Echoes Of Honor - David Weber

Echoes Of Honor
David Weber
Baen Books
Copyright: 1998
0-671-57833-2

The cover description:

BACK FROM HELL

For eight bloody years, the Star Kingdom of Manticore and its allies have taken the war to the vastly more powerful People's Republic of Haven, and Commodore Honor Harrington has been in the forefront of that war.

But now Honor has fallen, captured by the Peep Navy, turned over to the forces of State Security ... and executed on the interstellar network's nightly news.

The Manticoran Alliance is stunned and infuriated by Honor's death and grimly resolved to avenge it. Yet their military is over-extended and the People's Republic is poised to take (he offensive once more, this time with a new strategy, new weapons, a new command team, and a whole new determination to win. The war is about to enter a phase of unprecedented ferocity . . . and the Alliance is on the short end of the stick.

But even as powerful Peep fleets hurtle towards their objectives, neither they nor the Alliance are aware of events occurring on a distant, isolated, inescapable prison planet called Hell. For what no one knows, not even State Security, is that Honor Harrington is not dead. She and a handful of her people are trapped on Hell, and determined to disprove the Peep boast that no one can ever escape it. Honor Harrington is going home, and taking her people with her... even if she has to conquer Hell to do it.

Unlike the last book in the Honor Harrington series, In Enemy Hands, this was a book I couldn't put down. Reread or not, I just had to keep turning the pages and seeing what happened next.

Echoes of Honor picked up right where the previous book left off: Honor's escape after the destruction of the State Security ship Tepes. She's alive, but she and her people are now stuck on a planet that's been used as a prison camp for decades. Everyone else, however, believes that she's dead: Peeps and Manticorans alike. After all, nobody can survive an impeller wedge being brought up inside another ship. Surely she's out of the game now...Or is she?

This is one of the more exciting books in the series recently. Honor's back in the thick of things and having to take direct action. Not to mention that there's a few fewer threads to the storyline, giving the characters each more time on the page. We also finally get to spend some time with Honor's parents as they grapple with her death and what to do about the various responsibilities Honor had, both in the Star Kingdom of Manticore and on Grayson.

Echoes of Honor is part of a series though. An ever growing series that started with the book On Basilisk Station. I think that this book is number eight, but I've honestly lost count of the books now. That's the downside to this wonderful world that David Weber has created - the sheer time commitment to read the books in order to this point is pretty big now.