Torch of Freedom: Volume 4

my favorate author

David Weber and Eric Flint have scored a home run with this one. I could not put it down. It is not "too wordy." On the contrary, I didn't want it to end. All of the subplots eventually tied together. The Big Picture is still left unresolved, but that is to be expected. I am very much looking forward to more of this story. Having read all of the Honorverse stories published to date, I agree with the reviewer whose opinion was that Honor herself has become too big a player to be included in the kinds of stories that David Weber tells best. Just as when Tom Clancy's character Jack Ryan moved up in rank and influence his stories dealt less with field operations and more with political intrigue. The stories are still good reading, but not the same kind of action. This book picks up at the end of Crown of Slaves and does it one better. We get to see just how evil the grand schemes of the genetic slavers are, and how (and why) they have been manipulating galactic events. We also are treated to a great spy story with some nail-biting moments. And it ends with a terrific space battle with small units - like earlier Harrington stories. Hooray! I don't know how he does it, but no matter how many space battles Weber writes, they are all unique. I may be looking forward to the next book in this series *more* than the next Harrington book! (Gasp!) Bring it on, gentlemen.

This is a quite worthy sequel to Crown of Slaves and is a very good bridge novel between that one and a return to the main honorverse sequel that Weber appears to be working away for 2010. As others have mentioned, the parts dealing with Berry were great. It also introduced an introduces a new cast of characters and a harrowing black op mission on Mesa that really furthers the plot that will be coming in the next book. That and the action taking place around Torch. Well worth reading and as all recent Weber hard bounds it includes a e-book library dvd (am presently reading Storm From the Shadows by Weber from it) that is worth things all by itself. Well worth reading. While I still rate Crown of Slaves as more fun, this one had its definite moments and sets the stage for so much more.

Like many other Baen hardbacks, particularly other Weber novels, this comes with a CD full of ebooks. The books include all of the other Honor Harrington universe books (mainline, Saganami Island subseries, Manpower subseries, and anthologies) plus most (perhaps all) of his other Baen published books. Of course the Tor published Safehold series is not included. Still, there are about 40 books included in HTML, Word, Mobireader, Lit, EPUB, RTF, and LRF formats. Nov 23 update: This novel, "Torch of Freedom," is not actually included on the disc as it was made before a suitable manuscript was available. A nice bonus.

For me, there's a real tension between Davids Weber's strengths as a storyteller and the current state of Honor Harrington's life. Weber's strengths are exploring a person's or small group's heroism as they plug away at their own part of a grand unfolding series of events. That's the rich and heady broth on which the original Honor books were built, and a mighty fine edifice they are. However, the more successful Honor is, as a Navy officer in a nation at war, success is going to promote her off the command deck of her own ship, and even (as it has now) off the squadron flag deck. As she's become more a fleet commander and politician, the series has (of necessity) wandered away from its storytelling roots to become something larger and more epic. Honor is still a character I adore, but her stories are not the kind of space opera I like best, which comes down to individual actions within a larger scheme of things. Additionally, as the action has progressed, there are now a ridiculous number of characters and theaters of action, far too many to track in one linear series of novels. Weber (and his partner in crime, Eric Flint) have wisely diversified the series to take advantage of both the storytelling opportunities and to wrestle the beast into something resembling coherent novel-sized pieces. The books of the Honorverse now seem to have three main streams. One, of course, is the story of Honor, which I will keep reading, only because that's where the grand unfolding of the galactic history occurs (and because I adore Honor -- did I mention that?). Another is the books like The Shadow of Saganami (The Saganami Island) which can (and do) focus on the antics of a single starship or a small squadron of them -- this is the space opera where Weber truly shines. And finally, there is the espionage-based series of books that started with Crown of Slaves (Honor Harrington) and is continued in this book. The three threads form one glorious, galaxy-wide saga that I wouldn't miss for the world. This book is a worthy addition to this fictional enterprise, a great deal of fun to read, and an interesting progression in the story as a whole. I'm not sure it stands alone -- while it does repeat some action from other books, there are also references to things that are not wholly explained (such as "what Harrington did to Giscard at Lovat"). However, as a piece of the puzzle, it's an excellent book. Since it focuses on individuals for the most part (and task forces at the largest), the action is firmly where Weber excels. Flint's presence seems to keep the exposition of new technology to small enough chunks that they go down fairly easily. It's clear that both authors have a great fondness for their characters (although they are not at all afraid to kill off those same characters when the plot demands it). If motivations are sometimes described with a heavy hand, the book makes up for such awkwardness with the breakneck pace of the action, the way in which va

Torch of Freedom (2009) is the second SF novel in the Torch subseries of the Honorverse series, following Crown of Slaves. In the previous volume, a slave uprising on Congo threw off the yoke of Manpower and other Mesan transtellars. Berry calmed down the genetic slaves enough to spare technicians and other low level workers, but Manpower managers were slaughtered. The Torch Liberation Army took the space station. Then a Mesan taskforce was confronted by Manticore and Mayan Sector ships and declined combat. The world and system were renamed Torch by its new citizens. Then the victorious former slaves selected Berry as their Queen. Manticore, Haven, Erewhon and the Mayan Sector of the Solarian League quickly recognized the provisional government and signed defense treaties with the torch system. Audubon Ballroom also supported Torch with their ships and personnel. Torch opened their citizenship to all genetic slaves, who soon began to arrive by shiploads. The Alignment is a secret organization within Manpower. Created by Leonard Detweiler, it is dedicated to improving the genetic inheritance of the human race. Beowulf rejected their arguments and now the Alignment cares little about whether the rest of humanity wants to be improved. In this novel, Berry Zilwicki is the Queen of Torch. Berry is only seventeen years old, but has had a very perilous life before becoming Queen. She doesn't like to be called by her titles. Anton Zilwicki is Berry's father. He was an intelligence analyst for Manticore. Now he is the common law husband of Catherine Montaigne and part of the Torch government. Victor Cachat is a Haven FIS secret agent. He is Head of Station for Torch and Erewhon. He also works closely with Anton and the Torch government. Ruth Winton is a Manticoran princess. She would rather be a spymaster and is rapidly learning the role from Anton and Victor. Brice Miller is almost fifteen years old. He is a resident on Parmley Station, an exoatmospheric amusement park that has been losing money for decades. Hugh Arai is a former genetic slave and an agent of the Biological Survey Corps, Beowulf's covert operations organization. He is the commander of the BSC ship Ouroboros. Jack McBride is the security chief of the Alignment's Gamma Center, a hidden research facility on Mesa. He has been a field agent, but his superiors considered him too squeamish for field work. Herlander Simoes is a mathematical physicist on the Alignment drive research team. He has played a key role is developing a new type of interstellar drive. In this story, Queen Berry and her advisors begin to suspect that Manpower is not a normal transtellar corporation. They have too much money and are involved in too many operations. Then somebody tries to assassinate Berry. Meanwhile, Parmley Station is visited by another ship. Although the Parmley family has resisted attempts by slavers to take over their station, they soon realized that the slavers hav