Quick change signage

Walking passed a jewelers first thing this morning, I was amused to note that they'd already removed the Valentine's Day exhortations to buy things for a beloved and replaced them with signs warning of imminence of Mothering Sunday on the 22nd of March. Not that I blame them — after all, in the current financial climate, one cannot allow the grass to grow under one's feet — rather, I salute their expeditiousness...

The Short Victorious War

Returning to my gradual re-reading of David Weber's Honorverse novels, I find that I've reached the third book in the series, The Short Victorious War.

The hereditary rulers of Haven are worried. The treasury is empty, the proles are restless and, following a daring suggestion that the dole allowance be frozen, the economics minister has just been assassinated. What they need is something to take the public mind off the state of the economy. What they need is a short, victorious war.

After a year spent recovering from the injuries she picked up on Grayson, Honor has landed a plum job. Assigned to command the pride of the fleet, the brand new HMS Nike, she finds herself shipped out to join the taskforce at Hancock Station the flag captain of a newly formed battlecruiser squadron under the command of Admiral Sarnow. But the gloss soon falls of the mission and Nike finds herself hobbling into to her assigned system with a serious reactor fault that looks like it is going to take months to fix.

The Havenites, meanwhile, have decided to kick off their war with a series of provocative attacks on Manticore's allies and its smaller picket forces, causing the Admiralty to send out a war warning authorising more robust rules of engagement. Worried by the increasing tensions, Hancock Station's commander, Admiral Parks, decides to redeploy his heavy forces better to protect the heavily populated allied worlds in his demesne, leaving Sarnow's forces to protect the fleet base at Hancock. But when Haven does finally decide to take the gloves off, they pile in not against the systems fortified by Parks, but against the relatively lightly defended Hancock Station.

Despite sharing a certain amount in common with its predecessors — it is a naval novel after all — The Short Victorious War is sufficiently different to be interesting.

Ignoring the obvious differences between fleet and single-ship warfare, the real innovation occurs in the way that the politics are presented. Rather than view events from the perspectives of a few low-level operatives, here the action flows from cabinet meetings and admiralty boards, with politics explained by the players at the highest levels. Not only does this make exposition easier, it also exposes the political problems that beset the People's Republic of Haven and allows tension to build up once one of the main characters of the series, one Robert Stanton Pierre, has been introduced.

The rest of the story is well handled and there are some interesting character developments — Honor gets a boyfriend, her old friend Michelle Henke appears for the first time, while the vile Pavel Young reappears and makes a total disaster of things — the book is enjoyable and, if not my favourite in the series, it definitely has its moments.

Hahn plays Korngold

Just because it's utterly wonderful, here's Hilary Hahn, Kent Nagano and, presumably, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin performing Korngold's violin concerto: