Customer Reviews

At All Costs (Honor Harrington #11)

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the People's Republic of Haven are still in the bloodiest war ever known. In a previous novel, readers learned that the Havenites believed the Manties, during a cease-fire, altered documents. Therefore, the Havenites fired the first shot, ending the cease-fire without even bothering to notify the Manties. Now the Havenites have reason to believe that the Manties never altered anything. In fact, it appears that one of their own did the altering, hoping to cause the war to continue ... and succeeded.

Haven President Eloise Pritchart wants nothing more than for the war to end. She releases a POW, who happens to be close to Honor Harrington, with a message for Queen Elizabeth. Eloise wants to meet and discuss terms for peace. Elizabeth is given the choice of when and where. Eloise asks that Honor be included, as well as, the treecats.

Honor Harrington is still close to Hamish and Emily (of White Haven). As Honor begins her return to the front, she learns that she is pregnant. Though all know, in the back of their minds anyway, who the father is, no one dares state it aloud. Since being killed in battle is always a possibility, Honor has her unborn child removed from herself and placed in a tube to mature. (Totally safe.) Those on Manticore and Grayson, depending on how they feel about Honor, are either thrilled to learn about an heir or furious and wanting to use the child as a weapon against the mother.

***** First off let me state that I hope the author creates a whole new series about Torch, its teenaged queen, and its Amazonian people. Such potential exists there. Queen Berry Zilwicki came across much better than Queen Amidala could ever hope to have done.

Honor Harrington is something of "a personal bogeyman" for the Havenites. As always, Honor's reputation for unusual strategies grows, with great reason. If a student is only as good as his or her teacher, then the author, David Weber, is down right scary! The planning, tactical details, and battle executions are unnerving to me. I totally believe Weber to be a genius in this regard.

As my husband or I read ANY book by Weber, we lose a lot of sleep. We no longer bother to inform the other of WHY we look so tired and exhausted. We simply look into the eyes of the other and say, with a voice of pure disgust, " Weber Evil." Those two words say it all. This series has my highest possible recommendation! *****

(...)

I've been a fan of David Weber's for many years and I've been growing increasingly disappointed with his Honor Harrington series. Weber developed a very real-feeling universe for his character to live in but over the last several books he appears more interested in talking about the universe than in developing the characters, plot, or story. In SHADOW OF SAGANAMI, Weber got back closer to his roots, but AT ALL COSTS feels too much like a wandering text and not enough like a story. His characters move around like pieces on a board and don't have the same emotional impact they once did.

For example, part of this book is supposed to be a love story--a love between Harrington and White Haven. I don't feel it like I did Honor and Paul's story. I don't feel the dramatic impact of a main character's death, because that character barely had two lines in the whole novel. If it were a TV series, I'd assume the actor had wanted out of his contract.

No, David Weber is still a good writer, but he has to get back to basics with this series. Cut down on the breadth and go for the depth, Mr. Weber; you can make it work again.

It pains me to admit it, but despite my own longtime love of Honor Harrington books, I waited a long time on this one, and only read it because my local library had a copy. You see, I found "War of Honor", the previous installment, to be almost agonizingly boring. Honor never commanded a single vessel up until the very end when she just happened to have her Elysian Space Navy on maneuvers at the right place at the right time. Nearly the entire book was spent on such things as Honor's "battle" with the smear campaign involving her, Emily, and Hamish; the Saganami Island students she was befriending; and the new efforts to communicate with treecats through sign. "War of Honor" was probably the most boring military sci-fi book I have ever read. I pretty much decided when it was over that David Weber must have forgotten how to tell an exciting story, and if I ever bothered to read "At All Costs" it would only be if I could get it free and felt like I didn't have anything better to read.

So having gone into sufficient detail how much I hated "War of Honor", "At All Costs" was absolutely gripping fiction at its very best.

For the first time, both Haven and Manticore are led by honest politicians. The war, by rights, ought to be ended. Republic of Haven's President Eloise Pritchart learns early in the story that it was her own Secretary of State that had been the one to alter the diplomatic dispatches with Manticore, resulting in her decision to launch her surprise attack. Now she desperately wants to bring a diplomatic end to the war. Unfortunately, the mysterious organization "Manpower" introduced in "Shadow of Saganami" has other plans for the two Star Nations.

Honor Harrington has been newly installed as Eighth Fleet's commander - the primary offensive fleet for the Royal Manticoran Navy. Her job is to find a way to convince the Havenites to cover their rear areas and reduce their fleet strength available for offensive operations. Unfortunately, she faces an opponent with an almost two to one advantage in hulls that not even superior Manticoran technology is sufficient to offset. Not only that, but they enjoy an advantage in ongoing construction, meaning their superiority is only going to increase. Her job won't be an easy one.

Tom Theisman, the Havenite Secretary of War, wants the war to end just as badly as President Eloise Pritchart. His dilemma is that while he too knows about the way his Star Nation was manipulated into going into war, the war itself enjoys too much popularity at home. Congress won't allow their forces to simply surrender and bring the fighting to a close. And if Manpower is going to sabotage any chance for a peaceful settlement, then the only other option is to end the war through an all-out military victory. And while he prays it won't come to that, Tom Theisman knows he's got the strength to make it happen.

"At All Costs" is not a book to be read if you can only devote a few hours to it here and there. From nearly the first chapter, David Weber weaves his most masterful and exciting plot ever, and putting the book down, even for a minute, can be almost agonizing. I know some will find it frustrating, and particularly the end might be unsatisfying for some. But I will enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who likes military sci-fi. This is absolutely the best I've ever come across within that genre, and certainly the best book in this series.

One last thing... David Weber's recently released "Shadow of Saganami" takes place in parallel with "At All Costs", and provides additional background on the workings of Manpower. You may want to read that one first, even though it isn't technically an Honor Harrington book.

The scale of the carnage is incredible. The star kingdom of Manticore is on the ropes and reeling after the resumption of hostilities with Haven. Neither side wanted the war; they were driven into it by self serving and lying politicians. Now the war has been resumed and it is an ugly one. Even when it seems that peace might break out, vested interests fan the flames and send the peace process down to defeat. That costs even more lives on both sides.

In the climax, the two sides come against each other in a titanic clash, the largest in history, in which all depends on a single roll of the dice. Whichever side wins, the carnage continues to mount.

Weber does his usual splendid job of characterization and laying the groundwork. He is masterful at creating characters we love and respect, characters we can both despise and respect, characters we want to lose but want it to happen gracefully and characters we just want an Acme safe to fall on. Strangely enough, that even happens.

This is not Weber's work but he sets such a high standard that even a middle of the road book is very good indeed. That is what we have here.

I was lucky enough to begin this series late enough that I was able to read the first 10 in quick succession. Then I had to wait for this one to come out. It was worth the wait.

Even for a fan of the Honor Harrington series, this is getting tired and uninteresting. Pretty much I agree with ALL the negative comments and think Duane's review did a particulary good job at listing many of the faults.

The only review I might disagree with is that you won't "get" this book if you haven't read the others. Perhaps you will miss some of the background depth but the real reason you should read the earlier books is that they are quite simply much better.

The one flaw that just drives me nuts is that this book does not stand alone AT ALL. It has a bunch of plot lines and instead of resolving most of them, leaving one or 2 dangling for the next novel in the money train, it resolves almost nothing. And what little it does, is so unsatisfactory, it's worse than trying to eat just one potato chip.

So the ponderous wordiness is a chore for at least the first 500 pages, then gets almost a little interesting for a couple hundred (hence the one star, for this part and the character development of the Havenites), then, the worst happens. Without putting any spoiler here, lets just say that the ending leaves you turning the page expecting more and instead makes you want to throw the book out the nearest window!

If you can stop your addiction to the Honor series before this book, it's probably time. If you really really must read this one, try waiting. Unless you really enjoy the torture of 800 pages with no resolution and almost no ending...
Yep, way past time to write a final chapter....

In this book the author gives us his usual rousing space battles with a better second villian in the genetic slavery folks than usual. But in his treatment of Honor's personal life he fails miserably to convince me that her emotional reactions to the personal events in this book are the ones of the same woman a few books back(not to be a spoiler, I will leave it there). I was in total disbelief at the treatment of some of the events. It was like a fairy romance, and I like romances but this one was way over the top, with not enough emotional inputs for you to understand why she, and other, love the way they do. I was aware that Weber was not being as 'self-honest' about the rigour of his work with Honor as he was in the beginning, when she was a tough cookie; now she has become an empathic marshmallow and I am no longer interested.
That is the last Honor Harrington book I will ever buy and I advise you to skip this one, unless of course you like shoot em up fairy romances, in which case, buy it.

That the combat is well written is no surprise. The plot as usual is very good with some nice suspense and twists
as well as humor. Weber came up with an interesting solution to Honor's relationship with the Alexanders. There are a couple interesting surprises though and the usual outstanding haracterizations.
There are also a few bobbles I find it hard to believe that someone on the Manty side did not come to the same conclusion that Pritchard et al did about who is doing the assignations. After all the basic question of "who benefits"? is always valid and points more to Mesa than to the PR. There are a few ditorial bobbles an acceleration of 40,000g is hard to take (pun ntended). And I don't think that worl is a word, there is also one paragraph that occurs twice.

The final battle is pretty horrendous but a logical consequence of bring large fleets of pod layers together. I wonder where Weber is going with the series? Can the PR and Manties get Mesa without involving the Solies? Could they along with the PR, the Andies and Ehorwinese take the Solies?

Overall a very good read highly recommended.

"At All Costs" has all the elements of a good Weber HH novel, but the sloppy writing drowns the entertainment.

This novel starts out slowly in order to build suspense. We're given a peek at the antagonists' evil (and not so evil) plots and shown how they have the upper hand. Meanwhile, Honor is shown in bucolic bliss (mostly) unaware of the mountain about to fall on her and the alliance.

Written tightly this would be a fine way to start a novel. Unfortunately, this consumes about 300 pages. An entire page (paperback) is devoted to why a particular room was chosen for a meeting. Treecat sign language is again described down to the joint movements. Did no one tell Weber that this was an idiotic device after "War of Honor"? Similar excesses of exposition litter the novel. You will not miss anything important if you simply skip half a page every time you detect one of Weber's self-indulgent excursions.

But half a page may not be enough!!! You must resample and possibly skip another half page to get past each of the useless expositions. Skipping pages requires an act of will for fear that you may miss something important, but trust me, in this book, you won't.

The middle two or three hundred pages are somewhat better, but the large chunks dealing with Honor's personal life are insipid and uninspiring. I do not object to Weber writing about Honor's personal life, nor to political maneuverings. I am not a space opera purist. I have enjoyed prose on those topics in the past (e.g. in "War of Honor"). There is simply no entertainment value in those topics in this novel. It's like Honor punched a ticket. Hmmm. okay, got approval, got married, high priest of superstitious nutters is pleased, got baby, check, check, check.

There's no conflict to be had in those topics at this point in the story. Oh, Weber tries to liven it up by endless discourse about public (dis)approval, but the fact is that Honor is wealthy, her friends are in total control of the Manty government, other friends have a lock on the Grayson government and the only human obstacle to her relationship with Hamish is practically lassoing Honor and tieing her to the bed for him--and Emily would too, if she had two good arms.

Her mother's help is nice, but Mrs. Harrington's flamboyant character has become trite. Okay, we get it. She doesn't follow convention. Cool. But it's not really interesting to show it to us again, unless it adds something to the plot development. Hurray, Emily had a baby. Babies are swell and fun to tickle. But reading about other folks tickling them is just dull.

Without conflict (in the broad sense) there is no entertainment. All of this material should have taken place off-stage and been mentioned only in passing. They may have been major events in Honor's life, but they were tiny tidbits in story terms. Yet those miniscule tidbits consumed an enormous share of this novel.

If Weber wanted it to be interesting, then he needed to add some conflict to them. For example, why is Honor so poised and able to fit into aristocratic society so easily, while her parents were presented to us as yeomen? The customs of the rich are generally not the customs of the middle-class. Yet, Honor has never tripped on this issue. Perhaps training in etiquette at Saganawi took care of that.

Also, *why* is she in love with Hamish, the old fart? Sure he's a great strategist and he's in the navy too (or was) but really, what's the attraction? I'm not convinced. If I was Honor's friend, I'd be speculating that she just has a case of coworker-romance. I.e. she worked with him so much she's mistaken collegiate cooperation for romantic intimacy. Or perhaps she is one of those strange (yet ubiquitous) women who is inevitably drawn to the most powerful man at hand.

I should mention that Clinkscale's funeral was touching. Also, assigning a guardsman to her son was very moving. These were great emotional moments. Unfortuantely, Weber also transcribes the entire funeral ceremony for us and then gives us half of a book of prayer when he transcribes five pages of christening ceremony into the novel.

The final 200 pages of the book are engaging and will keep you turning pages. Weber still writes interesting space combat motivated by strategic factors. And as you should have come to expect, the Manty's advantages are finally revealed near the end, and the odds are not quite as grim as the novel's introduction leads us to believe.

However, keeping Haven in the war causes the bones of the story to show a bit. Weber gives the Havenites a rationale for continuing the war which is barely believable. The rationale would be easily believable in the mouths of less intelligent characters, but the current leadership of Haven is too smart to lurch into war down the steps Weber paved for them. For that matter the Manty's rationale is a bit threadbare as well, given the facts at hand. However, it is more plausible than the Havenites' decisions because we have previously seen the Queen's implacable temper.

Weber has never been an excellent stylist. His strengths are in imaginative plots, interesting technology and believable, highly creative consequences drawn from that technology. On his good days he has the ability to draw engaging characters and carry them through a story decorated with his other strengths. This novel was not written on his good days.

Except near the end, his strengths are drowned in a sea of excess verbiage, explaining Weber's every rationale for the elements of the story. For example, the room-choice page mentioned above; I'm sure Weber carefully thought out what room would be used based on the elements of the story--but there was no need to explain that thought process to the audience!

Even a mediocre style editor could have vastly improved this book (and cut 300 pages). Heck, any college writing class which includes a mutual editing component could have shortened this book by 1/3, made it more readable, and vastly improved its entertainment value.

Did the reviewers who claimed that the whole novel was a page-turner read the same book as I did?

Long series of books usually draw readers in with interesting, well-written early novels. After that even a dud of a book can sell, because readers are so curious to know what happens next. This book is largely a dud, but if you must know how the Honor saga continues to unfold you'll still want to read this book. The only people who could possibly call this book well written and a stay-awake-all-night-page-turner are those who are beyond any rational desire to know what happens next in this on-going story.

I loved this series when it first started. The writing was sharp, the characters believable and the action sequences both compelling and intense. I haven't seen that from the series in a while though and certainly didn't see it here.

The plot concept and the characters are as good as ever but there was far too much dross in the middle. There were pages and pages of internal reflection, much of it redundant to descriptions that we'd just read. I found myself frequently wondering where the editor had gone and why no one helped Weber to tighten the book back up. The book was over 900 pages but should have been closer to 400.

I also found myself disenchanted with the author's recent approach to the battle sequences. Where the early books focused on tactics and innovation, the scenes in this book described little beyond tactical attrition. A little strategy and maneuver then everything boiled down to "this many thousands of missles launched, this many shot down, this many missed, this many the other, leaving this many to hit and blow everything up." It was hardly engaging reading.

Much as I loved the series at the start, I don't think that I'll be continuing it anymore.

The 11th volume in this long series is quite successful overall. It is almost as long as the prior "War of Honor", but doesn't feel so padded. As usual there's plenty of action, culminating in the largest space battle ever fought in this timeline. Weber is generally successful in moving Honor from a task force commander to an admiral commanding an entire fleet, and protraying the new challenges that involves.

As the story opens, Haven has a definite military edge over Manticore for the first time, due to the successful offensive in "War of Honor". Manticore is building frantically to recover it's strength, but Haven is also building on a huge scale and has enough quantitative edge to offset Manticore's superior technology, as well as far more capable leadership than in earlier volumes. That forces the Manties onto the defensive, while waiting for new ships and possible technological advances to return them to the initiative.

But the series is evolving as Weber developes the Havenite side further, and for the first time since the war started, the Haven leaders aren't the villains. Haven's new leadership is desperate for peace and has discovered what nobody on Manticore has yet guessed, that another party is manipulating both sides and pushing the war forward. (The Havenites don't know who that is, but the reader does.)

This novel is closely connected to "Crown of Slaves" and, to a lesser degree, "Shadow of Saganami". For the longtime reader who has been through the full series, I would recommend reading both of those before this one. So much use is made of the earlier novels that I suspect this book will prove unreadable for those who have never read any of the series to date.

The worst weakness is that Weber goes back to his habit in some earlier books of lavishing technical details and detailed math on the reader to a level that almost suggests OCD. "Nike and Hector were still 20,589,000 kilometers from Vespasian, but their velocity was down to a mere, 5,265 KPS as they continued to decelerate at a steady 5.31KS2....They would both be down to 2079 KPS and less than 400,000 kilometers from their planned zero-zero point - or about 18,400,000 kilometers from Vespasien." (p 365) And for all the elaboration of Weber's technical analysis, it doesn't seem convincing. He talks endlessly about the maximum effective ranges of the missiles that are the primary weapons of space warfare in this universe, but why should missiles in space have a maximum effective range at all? Particularly when, as Weber specifies for the weapons in this book, they reach a maximum verlocity of about 0.8 c and have onboard AIs for targeting.

Weber goes into equal and even more unnecessary detail in describing the sign language developed for treecat-human communication.

Still, this sort of stuff is classic Weber and if, like me, you've read the full series, you're accustomed by now to these little quirks. The strong story here is easily sufficient to make up for Weber's little tics.

The novel does seem to bringing the series measurably closer to completion. The reviewer below who said that we're being prepared for a Manty-Haven alliance against the Sol Confederacy is almost certainly right; I'll go a little further and predict that to help create it, Honor will, in the next volume, refuse a direct order from Elizabeth to destroy Haven targets, probably the home system.