In Enemy Hands
(Honor Harrington #7)

David Weber

Riverdale: Baen Books, 1997. ISBN: 0-671-57770-0. Pp. 530

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

After her spectacular use of a Q-ship against pirates and Peeps, Honor Harrington returns to Grayson with a whole family of 'cats: Nimitz, Samantha, their progeny, and a bunch of relatives to look after them. It appears the treecats have decided that staying on Sphinx when a war is going on is not the most bright planning for their future as a species. Upon arrival, one of the 'cats adopts Miranda LaFollet, and I bet it's only a matter of time before they adopt someone from the Protector's family. While Honor's emphatic link with Nimitz is usually a source of strength, here it turns into a liability when she detects some, ahem, unprofessional feelings coming her way from Earl White Haven... and finds herself attracted to him too. To avoid the possible complications of getting romantically involved with a superior officer who happens to be married to an invalid, Honor gets herself assigned prematurely to some mission escorting merchant vessels.

Having been promoted to Commodore, Honor is not supposed to endanger her flagship, and so assigns the most dangerous escort job to Alistair McKeon: the position of the first ship to re-enter n-space where an ambush might be waiting. They are supposed to be going to a system in Manticoran hands, but the fortunes of war favor the inventive. The People's Republic of Haven finally seems to have begun getting its act together: they appear to have eased up on shooting their field commanders for anything short of complete success and are now well on their way of combining their mounting experience with more advanced technology smuggled from the Solarian League despite the embargo.

We have gotten so used to the Peeps screwing up that when they pull of an astonishing coup and capture the system from the Manties, we just see how Honor is going to stumble into their trap. But the bizarre arrangement that Weber uses to get Dame Harrington into a position in which she has no business being is a bit ridiculous: a birthday party for McKeon, smack in the middle of the translation that she had pronounced too risky herself. Before they can say incompetence or dereliction of duty, the Peeps set upon them and although she manages to maneuver in a way that saves the merchant vessels, she is forced to surrender!

This is where the book really picks up. After 250 pages of merciless info-dumping that might be interesting to some Star Trek Technical Manual writer wannabe, we finally get to what Weber does best: adventure. Now, I have to admit that some of the political background is crucial, especially the internal developments on Haven because they are likely to have great repercussions for the war. The sinister Committee of Public Safety partially comes to its senses and invites Navy Admiral Esther McQueen to become the interim Minister of War, bringing some professionalism to the fighting. The boss of the propaganda section, the powerful Cordelia Ransom, is none too happy, and her boundless energy and faith in her own judgment makes her a dangerous fanatic. When Honor and her crew fall into Peep hands she is the one to override the honorable officers in her own military who seek to treat Honor with the appropriate courtesy and dignity. Instead, Cordelia dusts off the fake conviction from On Basilisk Station and has Honor declared a common civilian criminal who cannot come under the protection of the Deneb Accords that govern the treatment of POWs.

This is where the story sags a bit in the believability department. It's just that all those Peep commanders are too damn honorable, too enchanted with Honor, and in fact if I were an StateSec man, I'd probably be on their case too. It is also a bit naive to think that people who are so afraid of the political commissars attached to spy on them will actually have the guts to sabotage the Committee's wishes. Either they are weasels, in which case honor does not enter the calculations, or they are brave men and women ready to stand firm for their principles even if that means facing the firing squad or vacationing in the Havenite equivalent of Siberia.

The other problem that I have mentioned before is Weber's tendency to spend too much time tracking minute facial expressions, fleeting thoughts, and deep analyses in the middle of dialogues. Where we should get a brisk exchange of lines in rapid-fire succession, we get one sentence, then pages upon pages of overwhelming detail and rumination, and then, finally, a response that comes so late that I have to flip back to read the original sentence. It's just way too disconcerting, and it's also the main reason why this novel is twice as long as the earlier ones despite a similar load on the adventure front. I am dreading the next one and I fully expect Weber to hit 1,000 pages per book before the series is over.

Having said all that, I must admit that the last third of the book is absolutely explosive... in more ways than one. I could not put it down and had to read in the wee hours of the morning just to see how it would end. It's a nice change that Honor actually takes a back seat to the action and members of her crew get their chance to shine. Some familiar friendlies will sacrifice their lives to help Honor escape the death sentence Ransom had arranged for her, and the sheer nerve with which it is all perpetrated is breath-taking. This is what Weber should be writing, not some godawful romantic never-gonna-happen nonsense. The book ends with the ultimate cliff-hanger, and the next one is clearly going to be a direct sequel. I am on my way to the bookstore as I finish typing.

March 2, 2006