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A review by sleeping_while_awake
The Short Victorious War by David Weber
2.0
Close to three stars, but I hit such a block when reading the middle of this book. It took me a week to get through one chapter.
The Short Victorious War is an idea by the People's Republic of Haven to draw Manticore into a war, in order to distract their populace from the unrest and widespread economic and political issues on Haven.
In the beginning, Honor is recovering from a head wound, and is adapting to a new bionic eye. She is called back to duty, and assumes command of the ship Nike as the flag captain in her squadron under Admiral Sarnow. After some time, Pavel Young, her enemy, i.e. attempted rapist, also joins the squadron. However, Honor does find some romance with another officer, and surprisingly, she does have character development.
There aren't many battles in the beginning and middle. Much of the action is placed towards the end. The middle is so focused on the strategy, from multiple point of views, and I wasn't very invested in the merry-go-round of characters driving the narrative. It got so heavy I had a hard time getting through the middle. Once it got to the actual battle, it felt like a re-hash of the strategy portions.
I really liked Honor's character development. I was surprised that she got any development, and the beginning of the book was my favorite. Honestly, all the parts with Honor are really great, but I kept falling asleep with all the strategy talk.
Not to mention the seemingly hundreds of characters that are mentioned! It was definitely hard for me to keep track of the command structure. At one point I was making notes of the connections among all the characters.
The way Pavel Young was handled was a bit odd. Considering that he tried to rape Honor, I found it weird that another character (male) is trying to get her to see how bad Young's life is now after Honor beat him up. And that Honor truly considers this and has some sympathy. I guess if I were I Honor's position I would not care at all what happened to him.
I liked the French references with Haven. I found it amusing that there is a Rob S. Pierre in the narrative. If you know even a little bit of French history, you can guess what that character's about.
I preferred the previous book, but I think there is potential if the battles don't become such a copy of the strategy. It makes the reading very repetitious. This book was written over 20 years ago at this point, and I think it shows its age somewhat in its style.
The Short Victorious War is an idea by the People's Republic of Haven to draw Manticore into a war, in order to distract their populace from the unrest and widespread economic and political issues on Haven.
In the beginning, Honor is recovering from a head wound, and is adapting to a new bionic eye. She is called back to duty, and assumes command of the ship Nike as the flag captain in her squadron under Admiral Sarnow. After some time, Pavel Young, her enemy, i.e. attempted rapist, also joins the squadron. However, Honor does find some romance with another officer, and surprisingly, she does have character development.
There aren't many battles in the beginning and middle. Much of the action is placed towards the end. The middle is so focused on the strategy, from multiple point of views, and I wasn't very invested in the merry-go-round of characters driving the narrative. It got so heavy I had a hard time getting through the middle. Once it got to the actual battle, it felt like a re-hash of the strategy portions.
I really liked Honor's character development. I was surprised that she got any development, and the beginning of the book was my favorite. Honestly, all the parts with Honor are really great, but I kept falling asleep with all the strategy talk.
Not to mention the seemingly hundreds of characters that are mentioned! It was definitely hard for me to keep track of the command structure. At one point I was making notes of the connections among all the characters.
The way Pavel Young was handled was a bit odd. Considering that he tried to rape Honor, I found it weird that another character (male) is trying to get her to see how bad Young's life is now after Honor beat him up. And that Honor truly considers this and has some sympathy. I guess if I were I Honor's position I would not care at all what happened to him.
I liked the French references with Haven. I found it amusing that there is a Rob S. Pierre in the narrative. If you know even a little bit of French history, you can guess what that character's about.
I preferred the previous book, but I think there is potential if the battles don't become such a copy of the strategy. It makes the reading very repetitious. This book was written over 20 years ago at this point, and I think it shows its age somewhat in its style.