Customer Reviews

Flag in Exile (Honor Harrington Series, Book 5)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

David Weber has created Science fiction's equivalent of C.S. Forrestor's Horatio Hornblower saga with his ongoing saga of his heroine, Honor Harrington. With her faithful, and empathic, treecat Nimitz, this series is a true delight. This is swashbuckling, space opera sci-fi at its best, with excellent characters, a vibrant universe, complete with an intriguing socio-political plot which drives the overall plot of the background of this fascinating universe.

"Flag in Exile" opens with Honor Harrington having returned to Grayson, the patriarchial planet she saved in the 2nd novel in the series, "The Honor of the Queen." As a result of her efforts in that book, she was made Steadholder Harrington, one of the planet's 80 great nobles, with powers within her own domain far greater than any noble from her home system of Manticore.

Bearing the weight of the tragedies she sustained in the prior novel, ""Field of Dishonor", Honor is content to recover in private. But Grayson is desperately short on experienced officers, and Captain Honor Harrington, Royal Manticoran Navy, on half-pay from that service due to the political fallout of her quest for justice, is offered the rank of a full admiral in the Grayson Navy.

This novel spends time looking into the nature of Grayson politics, and has Honor and her treecat Nimitz dealing with religious zealots who cannot abide by the thought of what Honor, a woman, is doing to their male-dominated traditions. In addition, the Peoples Republic of Haven (Peeps) is attempting a counter-offensive in their war with the Manticoran Alliance. This novel serves to help widen the Honor Harrington Universe with its examination of Grayson politics.

Honor and friends must battle terrorists who would slaughter innocents, rampaging sexist bigots, and the ever-present menance of the Peeps. This book contains a brief afterword by the author relating a certain tragic event in this novel with the bombing in Oklahoma City. That afterword, and this book's look at the minds of religious zealots prepared to do anything for their beliefs, remains sadly relevant after the events of 9/11.

This is an excellent and enjoyable novel. The entire Honor Harrington series is perhaps the best space opera in the past decade plus.

If Manticore's politicians are so short-sighted and bound by personal enmity and cynical politics that they won't let the RMN make use of Hinor's talents and abilities, rest assured that Protector Benjamin and *his* Admiralty are not.

The People's Republic of Haven has begun to swing the tide of battle a bit; if not actually in its own favour so far, at least a bit less one-sidedly toward Manticore.

While this book certainly has its quota of lasers, grasers and missiles and deadly space warfare, the more important parts are politics on Grayson, the religion-dominated world where Honor has been made the first female Steadholder (roughly a Royal Duke in terms of our own peerages, and very much the great feudal lord that such a title once implied).

On half-pay from the Manty Navy, she is invited to join the Grayson one -- as an Admiral. She does, and the usual results of giving Honor Harrington spaceships to play with ensue. (This woman attracts Forlorn Hope Last Stands like Jessica Fletcher atttracts murderers...)

Meanwhile, on Grayson, various reactionary elemsnts, offended at the thought of a woman having power, and even more offended that Honor had made no attempt to hide her relationship with her late lover, are trying to stir up bogotry and hatred against her... And some of them are very powerful men, indeed; men who will stop at nothing to discredit her, even if it means the deaths of countless innocents -- possibly even their own people!

But what this book is mostly notable for, in my opinion, is that it shows us more of the Grayson State Church of Humanity Unbound, and its God the Tester... And of Reverend Hanks, the physically but spiritually great man who stands at its head; a truly Good Man in the way so few, even religious, are truly Good Men. ((David swears he is *not* based on Archdeacon (later Bishop) Pinckney of the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, who we both had the good fortune of knowing while we were kids and he he was Archdeacon in charge of missions in that diocese, but i cannot imagine any other face or voice for him...))

And there is a terrible crime -- two terrible crimes, actually -- that shake Grayson and its society to their roots.

And Honor must stand, literally sword in hand, to being justice to a traitor...

Good read.

((In interests of total candour, i am David Weber's elder brother))

"Flag in Exile" is the fifth book in a wonderful space opera series set some three thousand years in the future and featuring David Weber's best fictional heroine, "Honor Harrington."

These books are best read in sequence and I strongly recommend that you start with "On Basilisk Station" which is the first one.

The Honor Harrington stories are replete with parallels to the time of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In particular, the Royal Manticoran Navy in which the heroine is a captain is clearly based on the Royal Navy at the time of Nelson. (In this book she finds herself seconded to serve as an admiral in the navy of Manticore's ally, Grayson.)

The technology of space travel and naval warfare in the Honor Harrington stories has been written so as to impose tactical and strategic constraints on space navy officers similar to those which the technology of fighting sail imposed on wet navy officers two hundred years ago. Similarly the galactic situation in the novels contains many similarities to the strategic and political situation in European history in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

This seems to be quite deliberate: many thinly veiled (and amusing) hints in the books indicate that they are to some extent a tribute to C.S. Forester, while the main heroine of the books, Honor Harrington, appears to owe more than just her initials to C.S. Forester's character "Horatio Hornblower."

In the earlier book, "The Short Victorious War", Honor's home nation of Manticore, and their allies, were attacked by the People's Republic of Haven or "Peeps" - an agressive superpower which has been gradually conquering the small nations on its borders in bitesize chunks.

Following a coup in the People's Republic after their first round of attacks were not successful, Haven is now run by a "Committee of Public Safety" headed by one Rob S. Pierre, which has imposed a reign of terror. However, the new Peep government is just as committed to the war as the old one was.

Weber clearly means the reader to understand that Haven represents Revolutionary France. Early in this book, the Grayson High Admiral prsents a report to his head of state which concludes that "this is going to be a long, long war unless one side or the other completely screws up" and "this war isn't about territory any more. It's become a war for survival; someone - either the Kingdom of Manticore and its allies, including us, or the People's Republic of Haven - is going down this time, Your Grace. For good."

At the start of this book, Honor Harrington has been relieved of command of HMS Nike and put on half-pay after the fighting two controversial duels. So she has returned to Grayson where she is now a "steadholder" e.g. one of the most powerful people on the planet.

Up to this point in the series, Weber has appeared to show disdain and even contempt for politicians, but now that his heroine has become one, she has to think through the decisions she takes from that very different perspective. From this book onwards in the series, the way that political needs affect military objectives begins to be considered in a far more realistic and less oversimplified way.

However, Grayson doesn't just need Honor as a political leader: they desperately need her naval experience, so they ask her to take command of a squadron of superdreadnaughts.

More traditionalist elements on Grayson are horrified at the idea of a female steadholder, so Honor has to deal with some very nasty tactics, including a horrible act of terorism. Honor has to defend against enemies both within and without.

There is an author's note in my copy (September 1995) explaining that the original manuscript was completed in October 1994. Between the time it was finished and the novel's publication came the Oaklahoma bombing, an act Weber describes as "even more despicable than my fictional villains." He adds "That we cannot allow those actus to go unpunished or extend to those who commit them any shred of respect, whatever the "cause" which motivated them, is a lesson the civilised human community must teach itself."

At the time of writing there are thirteen full length novels and four short story collections in the "Honorverse" as the fictional galaxy in which these stories are set is sometimes known. The main series which tells the story of Honor Harrington herself currently runs to eleven novels; in order these are

On Basilisk Station
The Honor of the Queen
The Short Victorious War
Field of Dishonour
Flag in Exile
Honor among Enemies
In Enemy Hands
Echoes of Honor
Ashes of Victory
War of Honor
At All Costs

The four collections of short stories set in the same universe, not all of which feature Honor Harrington herself, are

More Than Honor
Worlds of Honor
Worlds of Honor III: Changer of Worlds
Worlds of Honor IV: The Service of the Sword

The two spin-off novels are "Crown of Slaves" (with Eric Flint) which is a story of espionage and intrigue featuring a number of characters first introduced in earlier Honor Harrington novels or "Honorverse" short story collections, and "The Shadow of Saganami" which is a kind of "next generation" novel featuring a number of younger officers in the navies of Manticore and her ally Grayson.

For amusement, if you want to try to look for the parallels to nations and individuals from the French revolutionary period and the Hornblower books, one possible translation would be:

People's Republic of Haven = France
Star Kingdom of Manticore = Great Britain
Gryphon = Scotland
Grayson = Portugal

Prime Minister Alan Summervale = Pitt the Younger
Hamish Alexander, later Earl White Haven = Admiral Edward Pellew
Honor Harrington = Horatio Hornblower
Alistair McKeon = William Bush

Crown loyalists and Centrists = Tory supporters of Pitt
Conservative Association = isolationist/hardline High Tories
New Kiev Liberals = Whig Oligarchists
Progressives and traditional liberals = Whig radicals

Legislaturist former rulers of Haven = Bourbon monarchy and French nobles
Rob S. Pierre = Robespierre
Committee of Public Safety = Committee of Public Safety

Anderman Empire = Kingdom of Prussia
Silesia = Poland
Solarian republic = United States of America

Wall of Battle = Line of Battle
Ship of the Wall = Ship of the Line
Battleship = "4th rate" sailing warship (in each case too small to form part of the main force in a fleet action, but powerful enough to defeat anything else smaller than a ship of the line/wall.)
Battlecruiser = frigate (5th rate)
Cruisers and destroyers = 6th rate and smaller warships

Step by step, Honor Harrington moves up in the world. In the last book, Field of Dischonor, Honor finally defeated her nemesis, Pavel Young (Earl North Hollow), once and for all. Also, Denver Summervale, the mass murderer from the first books, finally bites off more than he can chew.

But, alas, though the Queen, Prime Minister, and Naval Brass support Honor privately, politics dictates sending her away to please the opposition in the House of Lords. So, without a command, she goes to Grayson to take an active role in running her steading. Naturally, there are still malcontents like the crazy cleric Marchant and the steadholders Mueller and Burdette who would just love to kill her off and turn back the clock. Then, to top it all off, the Havenites have decided to invade Grayson again. Fortunately, Admiral Matthews and Protector Mayhew decide to give control of their growing fleet to Honor, and the Peeps will never know what hit them...

This is a great book, the culmination of all before. With north Hollow out of the way, Honor now takes on Grayson society and struggles to prove that she is not only a hero in war but in peace as well.

Honor is good as always, but, like in the last novels, I enjoyed even more reading about her friends and colleagues. In the last book it was the Queen and White Haven as well as Henke, McKeon and crew (especially the security chief). Now the spotlight is also on Clinkscales and Major LaFollet as well as the engineers of the Sky Dome Project, Protector Mayhew and High Admiral Matthews, and Reverend Hanks. It is great when Harrington discovers that her flag captain will be none other than former Peep Captain Alfredo Yu (then also finds out her chief of staff is Mercedes Bingham).

All of these characters shine. Mueller, Burdette, and Marchant are just as rotten as Pavel Young ever was, and danger after danger confronts Harrington from the war with Haven to the Sky Dome Project to wrangling with rival steadholders. Of course, Honor will come out on top: it is the journey there that is the most exciting.

So read this book...

Nothing interesting happens until chapter nine... 100 pages of slowness.

This book exaggerates the problems and heart of the Honor Harrington series. Like On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington), the last three chapters (about 50 pages total) have an awesome space battle. It's from chapter 30 onward, and it's the best part of the novel. Like The Honor of the Queen (Honor Harrington #2) the setting takes place in the Yeltsin system, and the first 375 pages contain hateful misogyny involving the Grayson variant of Catholic religion. It's 'let's hate girls' straight from the trashbin of Honor book two. Like The Short Victorious War (Honor Harrington #3) fifty pages superficially cover the political situation in the People's Republic, following a totalitarian coup, and ultimately add little to the book except inflating the page count. Like Field of Dishonor (Honor Harrington #4) a tragedy puts Honor Harrington offline for about five chapters, and the angst was annoying and overwritten.

I hated fifteen chapters, disliked seven, thought six were 'Ok', liked four, and loved the one where Clausewitz was mentioned. Using a chapter-based average, that means I rate the book at 2 stars. While I did enjoy small parts of the 442 page novel, my overall impression was a good editor should have disciplined the book to 300 pages and cut the irrelevancies and purple prose. I read Weber for space opera military battles, not for political science, definitely NOT for religious dogma, and not for tragic mysteries. This book had very little space opera (only about 1/6 of the content), which is why I didn't like the whole.

If book six shares the long passages of irrelevant 'told' exposition and (minor) character introspection, that may be it for me with this series. I simply didn't enjoy wading through so much junk to hit the highlights.

Of the five Honor Harrington books I've read so far, this is the only one that had me skipping pages. Weber moves away from what made the series so enjoyable -- the military angle -- and the result is a book that's 80 percent politics, with only a smattering of the fleet-dueling, ship-maneuvering fun.

Worse, there are seemingly endless passages of characters' introspection. Yes, it rounds them out to see their thought processes, but after 10 or 12 paragraphs that serve as either overdone exposition or needless history lesson, it's a bit tiresome.

Imagine something like this:

"Smith looked out the window at the fields below -- fields his father had inherited after the first civil war, which saw more than 80 percent of the farms in the region destroyed. His father, himself the child of a military man, had pledged never to let that happen again. And because his father was a Jonesian by birth, that promise also carried on to the younger Smith. Jonesians were known galaxy-wide for their unwavering resolve, a fact that had served Smith well. It helped, of course, that he had been trained at the Johnson Academy, known for instilling the virtues of both economic sense and military prowess in its students. But because those students often...."

You get the idea. Now imagine it going on and on for several pages. So much for "show them, don't tell them."

There are other issues with "Flag in Exile." Ironically, while such overzealous inner dialog gives supporting characters more depth, Honor Harrington is in danger of becoming a caricature. She's too perfect. Her officers are all incredible. Her staff is top of the line. Her crew is wonderful. Her plans always work. In earlier books we learned she's a perfect shot -- possibly one of the best there is. Her treecat, Nimitz, is the only one known to develop a two-way empathic link. In this book, [SPOILER WARNING!!!] despite less than a year's training, she's able to defeat one of the best sword fighters on the planet in a fraction of second while bruised, broken, and exhausted. [END SPOILER]

To say believability is stretched is an understatement.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first four books in the series, and will be starting the sixth soon. But if I find myself confronted with overly long exposition and a lead character who can do no wrong, that's it for Honor Harrington.

Honor harrington is my favorite book series, and this one doesn't dissapoint. we get to see a little more about Grayson, and some of the later scenes (I won't spoil them) involving the anti-Harrington terrorists are absolutely heart-wrenching. Five stars!

I truly enjoy this entire series. I have unfortunately had to read a few books out of order but I love everyone I read.

I am huge fan of David Weber. This is the 3rd copy of this book that I have bought as I re-read the series often enough paperbacks eventually start to fall apart in my hands. #5 keeps up the high octane pace and give a reader a different cultural point of view in the Honorverse.

not only it is good space opera, even for those like me, who is not military or ex military; but it is an excellent political thriller as well. WARNING: Do not attempt to read this book unless you have the time! otherwise it will raise havock with your schedule!!