The Service of the Sword
(Worlds of Honor #4)

David Weber / Jane Lindskold / Timothy Zahn / John Ringo / Eric Flint

Riverdale: Baen, 2003. ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-8836-5. Pp. 665

Review © 2007 Branislav L. Slantchev

Another collection of short stories set in the Honorverse and edited by Weber. This time, the set is uneven: some stories could have easily been set in any random unnamed universe and as such are neither integral to the Honorverse history nor particularly illuminating of some interesting background characteristic or event from it. The two John Ringo stories fall into that category. Others are only serviceable and if it weren't for the emotional baggage any fan of the Honorverse carries with him into reading them, they would have been quite disappointing and unremarkable. The stories by Lindskold and Zahn are plainly guilty of being utterly pedestrian. Interestingly, Weber himself does not really rise much above his own average (which, admittedly, is pretty high) and comes very close to re-telling Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington from Changer of Worlds under the guise of regaling us with the narrative of the middy cruise of Abigail Hearns (the first Grayson woman to wear the Navy uniform). Despite its unusually high level of dirtside action, the story is not particularly captivating. I have to say that Eric Flint's is the best contribution to this volume, in terms of quality of writing, suspense, and fleshing out of an important character (Cachat).

Promised Land by Lindskold is about a group of Masadan women who flee their oppressive and abusive husbands/fathers/brothers/sons. There is some mildly entertaining action as the under-trained women make their escape just when a diplomatic mission from Manticore is trying to compete with Haven for potential support from Masada (this is before they realized just how fanatic and hopelessly theocratic the Masadan government is). But there really isn't much else going on. For one, the plight of women under the ridiculously improbably regime has already been dealt with by Weber. Now, putting aside the sheer implausibility of having a technically advanced society that can sustain inter-planetary travel while essentially subsisting on farms where the males get to exercise total control of their womenfolk, the treatment is uninspired at best. Lindskold spends her time on lurid detail (rape and such) without really delving into the much more debilitating and depressing question of how women have been conditioned not simply to accept this social order but regard it as just. Lindskold also weakens the case by having her protagonist be an outsider, which seems to suggest that the women could not have succeeded without such help. At any rate, I never liked Weber's take on polygamy on Grayson (or, later, in Honor's own case) and to read about what he seems to regard as the extreme version does not help him make the case for what he seems to think is an acceptable mild variant.

With One Stone by Timothy Zahn could have been really interesting. We get to learn that the use of gravity waves for FTL communication (which would become quite important in the Havenite wars) had its origins in yet another inspired move by Honor herself (flashing the impeller wedge). We also get to revel in the gentlemanly collaboration between RMN and the Andermani. We finally get to enjoy a cloak-and-dagger adventure with Rafe Cardones, of whom I never did get enough in the main-line novels. The rest of the plot, however, left a lot to be desired. The idea of an unscrupulous Solly trying to sell a powerful weapon that can shut off the impeller from a huge distance to the Peeps is, by itself, ok. The notion that the testing captain would be so dumb as to be misled so many times is, by itself, at least mildly plausible. That his inspection of a room on a comet from which a hostile signal was detected would be so cursory and easily thwarted by a stolen-towel ruse is, by itself, humorous if obviously necessary to save the plot. And him slipping into the stupidest possible trap during the final battle is, by itself, at least possible. But multiplying the probabilities of all these low-likelihood events together does not produce an impressive number. As a result, the story appears patched and unbelievable. I don't think the writing made it easier to swallow either.

A Ship Named Francis by John Ringo and Victor Mitchell is a very short, very funny piece that simply does not have to be set in the Honorverse. It would work just as well in just about any navy, wet or space-going alike. It's basically a story about a ship used by the navy as the dumping ground for all sorts of misfits and incompetents. The result is a hilarious parody of the usually solemn space travel genre. When we're not chuckling at the priest enumerating all the disasters that can befall the ship in his daily prayers, we are laughing at the Potato Sack Tobogganing, flatulence and all. And when we're not smirking at a ship getting lost because of inept astrogation, we might be smiling at the doc sabotaging the XO's unusually severe treatment of anything he perceives as slackness. A funny story all around that does nothing to enrich the Honorverse but at least does not make it duller.

Let's Go To Prague by John Ringo reads like a novel that was drastically cut in half and then cut again in three. The setup is grand: two Manticoran undercover agents blackmail their supply officer into providing them with top-of-the-line gear for an unauthorized sojourn to Prague, a Havenite outpost. When they get there, they naturally find themselves thick in intrigue as, unbeknownst to them, ONI has set up the extraction of a defecting Havenite admiral. Of course, StateSec is on his heels and our two intrepid agents just happen to run into him (or, rather, he happens to run into them as they urinate on a wall). Of course, one of our agents has fallen for a highly disreputable woman, an exotic dancer, who naturally will turn out to have some highly improbable skills, knowledge, and unsavory, at least on first glance, friends. There is some under-ground chasing, some informer-skull-bashing, and even some rolling in the proverbial hay, but nothing can top the utterly incredible final revelation about the identity of the dancer. The story simply sounds like something that should have had a lot more characters: they just got collapsed haphazardly into one person or another when the author (or editor?) took the scissors to the story. Weak, indeed, and definitely below Ringo's usual.

Fanatic by Eric Flint is, hands-down, the best of the bunch. This is set almost immediately after the events in From the Highlands in Changer of Worlds: the events take place shortly after McQueen's attempted coup, they start before the fall of Saint-Just's regime and end after Theisman's restoration of the Republic. Here, Victor Cachat is dispatched to the La Martine sector to ensure the political reliability of the military and StateSec elements in that far-off place. His title is Special Investigator for the Director and his arrival heralds a systematic purge of people connected to the murder of Jamka, the highest-ranking official in the sector. (Jamka had been a pervert who murdered people for pleasure, his latest victim being a naval officer.) Cachat's brutal interrogation, cold-blooded execution, and general imperturbable bearing lead the 'locals' to regard him as a fanatic. And yet he somehow manages to earn the grudging admiration of even his most disaffected critic, one Yuri Radamacher, a people's commissioner himself. And yet, his methods do seem a bit over-the-top, so much so that even a reader who knows about Cachat will be left in vague discomfort if not complete disorientation. This is Flint's skill: portraying Cachat's cunning tactic in a way that would catch even readers "in the know" unprepared and would yet make perfect sense by the end of the story. I can't wait to read the sequel to Crown of Slaves now.

The Service of the Sword is Weber's contribution to this volume. It is the story of how Abigail Hearns, the daughter of Steadholder Owens, made her snotty cruise on board of Gauntlet under the command of Oversteegen, how she overcame (mostly imagined) prejudice against Graysons (in general and Grayson women in particular) in the Royal Manticoran Navy, how she nearly got herself killed in ground action when pirates attempted to hunt down the crew of her shuttle, and how she won the medal for Conspicuous Gallantry for that. On some level, this is too close to Honor's snotty cruise (it seems everybody of note gets to do something truly brave and heroic on her first ever assignment) and as such the plot begins wearing thin very quickly. (Heck, we even have the unwelcome attention of the overbearing, stupid, and vindictive aristocrat... but, thank goodness, without the attempted rape.) Aside from some fairly engaging space action around the planet of Refuge and a thoroughly absorbing ground hunt on the planet itself, there isn't much to recommend this piece. For example, Abigail works out her own hangups with enviable efficiency totally oblivious to the usual difficulty of getting feelings aligned with logic. But if we ignore the somewhat impossible odds of a heavy cruiser defeating four Solarian-equipped cruisers (manned by Silesians but with Solarian and Andermani elements in command), the action is at least entertaining. One won't learn much about the Honorverse but one won't be bored either.

April 29, 2007