Review::Honor Among Enemies by David Weber (Book 6 Honor Harrington series)

Honor Among Enemies by David Weber

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Honor Among Enemies by David Weber (Book 6 Honor Harrington series)

Having no power for 8 days seemed like the prime time to catch up on the Honor Series. Honor Among Enemies seemed like the turning point for me. The previous 5 my mind would go numb and white noise would start when all the exposition about tactics and armament would begin. I know they are important to the big plot of the series but I was in this for Honor. This book David Weber seems to have perfected whatever it is he's been trying to do all this time, because I am becoming more focused on what is happening in all the other stories that go on in here.

Honor Among Enemies has 40 pages (over 12K words) and two chapters before Honor even shows up. But instead of throwing it down in disgust I read the forty pages and was somewhat entertained. This time being about my third read with this book I have the advantage of having tried to pay attention to what goes on in the exposition. This book has about 8 strong stories within it dealing with various characters who eventually intersect with Honor somewhere along the way and it might be the first book to begin down the path of romance for Honor and Hamish, which is a long and rocky winding twisted road.

This is the first book that when in Honor's POV I actually noticed some character outside of the stiff rigid character she always has to portray. Most of how we see Honor from her own POV is the front she puts up to deal with the tension of the serious situations she is always confronted with. Sure we saw her break down a few times over the death of Paul, but even then we did not see the depth of her personality. Most of the time that depth comes from how others see here through their adoration, appreciation, and idolization of their commander. We also begin to see the growing plot pertaining to Nimitz and the other treecats as something more than just curious pets linked to their human.

As much as it sometimes pains to have to wade through all the politics and intrigue, the flavor for me now has turned toward what I always loved about Alexander Dumas writing. And we are even being introduced to some very interesting Peeps in this book, all preliminary steps toward moving into the next book In Enemy Hands.

I also begin in this and the next novel to be able to appreciate how David Weber manages to almost seamlessly move his POV in and out of multiple character's heads, with no apparent warning, as a scene shoots by . There are a few places where if when I wasn't quite wrapped into the story I had to stop and backtrack to make sure I was really in someone else head just a half page ago.

Overall this book is probably not that much different from the others and it's likely that I just have finally settled into how David Weber tells his story. I still lack the background in CS Forester's Horatio Hornblower series to make any comparisons though I have managed to do some homework in that area because I usually run afoul of someone in the camp who adore making comparisons.

I'm not sure that I'd be able to make many comparisons to the characters themselves other than at best Honor could only thinly be compared to Horatio. As to the battles its a tough decision since CS Forester put Horatio into few if any situation where he'd be in any historical battles, which makes it more difficult to determine if his battles were of any importance at all especially since he was often out of communication with England and not always up to date with the current diplomatic situations. Honor on the other hand does fight in areas that seem of less concern and yet all her battles become historically important in the stories. Also Honor doesn't have a dowdy husband at her home port that she cheats on.

Anyway this is great stuff for those who like their SFF with military-tactical-suspense and drama.

J.L. Dobias



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