At All Costs

2005

This novel carries right on from where War of Honor finished with the war between Haven and Manticore back in full throttle.

This is a full-up Honor-in-yer face book with Honor taking the front seat of the action as commander of Eighth Fleet, Manticore's premier offensive force.

Manticore itself is changing as well. No longer the single system polity that had fought the war with its allies but now the Star Empire of Manticore, trying to integrate both their section of the Silesian Confederation and the newly discovered Talbott Cluster. Not that much of this has any direct impact on the novel. The situation in the Talbott Confederacy is only mentioned for the coverage of the return of the starships Hexapuma and Warlock and the situation in Silesia is almost as summarilily disposed of with a passing mention of how the deployment there is almost as starved of the required ships as Honor is for the ships she requires to bring Eighth Fleet back up to strength.

Despite the preponderance of Honor, there's also quite a bit from the point of view of Haven's President Pritchard and her cabinet, which makes a refreshing change of pace from earlier books as the Havenites are shown with their own positive attitudes, not just as the strawdogs of the book.

Overall, Weber manages to avoid giving either side an overwhelming advantage either morally or in terms of technology (until near the end anyway...) and even Honor is shown in a near terminal situation in a couple of battles with a really bad defeat in Solon to tarnish the near god-like reputation she had built up until then.

The final big battle at the end really is an epic event and if it seems a bit unlikely there were any survivors, it was a damned close run battle

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