Honor Among Enemies - David Weber

Honor Among Enemies
David Weber
Baen Books
Copyright: 1996
978-0671877835

The jacket blurb:

For Captain Honor Harrington, it's sometimes hard to know who the enemy really is. Despite political foes, professional jealousies, and the scandal which drove her into exile, she's been offered a chance to reclaim her career as an officer of the Royal Manticoran Navy. But there's a catch. She must assume command of a "squadron" of jury-rigged armed merchantmen with crew drawn from the dregs of her service and somehow stop the pirates who have taken advantage of the Havenite War to plunder the Star Kingdom's commerce.
That would be hard enough, but some of the "pirates" aren't exactly what they seem . . . and neither are some of her "friends," For Honor has been carefully chosen for her mission—by two implacable and powerful enemies.
The way they see it, either she stops the raiders or the raiders kill her . . . and either way, they win.

 The sixth book of the Honor Harrington series by David Weber seems a bit like going back in time. The story feels a bit like that of the first book in the series: On Basilisk Station. There's the excitement of personal command, and all of the problems it brings. There's also the fact that situations in the two books are rather reversed. This time it's Honor who's running the Q-ships rather than the Peeps.

There's been hints of it in previous books in the series, but the actions of the Peep characters in this book are a definite reminder that at least some of them have strong, ethical codes of honor. That's what I think the title of the book means, anyway. Well, that and the fact that Honor is surrounded by enemies on all sides. After all, she's commanding in Silesia. Piracy and corruption rule the day there.

Honor Among Enemies also has strong roles for some of my favorite secondary characters: Scotty Tremaine and Horace Harkness, and Shannon Foraker is starting to make her way up that list. Then there's Nimitz. We do see a lot of treecats in this book, which I like. They're one of those things that just makes this universe, if you know what I mean.

This is a series though, so I really would recommend starting at the first book and going from there. By this point there's just so much going on in the background that I don't know how effective a starting poing the book is for someone who's unfamiliar with the series to date.