Classic SF book review: War of Honor by David Weber (Honorverse 10)
"I'd feel a lot better if I didn't know how many wars had started when neither side really wanted them to."
The above quote which is spoken in the novel by Admiral Thomas Theisman perfectly encapsulates this story. It is one of the best fictional treatments I have ever read about how nations can stumble into wars nobody wants though a toxic mixture of
- complacency,
- overconfidence,
- misreading the intentions of the other side, and
- ambitious politicians playing political games for their own domestic advantage but failing to consider how the results of their actions may be seen by people in other nations (or their own.)
Baron High Ridge, Prime Minister of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, has no intention of going back to war with Haven. He heads an extraordinary coalition government of ultra-reactionary Conservatives who make Donald J Trump or Nigel Farage look like woke liberals, in alliance with a Liberal party who very much are woke liberals and so much so that they make AOC, Zack Polanski or Jeremy Corbyn look rightwing. (If those names don't mean anything to you, imagine a coalition between the most right-wing and the most left-wing politicians in your own country.)
At the start of this book, that remarkable hard-right and hard-left alliance has held together for four years to two main reasons: firstly that they hate and fear Queen Elizabeth of Manticore more than they hate and fear one another, and secondly, the enormous peace dividend that came with four years of peace following a truce that stopped the shooting after more than a decade of total war has given the government enough money to achieve the aims of both halves of the coalition.
He's more than happy to let the negotiations for an actual peace treaty, which have dragged on interminably, continue for a few more years before producing a treaty, which means a technical war in which neither side has any intention of actually starting the shooting again - and that leaves all sorts of wartime rules in place which are very convenient for his government. But surely nobody in their right mind would want to start fighting again ...
Eloise Pritchard, President of the restored Republic of Haven (no longer the police state "People's Republic," thank you very much!) has no intention of going back to war with Manticore. After a decade of heavy losses during the war with the Manties, and four years of civil war with SS warlords who didn't like the overthrow of the People's Republic, a genuine peace seems like a really good idea.
However, restoring the Republic has meant restoring free elections. Pritchard's likely opponent at the next Presidential election is scoring a lot of popularity points with the voters by complaining about the fact that the Manties are dragging their feet in the peace negotiations and still occupy a lot of star systems they captured during the war.
Some of those systems have actually voted to join the Manties and as a genuine idealist, Pritchard is willing to respect their democratic wishes even if it costs her with the hardline element of her own voters. But most of them want the occupation to end - and if she doesn't make any progress getting those systems y and beleveback, she can kiss re-election goodbye.
The Emperor of the Aldermani Empire (think Prussia) is quite willing to go to war if that's the only way to get what he wants, but he would rather have a negotiated settlement. What he wants is a slice of Poland, oops sorry, Silesia, a region of space full of pirates and slavers which needs sorting out
He's been watching the improvements the Manticorans have made to their naval technology and thinks his own navy can match them. So he has sent his ships to hunt pirates throughout Silesia, and show off some of their new toys where the Manties can see them - so they will know when he goes to the Manticorans and demands that they let him have what he wants in Silesia, that trying to stop him could be costly.
But is High Ridge paying attention? And is there a danger that an over-aggressive Andermani captain might get the Empire and Manticore into a shooting war nobody really wants?
Or a danger that an over-ambitious politician trying to exploit the diplomatic deadlock between Manticore and Haven for his own ends might re-ignite the war that everyone wants even less?
Obviously, you will have to read the book to find out.
A note on the High Ridge administration in the novel. The unholy alliance between the hard-right and woke left which took power in Manticore at the end of the previous book and is still in power four years later at the start of this novel may seem incredible, but there was in fact a very broad-based coalition government in real history during the era which inspired these novels and which in some ways, though not all, is a pretty close analogue to the High Ridge government.
Manticore in these novels parallels Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Just as in the novels, the assassination of the long serving Prime Minister, the Duke of Cromarty, destroyed his government making the formation of some form of broadly-based coalition essential, in real history the natural death of Cromarty's analogue, the long-serving Prime Minister William Pitt (a.k.a. Pitt the Younger) was followed by the formation of a cross-party government of national unity known as the Ministry of All the Talents with William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, as Prime Minister.
However, despite the obvious parallels between the High Ridge government in the Honorverse novels and the Grenville ministry in real history, it would be wrong to make the comparison without also admitting that in at least one respect that comparison is unfair to the latter.
The "Ministry of all the talents" did while in office manage at least one major achievement of massive significance not just to Britain but to the world.
That was the government that passed the "Abolition of slave trade act 1807," the first law making the slave trade illegal.
It is probably not as widely acknowledged as it should be, because this fact doesn't fit certain political agendas, but over the following 60 years or so Britain did substantially more than every other country on earth put together to abolish the slave trade. And the "Ministry of all the talents" started that process.
Overall comment: like the rest of the Honorverse series, "War of Honor" is highly entertaining, and in fact I would rate it as one of the best books in the series.
You can buy "War of Honor" from Amazon at
War of Honor (Honor Harrington Book 10) eBook : Weber, David: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
More details of the series as a whole are given on this site at
Book Series overview: David Weber's "Honor Harrington" universe book reviews.
I can strongly recommend "War of Honor" and indeed the whole series.
Mitth'raw'nuruodo
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