The Honor of the Queen
David Weber
384 pages
published in 1993
The Honor of the Queen is the second novel in the Honor Harrington series, which finds Honor promoted after the events of On Basilik Station and off to command a small flottila escorting a diplomatic and trade mission to the Grayson Republic, which the Manticoran Kingdom hopes to gain as an ally. The thing is, Grayson is a system settled by American fundamentalist Christians who lived in isolation for centuries on a planet that was literally poisonous to them due to the amount of heavy metals in its soil. They have a bit of a problem therefore with women serving in the military, which complicates things for Honor. Meanwhile, on the planet of even more fundamentalist Christians, Manticore’s ancient rival the Haven Republic is busy meddling…
The Honor Harrington books are purely escapist mind candy for me, books I grab when I really don’t want to make an effort but still want to read something. Weber is a good enough author that he keeps your attention throughout, that he keeps you wanting to read on to find out the rest of the story no matter how often you’ve read it, which is why I’ve read his Harrington novels more often than many much better novels. They just give me something other books can’t. Even if objectively speaking they’re not very good.
What Weber’s good at is emotional manipulation, as Honor is put through the wringer, having to deal with people who hate and despise her for being a woman, who with their petty aggressions forced her to flee from the system under cover of duty, escorting merchant ships, leaving the remaining Manticoran ship and Grayson vulnerable to attack. When she comes back she has to deal with the guilt of knowning she’d made the wrong choice, a choice that had gotten one of her oldest friends killed and now still has to defend a system that had already made clear its opinion of her.
That’s a lotta angst right there.
What Weber is also good at, or incredibly bad, opinions differ, is the space battles, which go into serious anal detail about which ship is launching which missiles and how the enemy deals with them. All told in lovingly Clancyesque language. It’s not so bad yet in this novel, but later books in the serious waste a lot of pages on those descriptions.
Honor of the Queen has two set pieces that are of particular interest, one positive, one negative. To start with the positive, there’s the assasination attempt on Protector Benjamin, the ruler of Grayson, foiled by Honor and Nimitz, her treecat, whose telepathic gifts catch enough of a hint of the assassins’ intentions to launch himself at them. That scene, with Honor and Nimitz fighting side by side to defend the Protector and his family, is brilliantly done, one of the best fight scenes Weber has ever written.
The other scene however shows the worst of Weber’s instincts, as it’s the scene where the Cowardly Liberal whose highfalutin principles are only cover for his own selfish interest, is taken down a peg and physically humiliated by our avenging heroine. Weber is a bit of a rightwinger, as any quick perusal of his fiction makes clear and especially in the early Harrington novels he’s eager to put the boot into silly liberals and their silly ideas and not being particularly subtle about it. It’s incredibly irritating.
In general, like so many other military fiction writers, Weber has a disdain for politicians unless they’re the sort of steady, clearheaded people who always vote for increased military budget and a respect for professional soldiers with the right virtues –those who do their duty to the best of their honour– whether friend or foe. Opposed to that are emotional liberals and just as emotional fanatics of all stripes. It’s a simplistic and childish view of the world that I can largely ignore for the sake of the story, but sometimes it grates.