I finished A Rising Thunder, by David
Weber, recently. Well, I say finished; really, I devoured it,
covering its four hundred and sixty-four pages in about three days. Even for an
inveterate book-lover like myself, such progress is unusual, a
testament to the hook Weber's 'Honorverse' series has on me. But
when I sat down to write this review, I was struck by the fact that,
really, this is a very difficult book to review. Because while it is
a book, it's not really a story.
It's actually been a fairly long time
since Weber wrote a straight, stand-alone story about his heroine.
The first few books could be taken as fully-realized tales set within
a expanding world, but by the fifth book, In Enemy Hands, Weber had
clearly been sucked into the ever-growing scope of his own universe.
Not that that's a bad thing; Weber has created a sprawling fictional
galaxy of hostile multi-planetary star nations, most of them trying
to play empire at the others' expense, populated by politicians,
spies, and naval officers who run the gamut from incompetent to
genius and from vile to heroic, regardless of what side of any border
they happen to be. The story has grown from a single star system
desperately trying to escape conquest by a massive, hopelessly
corrupt empire to an alliance of new friends and old enemies all
trying to, well, escape conquest by a massive, hopelessly corrupt
empire. But, you know, a different one from the first time around.
And with that growth have come new planets, new fleets, new
commanders, new politicians, new enemies and new allies, all of whom
have to be checked in on every now and then to advance the larger,
galactic-level plot.
Which is to say, the individual books
that attempt to get across the movements of dozens of characters
across a handful of states have largely fractured, turning from
self-contained narratives to somewhat arbitrarily-selected
dispatches. Waiting for the latest Honorverse book, I can't help
wondering if this is how people felt waiting for the latest chapter
of Dickens' works to be published in the newspapers.
By embracing that sense of
serialization, Weber has been able to keep the story moving pretty
smoothly. Unfortunately, he's done that at the expense of the actual
divisions of the books themselves. The latest one, A Rising Thunder,
is the worsts offender; it essentially starts and ends at completely
arbitrary points. It's not the only one, though. Ever since the
issue with the Solarian League arose, with the exception of the
Shadow of Saganami/Storm from the Shadows spinoff series, the books
have transitioned away from 'building a story around, and to, a
singular confrontation' and towards 'telling the latest serial
instalment'. Which is what makes reviewing modern Honorverse stories
difficult, because it's become the equivalent of reviewing the
chapters of a book.
Still, there are a few things you can
say about it. The Honorverse books, after all, are marked by a few
recurring themes, and within the series you can judge the worth of a
book by how well it hits those themes. And within that metric, A
Rising Thunder does pretty well. It carries on the evolution of the
Manticorn Alliance, the trials and tribulations of which have been a
constant issue, and builds on the growth of the Republic of Haven,
particularly the alliance between the two of them that kicked off at
the end of Mission of Honor. It builds up the threat of the Mesan
Alignment, particularly their nanotech mind-control abilities. And
it gives hints that, like the corrupt Peoples Republic before it, the
Solarian League does actually have some competent, honorable
individuals working within its borders. None of them seem in the
kind of key positions that Theisman, Giscard and Tourville enjoyed,
yet, but if the League is serious about fighting the Manticoran
Alliance there should be plenty of dead men's shoes to step into
quite quickly.
Unfortunately, A Rising Thunder is
rather bigger on political manoeuvring than it is on space combat.
There is one major space battle in the book, about two-thirds of the
way through, and it breaks very sharply from the Honorverse's
tradition of 'outmanned, outgunned, but not out-thought'. Rather
than being a matter of tactical genius overcoming crushing odds, the
Manticorans enjoy total intelligence on the enemy force, the
defensive position, superior technology and superior numbers. It's a
well-executed plan, and it has Honor's trademark cunning, but it
lacks the thrill of Terekhov's battle at Monica or Rozsak at Torch.
Worse, despite being billed as 'an Honor Harrington Adventure' and
falling in the main line of the series, that is, the books that are
supposed to be about Honor herself, the woman doesn't appear until
over a hundred pages into the story, and her role is extremely minor
given the scope of the story now being told. It may be that, with
the series having grown so expansive, and Honor having attained such
advanced rank, she can no longer be sent on the kind of desperate
missions that made the earlier books such pleasures, but if that's
the case then perhaps she should be retired from the novel series in
favour of the Crown of Slaves/Torch of Freedom and Shadow of
Saganami/Storm from the Shadows storylines.
A Rising Thunder isn't a bad instalment
in the series. It moves the story along nicely, it introduces some
characters who are likely to play important roles down the line, and
while it never comes to an open fight, there are some well-written,
tense moments of Manticoran naval ships trying to get out of, and get
the Manticoran Merchant Marine out of, Solarian space. But the
actual space battle is a one-sided and rather dull affair, the
Alignment is still a giant cipher of moustache-twirling villains, and
the character who's billed on the cover has relatively little page
time. For those already invested in the series it's a nice addition,
but I could never in good conscience recommend a first-time
Honorverse reader pick up this book.
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