The Honor of the Queen by David Weber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am a victim of having already read some really great MilSF, and so many of them have had vibrant characters and an outrageous hat-trick narrow escapes.

What does this mean for this particular novel?

Well, unfortunately, the characterizations were NOT as good as the setup in the first Honor book. It seemed rather cardboard-cutout, actually. So I have to rely mostly on good worldbuilding and battles to carry me through this particular novel. It's not a dealbreaker, but it does lessen my enjoyment by loads.

It's a shame, too, because I liked the interplay between the ice-queen and her new crew in the previous one. So years have passed and Honor gets the honor of being on a diplomatic mission as a prelude to war. It's tactics. Staging planets and beachheads and supply lines.

Unfortunately, the planet they're courting for this seems awfully Isreal mixed with a bit more fundamentalist elements that seem Muslim. This book is from '93, so on one hand, I can be somewhat impressed with the willingness to explore social craziness when it comes to women's roles, the perception in the military from the fundamentalist PoV as well as Honor, the exemplary female officer, balking and resolving some of her own issues when dealing with very different cultures. It's all right.

But by this point in my reading career, it's woefully flat and mild and full of aspects that I just can't quite believe.

This is a spacefaring society and, yes, the colonists here were fundamentalists under major terraforming problems that tortured the populace and made them regard women as breeding machines blah blah blah.

No.

So wait, the characters fell in quality and the seemingly impressive worldbuilding bits are kinda falling short? Possibly. So what's left?

Space Battle.

That was okay. :) Oh, and battle wounds. Particularly Honor. I felt something for her there. ; ;

I will probably continue this at some later date, but I'm not sure it warrants the full-press treatment anymore.

View all my reviews