Don't expect too much. It's a fun quick read if you liked previous books in the series, but there's nothing new or surprising here. ( )

Trying to pacify the people , the rules of the People's Republic of Haven, hope a short victorious war against the Star Kingdom, will be just the thing to pacify the people. Little do they know that there is a war brewing at home, and Honor Harrington is aboard to worry about.
We get our lengthy introduction to the Peeps and how they operate. I like their short shortsightedness. Honor continues to be the best part of this series. ( )

Not my favorite Honor book so far. I read these for fun military action and a kick ass protag. What I got was a lot of side action (relevant, but long), and a lot of telling about what happened instead of showing. I appreciate brevity in books, but I felt like the wrong parts were summarized. ( )

The People's Republic of Haven is in trouble. Their economy is tanking because so many of their people are on public assistance. They can only support their economy and the privileges the wealthy enjoy by continually adding new star systems to their Republic. So they have the wonderful idea to start, or pretend to start, a war with Manticore.

Honor Harrington has completed her long complicated recovery from the injuries sustained in the previous book and has been assigned as Flag Captain to a new ship named Nike and sent with a task force to a frontier repair base. The only problem is that that Admiral in charge of the task force doesn't like Honor whom he sees as hot-tempered and reckless which causes some problems for her despite the support of her immediate superior who is also in the Admiral's bad books.

Since the Peeps are conducting all sorts of feints into neighboring star systems, the Admiral decides that he needs to defend one of the more populous systems and leaves Honor and her boss to defend the repair facility with very little help.

Haven has been secretly watching the whole area with stealth ships and knows when the largest part of the force leaves the repair facility and knows that it is time to take it and bring the war into official existence. It should be easy as their ships and armaments vastly outnumber those left with Honor. But Honor and her boss have done all the tricky planning they can to get their system as safe as it can be and can hope to hold out until help arrives to support them.

Meanwhile on Haven, Rob Pierre is planning a revolution which will take down the current government and put himself and his own supporters in control. And he is planning to use part of the Navy he hates to accomplish his goals.

This was another exciting episode in the Honor Harrington series. It was filled with action and adventure. ( )

Mostly okay, but pretty thin. ( )