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January 14, 2004

The Short Victorious War

This is the third book of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, following the career of a naval officer in a space fleet. Chief among the flaws of this series is the simplistic characterization, with lots of not-so-subtle backing plot to let us know who the bad guys, good guys, gruff guys and just imcompetent guys are, so we know who to root for and who to tsk-tsk.

I was willing to live with that as I found the meticulous embedding of wooden ship battle strategies into a space opera entertaining of itself. However, by the third novel, that's gotten old hat, and the continuous wholesale and transparent borrowing of characters and nations from history continues to be rather heavy-handed (Rob. S. Pierre? Please!)

I'm beginning to think that getting some ten or twenty books for the price of one wasn't such a good deal after all. In any case, I'll read one of the other authors on the CD before attempting any more Honor Harrington. They're not bad, understand, just standard fare, and more of the same...

On the other hand, some people really hate this stuff:

[The Honor Harrington books] were bad. They were very, very bad. To paraphrase Pratchett, they were so bad they went though the other side of bad and were simply not very good anymore. Look, there go some one-dimensional bad guys! Look, there goes the one-dimensional good guy (well, person)! Look, she's put in impossible tactical odds and yet somehow still manages to triumph! Look, she gets no respect back at home! Look, the next book rehashes the EXACT SAME PLOT. Needless to say, I do not like David Weber, nor do I like the Honor Harrington books. I am deeply distrustful of anyone who does.

Roy Rapoport

Posted by dpwakefield at January 14, 2004 10:22 PM