Honor Harrington gets a bad ally and a worst enemies on a diplomatic mission. Friends and Allies pay the price but honor and justice is served at the from the business end of flaming torpedos! ( )

eBook from Baen ( )

Honor of the Queen is one of the weakest books in the series. It's unfortunate that the second is a letdown on the heels of the first, which is such a good stand-alone story. The premise is quite sound, and nothing per se is wrong with its pacing, but the main character tends to stray into unfortunate Mary Sue territory more often than in the other books, and cheap literary devices are used to garner sympathy from the reader, and the ending is quite frankly ludicrous.

First, regarding Harrington: Her self-doubt is fairly annoying, her decision to leave the system so as not to endure the derision of the misogynistic Grayson society (or "Space Mormons" as I like to call them) is mostly out of character. Her restraint in the face of finding out that the CO of a Masadan base tolerated and encouraged the sexual assault of her fellow Naval personnel is ludicrous and her choice not to blow his fucking brains out was completely ridiculous, a good chance to develop her character further and give her a "flaw" wasted.

Second: Sexual assault is used as a cheap device to garner sympathy from the reader on TWO separate occasions in the book, and it is something David Weber constantly struggles with for the rest of the series. Once, a female ensign is sexually harassed as she's landing a shuttle on Grayson, by a Grayson soldier of all things. She returns to the ship like a coward and keeps it all bottled up inside. Also, female prisoners are raped by male soldiers of the Masadi Navy (a splinter faction of even MORE militant Space Mormons than the people of Grayson). Alright, we get it, religious extremists are bad bad people. Weber uses sexual assault like a cudgel to tell you that this person is BAD, just as he used it in the first book, to indicate that the man who had sexually assaulted Harrington at the academy is a douchebag and will continue being a douchebag throughout the series. It's cheap, and it trivializes a very serious issue.

Third: The Space Mormons give Honor Harrington TITLE to LAND. What I'm saying here is that a society of Mormons who up until this point have treated women as second class citizens decide to appoint Honor Harrington, a FOREIGN woman, a provincial governor and owner of land on their planet for saving it. Even assuming that the leader of Grayson wanted to move his society in a progressive direction, the idea that Grayson society would accept this and not be irreparably harmed, or foment a revolution is entirely hard to swallow. I have no problem with the path David Weber wants to nudge Grayson in, as a reforming religious society. But to make Honor a noble-titled landholder on the planet immediately almost completely shatters the good feelings brought about by the victory of the good guys at the end of the books.

However, in light of reading the books subsequent to this, I do grasp why David Weber did this. Honor Harrington needed an "in" to the upper strata of Manticoran society, the nobility, House of Lords, et cetera. It would have been even more Mary Sue-ish to have her be the only non-nobility who tends to dine and speak with very important people on Manticore often. However I wish he had found a more delicate way to give her this "in" to Manticore high society without going so counter to Grayson society. ( )

It really is amazing how much politics there is in the early stories - they read like action stories, bu the reasons for the action are complex politics, domestic and external. Funny reading the Graysons' reaction to her, when I know how they'll regard her later... ( )

Knight Companion of the Order of King Roger
Duchess of the Star Kingdom of Manticore
Star of Grayson
Steadholder of Grayson
Captain of the heavy cruiser HMS _Fearless_ ( )