Mostly diplomatic and spy related story that moves the overall conflict towards a conclusion, at least for this arc of the series. A few battles, but not as detailed as in the main Honor books. ( )

The trail to the Mesan Alignment is warming up. The Grand Alliance is on the hunt and they have found the first of the evil Alignments fake boltholes. And Honor is on the hunt….Excellent continuation of the series. ( )

It has been a very long time since I read an Honor Harrington book - years. I'd been stalled out by thinking I needed to read the last few to get situated in that universe again. Well, I read this; I was lost a few places, and uncertain who some people were (there are a _lot_ of people in these stories) or what exactly happened during referenced events - but it didn't prevent me following the story, and I think there was sufficient explanation of people and events that I knew what had happened. Another exceedingly complex story - Honor has a small (though major) part near the end, but it's mostly the spy squads (who start working together, which is interesting - Manticoran, Solarian, Torch (what's the adjective for them?), and Mesan groups all contribute). And reconstruction on Mesa, which was the part I liked best. The story isn't as done as they think it is, but the bad guys take some major hits. I'll definitely read the next. ( )

OK, the first hundred or so pages are deadly boring and only the fact that I'd actually had to go to quite a bit of effort to get hold of this kept me going, which was fortunate :-). There isn't much in the way of actual space warfare for a book in a series sold as space opera. bu by this deep into the series, this is actually part of the charm of the ongoing stories, no depending more on the political and intelligence shenanigans, which was well handled.

Overall, the book was enjoyable, with the traditional space battle at the end being the biggest let down ( )

I did enjoy this book, very much, despite its character and scope complexities. WW2, with 60 million casualties pales by comparison but is the only possible frame of reference that I can use for comparison. Battle scenes are good but I appreciate very much the detail and care that goes into the reasons for the actions. Flint, in particular, but Weber, as well are excellent at setting the stage for the actions that take place. A cast of characters would have been a very helpful inclusion. ( )