Subject: Review: Honor Harrington: In Enemy Hands by David Weber

From: [email-masked] (SFRevu)
Date: 02 Sep 1997 21:08:46 GMT

Honor Harrington: In Enemy Hands by David Weber (reviewed by Bob Devney) 
	Review Copyright 1997 by Ernest Lilley 

Honor's in trouble again.

She's suddenly developing feelings for an attractive older man she's liked
for a while, but not THAT WAY until now. Unfortunately, he's her superior
officer. Even more vexing, he's got entirely the wrong slant on some new
multistage missiles with a performance envelope she'd gladly sacrifice 18
percent of her broadside for!

As if that weren't bad enough, comes the most one-sided defeat in the
history of the Royal Manticoran Navy. Plus, since the book title already
gives it away, let's just say that anybody whose fantasies feature Honor
looking fetching in handcuffs may be pleased with this seventh far-future
space navy thriller starring the beautiful and deadly Lady Dame Honor
Harrington: Countess, Steadholder of Grayson, newly promoted Commodore of
the Royal Manticoran Navy, and complete 40th-century fox.

The Honor books combine a dash of Danielle Steele's romanticism with a big
dose of Tom Clancy's technothrills and anti-leftist politics in an SF
military/adventure milieu. Usually, they're a pleasant read if you like
anything in that mix.

Unfortunately, here the politics threaten to thwart the thrills. The
book's three measly space battles are swamped by three thousand political
discussions. Starting with the opening scene, which excitingly features
people sitting around a conference table thinking about recent political
history.

In a nod to the French Revolution, the kakistocratic nogoodniks heading up
Honor's enemies, the People's Republic of Haven, are called the Committee
of Public Safety. Led by Rob Pierre, get it? The Peeps are set up (and I
do mean set up) as a straight Marxist/socialist bureaucracy.

While the good guys, Manties and Graysons, are enlightened products of 40
centuries of human political development. You know, a hereditary monarchy
and a hereditary oligarchy ...

Weber does get your blood boiling as his bad guys commit the usual
socialist outrages. Tying the hands of the military, gutting free speech,
providing welfare to the poor, and so on. But in extrapolating a huge
star-spanning socialist empire just to expose its sins, isn't he
flagellating an extremely ex-equine?

Luckily, there are other familiar pleasures here.

We get the first inkling of a new parallel to wet navy technology, with
mention of sortieing the Manties' light attack craft from something
reminiscent of an aircraft carrier. This kind of thing is an enjoyable
constant in the series. Space navy technology 2,000 years from now seems
to be a mixture of 1805 (broadsides and a 3D equivalent of lines of
battle) and about 1985 (lasers, missiles, electronic countermeasures).
You keep waiting for Weber's swabbies to start sponging out their impeller
missile tubes.

Also returning, naturally, is Honor's cute, furry yet formidable empath/
symbiote/pet treecat, Nimitz, along with so many relatives that the next
volume may be called THE TROUBLE WITH TREECATS.

There's also the usual quota of old friends, subordinates, and retainers.
All so besotted by what a good person and outstanding officer our heroine
is that they're glad to be slaughtered so Honor can move on to higher
command in the next book.

%G ISBN 0-671-87793-3
%D August 1997
%P Baen Books hardcover

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