Mission of Honor

2010

Originally advertised at ove 800 pages long, this book actually checked in at spot on 600, including the list of characters.

Timewise, it opens almost directly after the Second Battle of New Tuscany (though the Sollies are still classifying these as incidents) and follows through the events in The Storm out of the Shadows though there is almost no direct overlap between the two storylines, the events of the latter story being very much 'off screen' in this novel. Although technically an Honor novel, Honor herself actually takes rather a back seat; she's in it but for a large part of the story, she is stuck in negotiations with the government of Haven as the two powers try to negotiate a peace to end a conflict that has been going on as long as Honor had been alive (she's somewhere in her sixties) and there is a distinct lack of action.

What this novel does is more-or-less focus on is the diplomatic manoeuvrings within the Solarian League and the Manticoran Empire and we begin to see more detailed goings on within the Mesan Alignment. It acts as a switch-point from the Manticoran/Haven conflict that has been the focus of the original series to the forthcoming bloodfests that will characterise the fighting between Manticore and the Sollies, and the Mesans and the rest of the human galaxy.

This book is unique in that it doesn't really have a single massive battle as a focus. The Mesan attack on the Maticoran yards actually hits home and we get to see some of the collateral damage to this, including some enraged treecats...

This lack of action may be rather nice after the hectic pace of some of the earlier books but it is clearly a placeholder as we wait for the next books in the series when things look like they are going to be heating up rather interestingly.

---