pretty unexpected, brutal, and impactful - until Jacques and Hamish BOTH survived. HH going to Sol was fulfilling, if a touch anticlimactic.

If this truly the last book to have Honor as a main character, it finished her journey from Basilisk Station to empire-conquering Admiral quite nicely. If RFC takes this as an opportunity to depart for a time or forever from the Honorverse, it’s at least more of a conclusion that’s we are likely to get from GRRM for the ASOIAF books!

I think you're protesting far too much. Yes, there were a lot of untied strands. That's the way life is. It would be nice to have a nice package with a bow on top that contains everything but in a vast tapestry there will always be things left out.

I would have liked some info on Ginger, Helen and Paolo. Instead, there was a different focus.

As for the treecats, well, first of all it was fun and a nice break from killing a lot of people or talking about killing them. Second, Weber has talked about another arc, focusing on Honor's children. There could be elements in there as well.

I disagree about the final battle. Yes, the Grand Alliance could have gone on earlier but they probably would not. Things had not gotten to that stage, But with the destruction wrought on those planets, there was no longer any reason to hold back.

ldwechsler wrote:
I disagree about the final battle. Yes, the Grand Alliance could have gone on earlier but they probably would not. Things had not gotten to that stage, But with the destruction wrought on those planets, there was no longer any reason to hold back.

I don't think Kingsford would have reacted the same without 1st hand knowledge that the "Other people" existed and had been screwing with Solarian Politics and military affairs. The confluence of The "Other People's" existence (demonstrated live, in front of his eyes) and Honor's demands, allowed him to declare martial law and arrest the Mandarins, because he knew what she said was true and what she asked was not an irrational request - given what was actually going on.

Without that knowledge, he would have fought to defend the Sol system, he was a patriot and wouldn't have just given in. So if Honor had made the thrust for Sol, say immediately after Hypatia, the SLN would not have rolled over, and the SL would have turned against her, instead of looking at her own faults.

Theemile wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:
I disagree about the final battle. Yes, the Grand Alliance could have gone on earlier but they probably would not. Things had not gotten to that stage, But with the destruction wrought on those planets, there was no longer any reason to hold back.

I don't think Kingsford would have reacted the same without 1st hand knowledge that the "Other people" existed and had been screwing with Solarian Politics and military affairs. The confluence of The "Other People's" existence (demonstrated live, in front of his eyes) and Honor's demands, allowed him to declare martial law and arrest the Mandarins, because he knew what she said was true and what she asked was not an irrational request - given what was actually going on.

Without that knowledge, he would have fought to defend the Sol system, he was a patriot and wouldn't have just given in. So if Honor had made the thrust for Sol, say immediately after Hypatia, the SLN would not have rolled over, and the SL would have turned against her, instead of looking at her own faults.

I, obviously, stand by the way I structured it, but the reason Operation Nemesis wasn't on the table before Beowulf was the enormous escalation it would have represented in Solarian eyes. For the SL man-in-the-street, Cachalot was Colombo in Sri Lanka and Hypatia (where, after all, no Eridani violation occurred in the end) was Reykjavik. Both of them happened far, far away to people who weren't really real and didn't really matter as far as the imagination of that man-in-the-street and all the media coverage available to him were concerned.

The SLN was at war; the SL was at the mall, remember? That lack of any substantial public opinion aware of (or concerned about) what was happening --- of the scale of the SL's depradations --- coupled with the Mandarin's political unaccountability was the reason the GA had to practice restraint to avoid revanchism by the surviving League after the war. A direct strike on Sol, sufficient to make the point that the League could not fight the GA directly, would have been seen by that moribund SL political opinion as a huge escalation which did enormous damage. It would be like launching a retaliatory nuclear strike on New York City because someone dropped a couple of dozen cruise missiles on downtown Reykjavik.

But Beowulf was Boston. Beowulf was the Solarian League inflicting millions of casualties in a mass-casualty attack. Oyster Bay wasn't the League. The GA couldn't reasonably exact reprisals against the SL for something the MA had done. But Beowulf changed everything. Beowulf was the philosophical cradle of the SL, its citizens had been Solarians themselves only weeks before, and the SLN had been complicit in murdering 43,000,000 of them in an afternoon.

What Beowulf did was to give Honor a way to inflict an utterly devastating blow against the SL economy, demonstrate the total futility of the SLN, and levy a threat that amounted to promising the total destruction of the SL . . . and present it --- accurately --- as an act of restraint. It isn't going to keep a lot of individual Sollies from being pissed off as hell and wanting to do anything they can to break the GA's kneecaps post-war, but it is not going to produce the level of revanchism which would almost inevitably have been fatal to the GA's members in the fullness of time.

runsforcelery wrote:But Beowulf was Boston. Beowulf was the Solarian League inflicting millions of casualties in a mass-casualty attack. Oyster Bay wasn't the League. The GA couldn't reasonably exact reprisals against the SL for something the MA had done. But Beowulf changed everything. Beowulf was the philosophical cradle of the SL, its citizens had been Solarians themselves only weeks before, and the SLN had been complicit in murdering 43,000,000 of them in an afternoon.

What Beowulf did was to give Honor a way to inflict an utterly devastating blow against the SL economy, demonstrate the total futility of the SLN, and levy a threat that amounted to promising the total destruction of the SL . . . and present it --- accurately --- as an act of restraint. It isn't going to keep a lot of individual Sollies from being pissed off as hell and wanting to do anything they can to break the GA's kneecaps post-war, but it is not going to produce the level of revanchism which would almost inevitably have been fatal to the GA's members in the fullness of time.

I have to admit that I don’t really see how a terrorist attack based on planting gigaton scale bombs inside inhabited station is tightly connected to a disasterously failed SLN attack that targeted clearly military targets and did minimal damage.

Is there are reason for a random observer to think that the bombs would have never been detonated if the SLN hadn’t attacks? Well, no, once you go to that level the bombs were clearly going to go off whether or not the SLN attacked or not.

It’s roughly akin to blaming the UN for blowing up Manhattan because the inauguration of the new Secretary General was the trigger for a 20mt bomb in Manhattan planted by ISIS.

Edit: The SLN knows they didn’t have anything to do with that. Heck, the battle was over and they didn’t even know about it, so they are not going to feel responsible, The RMN knows the SLN isn’t responsible and knows who did it. They also know that if the MA wanted to take out the military plants they trivially could have. Beowulf knows it wasn’t the SLN either, the SLN attack had already failed and the ships had hypered out or been shot up. It also obvious to them that the MA could have just blow up all their industrial facilities with the tricks used, the SLN was just being used.

kzt wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:But Beowulf was Boston. Beowulf was the Solarian League inflicting millions of casualties in a mass-casualty attack. Oyster Bay wasn't the League. The GA couldn't reasonably exact reprisals against the SL for something the MA had done. But Beowulf changed everything. Beowulf was the philosophical cradle of the SL, its citizens had been Solarians themselves only weeks before, and the SLN had been complicit in murdering 43,000,000 of them in an afternoon.

What Beowulf did was to give Honor a way to inflict an utterly devastating blow against the SL economy, demonstrate the total futility of the SLN, and levy a threat that amounted to promising the total destruction of the SL . . . and present it --- accurately --- as an act of restraint. It isn't going to keep a lot of individual Sollies from being pissed off as hell and wanting to do anything they can to break the GA's kneecaps post-war, but it is not going to produce the level of revanchism which would almost inevitably have been fatal to the GA's members in the fullness of time.

I have to admit that I don’t really see how a terrorist attack based on planting gigaton scale bombs inside inhabited station is tightly connected to a disasterously failed SLN attack that targeted clearly military targets and did minimal damage.

Is there are reason for a random observer to think that the bombsp would have never been detonated if the SLN hadn’t attacks? Well, no, once you go to that level the bombs were clearly going to go off whether or not the SLN attacked or not.

It’s roughly akin to blaming the UN for blowing up Manhattan because the inauguration of the new Secretary General was the trigger for a 20mt bomb in Manhattan planted by ISIS.

I didn’t say the SLN actually killed the 43,000,000. The death toll was, however, part of an attack in which the SLN was complicit. There’s not too much question about that. More to the point, for purposes of explaining the Alliance’s policy and the reason for Honor’s attack, those deaths occurred during an attack launched by the SLN. There is a plsusible connection between them, and – in fact — the bombs in the platforms would not have detonated without the Naval attack. The signal to detonate them, was transmitted only because the attack had taken place. Honor’s position statement was very carefully crafted. It didn’t save that the Mandarins had ordered the attack on the platforms; it said the mandarins had enabled the attack, which was true. My point is that war is a psychological exercise, Not just a “kill everybody on the other side” exercise. What happened at Beowulf provided the necessary psychological hook to launch Operation Nemesisand do it in a way which probably wouldn’t lead to the Leavue’s coming back for revenge in 15 or 20 years.


I might also point out that at the beginning of this conflict, the Alliance itself didn’t realize just how outclassed the SLN was. It took a little while for them to realize how much audacity they could a tualy get away with!

What Beowulf did was to give Honor a way to inflict an utterly devastating blow against the SL economy, demonstrate the total futility of the SLN, and levy a threat that amounted to promising the total destruction of the SL . . . and present it --- accurately --- as an act of restraint.

I may be kinda dense at times, but I'm not about to start arguing with the creator of this universe about how people would react. I do wish some of this woman-on-the-street viewpoint was made a touch more explicit. It's easy to scare people (Mesa bombing), but it's hard to make billions and billions of heretofore uninterested folks to treat as grateful liberators from an uncaring federal government who, up to this point, had been a "neobarb" backwater. RFC is a great writer, I'm sure he could have made it happen.

While Beowulf (kinda) allowed the GA to retake the moral high ground, if HH had needed to follow through on her threat to literally destroy all the orbital manufacturing for the entire League, no amount of high ground or justification would have prevented a revanchist policy from whoever was left over. It would have been easily argued that, while perhaps no direct deaths occurred, the economic hardship produced would have killed tens of millions indirectly. The Op. Buccaneer systems and Manticore itself will be able to rebound in a decade or so because of all the immediate and close-by help of its allies. You take out a couple dozen or more interconnected systems worth of industry, that might not happen for decades or centuries. I guess that was the gamble - hurt them enough at Earth, and not have to do it elsewhere. That would hurt, but not so much that revanchism was the most likely outcome.

I say "kinda" take the high ground because unfortunately the Beowulf bombs had nothing to do with the SLN - except timing. They could have gone off at any point in time even if the attack hadn't happened. Are the entire GA top tier folks going to lie from here out so they can retain the "moral high ground"? The staggering of the explosions and debris patterns means there would be no doubt from survivors below what happened. Internal bombs set by somebody. Even having the GA higher ups feel that the League was complicit makes no sense. The MA was always going to go after Beowulf, and the GA knew that. Nothing the SLN did in the entire war made the orbitals destruction easier or harder. Even if they had stomped on Earth immediately after Filareta, and the League was reconstituted (literally), the orbitals would still have been vulnerable.

Things had not gotten to that stage,

But what stage had they gotten to? How exactly is basically sieging the entire League into economic collapse kinder or gentler than a quick, definitive strike that no one could mistake that (as we saw) could be done with little to no casualties? I don't remember seeing anyone in the SLN who seriously thought after Filareta that any fleet of any size could stand up to the GA line of battle. The Kingsford of this book would have surrendered with or without knowing about the "Other Guys". All that knowledge did was make the arrests de jure and not just de facto.

Perhaps HH didn't think she could pull off the bloodless option and didn't want to kill the couple of million SLN spacers that a battle would have entailed? If so, I wish a couple of sentences to that effect had been thrown in. We got scenes where the GA rightly decided to keep their forces concentrated, but nothing really about why they were concentrated, other than as a reactive force. Great for when Op. Nemesis needed to happen, but if Beowulf hadn't happened, then would Nemesis have ever happened? What were the pre-Beowulf criteria to initiate the final confrontation? The fleet was the Sword of Damocles, but we never knew what would part the horse hair. Just that Beowulf was more than sufficient.

Great, now I managed to spend my lunch time nitpicking over what is essentially rather good read and for which no one asked my opinion. I love David's books and have been reading them for over twenty years. I guess my expectations were out of line. It went out with a bang, but like the end of a fireworks show, the grand finale can sometimes leave you thinking, "Wow, very cool and really nice, but was that all?".

runsforcelery wrote:Honor’s position statement was very carefully crafted. It didn’t save that the Mandarins had ordered the attack on the platforms; it said the mandarins had enabled the attack, which was true.

I noticed that. Very subtly and nicely done.

I'm still not sure, however, why the GA thought that the attack enabled anything. They didn't know that "only" an SLN attack would set things in motion. Only the MA knew that. The high-level JSC meeting would be a better reason to glom onto why it happened when it did. Yes, they figured out quickly that the League was being used as the scapegoat, by why would that make them then kill that scapegoat? I may have missed or can't remember a conversation that was cold blooded enough to say, "Let's use the deaths of these 40+ million people to further our political aims". Maybe HH and the others were furious enough to just lash out at the visible sacrifice rather than the invisible enemy.

kzt wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:But Beowulf was Boston. Beowulf was the Solarian League inflicting millions of casualties in a mass-casualty attack. Oyster Bay wasn't the League. The GA couldn't reasonably exact reprisals against the SL for something the MA had done. But Beowulf changed everything. Beowulf was the philosophical cradle of the SL, its citizens had been Solarians themselves only weeks before, and the SLN had been complicit in murdering 43,000,000 of them in an afternoon.

What Beowulf did was to give Honor a way to inflict an utterly devastating blow against the SL economy, demonstrate the total futility of the SLN, and levy a threat that amounted to promising the total destruction of the SL . . . and present it --- accurately --- as an act of restraint. It isn't going to keep a lot of individual Sollies from being pissed off as hell and wanting to do anything they can to break the GA's kneecaps post-war, but it is not going to produce the level of revanchism which would almost inevitably have been fatal to the GA's members in the fullness of time.

I have to admit that I don’t really see how a terrorist attack based on planting gigaton scale bombs inside inhabited station is tightly connected to a disasterously failed SLN attack that targeted clearly military targets and did minimal damage.

Is there are reason for a random observer to think that the bombsp would have never been detonated if the SLN hadn’t attacks? Well, no, once you go to that level the bombs were clearly going to go off whether or not the SLN attacked or not.

It’s roughly akin to blaming the UN for blowing up Manhattan because the inauguration of the new Secretary General was the trigger for a 20mt bomb in Manhattan planted by ISIS.

runsforcelery wrote:I didn’t say the SLN actually killed the 43,000,000. The death toll was, however, part of an attack in which the SLN was complicit. There’s not too much question about that. More to the point, for purposes of explaining the Alliance’s policy and the reason for Honor’s attack, those deaths occurred during an attack launched by the SLN. There is a plsusible connection between them, and – in fact — the bombs in the platforms would not have detonated without the Naval attack. The signal to detonate them, was transmitted only because the attack had taken place. Honor’s position statement was very carefully crafted. It didn’t save that the Mandarins had ordered the attack on the platforms; it said the mandarins had enabled the attack, which was true. My point is that war is a psychological exercise, Not just a “kill everybody on the other side” exercise. What happened at Beowulf provided the necessary psychological hook to launch Operation Nemesisand do it in a way which probably wouldn’t lead to the Leavue’s coming back for revenge in 15 or 20 years.


I might also point out that at the beginning of this conflict, the Alliance itself didn’t realize just how outclassed the SLN was. It took a little while for them to realize how much audacity they could a tualy get away with!

Here I am following the author into another classified thread again. My vow to hold out until the book comes through the junction is like the Manties walking on the rice paper Harrington's Doctrine was penned on. It's like opening gifts before Christmas, then rewrapping them. Doh!

Anyhoo, this post reminds me of something I already said that should have been obvious even to Solarian idiots...

The SLN had no business dilly-dallying around in-system.