Honorverse book review: "Mission of Honor" by David Weber (Honor Harrington book 12)

"Mission of Honor" by David Weber is military SF novel which basically continues the story of Admiral Honor Harrington after the original "Ms Hornblower in Space" story arc was largely concluded in the previous novel, "At all costs."

As the wars with Haven, which have lasted a generation and which Honor Harrington has been preparing for or fighting for her whole adult life, seem to be finally coming to an end, her nation, the Star Kingdom of Manticore (now the Star Empire) faces a new threat.

The reader knows, though at the start of this book most of the characters do not, that there is a centuries old conspiracy to improve the human genome through genetic engineering. Now you may ask, what's so evil about that - and indeed, the people working for that aim genuinely believe they are working for the good of what they see as the human race, which makes them far more dangerous, as many of them will give their lives for that cause and they believe nothing must stand in their way. 

So they will use tactics like starting massive wars which kill millions and millions of people to achieve their ends. And one of the wars they want to start is between the Star Empire of Manticore and the most powerful nation in in the galaxy, the Solarian League based on Earth itself.

As Honor is sent to Haven to negotiate a peace treaty, the galactic situation goes to hell in a handcart and the probability of an even more disastrous war than the one Honor is trying to bring to an end looms larger and larger ... 

Weber has been laying the ground for this new story arc in the previous two Honor Harrington books,  "War of Honor" and "At All Costs" and in two spin-off series. A number of characters from those books appear in this one.

These include some new enemies and a new "big bad," Albrecht Detwieler, head of the "Mesan Alignment." If you are interested in parallels between Sci-fi universes, there are some distinct parallels between the Mesan Alignment and the "Augments" from the Star Trek universe with Detweiler as Khan Noonien Singh, the "Transhumanists" from the "Jason Thanou" series created by David Weber's partner Steve White, or the Cetagandans from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan novels..

Overall comment: like the rest of the Honorverse series, "Mission of Honor" is highly entertaining, and  rewards the reader with some insightful and powerful scenes: it is also rather more tightly edited than one or two of the recent books in the series.

You can buy "Mission of Honor" from Amazon at

Mission Of Honor: (Honor Harrington book 12) by David Weber: Amazon.co.uk

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 "Mission of Honor" and indeed the whole series.

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