At All Costs
(Honor Harrington #11)

David Weber

New York: Baen, 2005. ISBN: 1-4165-0911-9. Pp. 855

Review © 2007 Branislav L. Slantchev

After the somewhat tedious previous installment, this entry in the Honor Harrington saga had to go beyond advancing the plot: it had to essentially rescue the series from terminal decline. I approached the hefty tome with trepidation: Weber has steadily ratcheted up the abuse of the keyboard at the expense of story-telling (does anyone recall what a joy the slim first entry was?), so this could have been another unfortunate variant of the last novel with nary a development in sight but plenty of verbiage that was off-putting even to die-hard fans like me. Well, to cut the long story short (bad pun intended), on the balance Weber has succeed in the salvaging the series. It's not a triumphant return like the White Haven's in command of the victorious Eight Fleet before the last resumption of hostilities. It is more akin to Honor limping home at the helm of a battered battlecruiser that is good only for scrap metal. But at least it is a victory.

There are several problems that made this reading less satisfying than it could have been. However, before I say what these are, I should point out that this novel does mark a return to what Weber does best: brisk action sequences embedded in rather personal travails of the title character. (Mostly) gone is the sweeping and not entirely believable space opera of high politics. Also (thankfully) gone is the endless repetition of the same events from various view points. Honor is finally back in serious action, in more ways than one. Aside from the somewhat unsettling tendency to proffer missile counts for every engagement (that many were fired, of those that many lost lock, of those that did not, that many were fooled by EW counter-measures, of those that were not, that many were picked off by the last-ditch laser-cluster defense, of those that were not, that many wasted themselves against the impenetrable impeller wedge, and of the remaining that many were deflected by sidewalls... you get the idea). Aside from the fun factor declining precipitously with each reuse of the plot device, the bogus certainty injects surgical precision in what must be a thoroughly confusing engagement.

But aside from this, Weber has opted to replace the often mind-numbing succession of battles with a few skirmishes, interspersed with more or less probing attacks, followed by a colossal final engagement. In-between, the action is on the personal level: Honor is dealing with pressing family matters and President Pritchard is trying to figure out how to put a stop to the war. In this effort to make the war appear even more senseless than before, Weber has reached new depths of implausibility. Recall that Haven started the last bout of fighting in exasperation of what Pritchard perceived as the unbending position of the incompetent High Ridge government of Manticore. We, of course, know that the correspondence had been manipulated by Haven's Secretary of State. At any rate, the two enemies are back at it and this time nobody really wants the war. If only this fact were common knowledge... Naturally, this forces Weber to offer a plausible explanation of why the two opponents would be unable to negotiate an end anyway.

After spinning a complicated plot that would have Machiavelli reaching for the Cliff's Notes in utter confusion, Weber simply kills off all inconvenient characters, some by assassination and others in accidents. Of course, Pritchard eventually does get to realize that Haven and Manticore had been manipulated, so she offers a truce and a summit with Queen Elizabeth to negotiate peace. Manticore, which has itself been steadily losing the moral high ground, now has every incentive to settle, especially since the war has not been going well for them. Elizabeth, who often behaves more like a petulant child than a monarch (or maybe there's no difference?), finally refuses to go after a series of assassinations of Manticoran diplomats all point to Haven as the culprit. Weber did try to explain why the Queen would think the Havenites would do something so utterly unbelievably stupid, but I can't say that I was convinced myself. One really needs to be able to infer some rational motive for suggesting a peace summit and then wrecking it. To make matters worse, with Honor's emphatic abilities, which, by the way, are now known to high-placed people in both Manticore and Haven, could have simply been sent to meet with Pritchard to ascertain whether she did, in fact, order the assassinations (which she did not). Too many holes to list in this little subplot.

Be as it may, though, for at least this part is quite entertaining. The really off-putting subplot concerns Honor. As I surmised at the end of the previous novel, Weber was setting up a menage-a-trois among her, White Haven, and his wife. I never particularly cared for Heinlein's ventures into group water-sharing, and was surprised to see Weber going the same route. Of course, we have Grayson as a precedent of polygamy, but Manticore is not Grayson (and I did tend to treat Grayson's custom as a relic of a legacy that is quickly being redefined through the genetic engineering efforts of Honor's mother). Unfortunately, Honor does hook up with the couple. We then have to suffer truly awful scenes in which she and Emily profess undying love to each other. It's so mawkish, I was tempted to skip ahead. It is also absolutely unbelievable. Putting aside things like jealousy and competitiveness between the wives, I was having a hard time reconciling this behavior with Honor's character. Yes, I think Weber does not understand all that well what sort of person he has created in her. It simply beggars belief that she would do this, and I don't care how often her emphatic abilities tell her that Emily really isn't all that jealous. I am guessing that Weber really wanted her to have a baby but she could have fallen in love with someone like Paul and accomplished the same thing (by mistake, no less). For his part, White Haven is reduced to a blathering idiot whenever the two women are around him. Also difficult to believe. The "neat" trick with the marriage that would save Honor from extreme complications on Grayson is just the sort of thing that the younger Weber would have avoided like SARS. He would have relished the opportunity to set Honor up for a huge fall and let her come up with a way out of it. This was such a copt out, that I nearly missed the atrocious multi-religious ceremony where the respective "popes" of two Christian sects also profess themselves satisfied with the sufficient convergence of their dogmas.

With all this happiness and loving going around, I was beginning to wonder if anyone would ever get to suffer like they are supposed to in time of war. Weber finally gets around to killing off some very sympathetic characters (making some surprising choices), but it all feels oddly detached. Like watching a History Channel recreation of some war that happened several centuries ago. Simply put, not enough time spent dealing with emotions of the people involved. At least Weber managed to twist the plot enough to almost cause an outbreak of war between Manticore and the Solarian League. (This is linked to Terekhov and events in the Talbott Cluster that readers would know from The Shadow of Saganami.) For several breathless pages, it seemed like Manticore would have to accept whatever peace Haven was willing to offer in order to deal with the second front. For a while I actually thought that the two would be able to terminate their war and then jointly attack Mesa for its causing the last round of hostilities. Since this was not happening, I thought that maybe Manticore facing the Sollies would make for a truly scarring experience; at least the Star Kingdom would definitely operate from a position of weakness. It would not be a hopeless war, however, since the League is so thoroughly dysfunctional because of its ossified bureaucracy, I would have loved to see the Manties foment splinter movements in the various autonomous regions, leading to the behemoth falling apart even as it tried to hammer the kingdom into submission. Unfortunately, I don't think any of this is going to happen now.

The ending is brutal. Haven's desperate attack on the home system of Manticore left over half a million Manties dead, and probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 million Havenites before Tourville surrendered to Honor with her incredibly powerful new Apollo platforms. Both sides having battered each other into a stalemate, there is nobody to take the war to a victorious finish. But with these atrocious casualties, the prospects for peace are now dimmer than ever. I wonder if the domestic political considerations that Pritchard had when she ordered the last-ditch effort to show the Manties that they had to negotiate were worth the death toll. I really doubt it, to tell the truth. Which makes her desperate attempt look more like the gamble of a somewhat unhinged person than a judicious head of state. It just beggars belief that with what they knew about Manticore's prewar honest behavior they would risk such a gargantuan battle on the odd chance that it would make the Star Kingdom more amenable to talks. Somehow, by the end of this novel, Weber has succeeded in placing just about every major character in a bad light. Some more than others. Naturally, I can't wait for the sequel now.

March 4, 2007