The Honor of the Queen
Sep. 16th, 2007 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylFollowing on from last months re-read, I've moved on to the next novel in David Weber's Honorverse series, The Honor of the Queen.
At a party to celebrate the recommissioning of HMS Fearless, the replacement for the ship that got pounded into scrap at the end of On Basilisk Station, Honor discovers she's being tapped to escort a convoy to Casca, with a pause en route to drop off a diplomatic mission on Grayson. But, all is not as simple as it first seems: Grayson is a relatively backward world, founded by religious extremists who weren't big on either technology or female emancipation. Fortunately the most zealous elements, the Faithful, were exiled to nearby star system following a civil war many hundreds of years before, but despite their new home being somewhat less poisonous than Grayson, they will do anything to seize possession of their former world from the Apostates.
Upon arrival in the Yeltsin, Honor realises that her gender is causing problems for the diplomatic mission, lead by her mentor, Admiral Raoul Courvosier. She decides to change the order of the Casca escort so that it includes her own Fearless, Alice Truman's Apollo and Alasdair McKeon's Troubadour, leaving the destroyer HMS Madrigal in system to assist the diplomatic mission and fend off any raids by the Faithful. Unfortunately, Honor is missing a key piece of the puzzle. The forces of the Faithful do not merely consist obsolete cruisers, for which Madrigal is more a match, but also a pair of modern Havenite warships. Thus when the Faithful come calling whilst Honor is away, Madrigal is destroyed and the Grayson navy devastated.
Horrified by the consequences of her decision to absent herself, Honor attempts to take charge of the defence of Grayson but falls foul of the entranced misogyny and is not helped cowardly snivellings of one of the senior Manticoran diplomats. She deals with the situation by manipulating the planetary ruler, Protector Benjamin, into installing a more suitable officer into the position of fleet admiral. Thus set up, she takes a joint task force composed of Grayson and Manticoran ships to kick the Faithful back to their own star system. Although the mission is successful, the victory is somewhat pyrrhic: although the Havenite destroy has been captured, Apollo has taken heavy battle damage, and the battlecruiser — which substantially out-masses and out-guns Fearless — is not present but is expected back at any moment.
I suspect that The Honor of the Queen is probably one of my favourite novels in the series. There's a certain freshness to the Graysons and their distinctly unenlightened view of the world — a view that is explained, at least in part, by the sheer toxicity of their planet and the fact that women out number men by four to one — although it's pretty clear that they're going to turn out to be alright in the end.
I even like the objectionable diplomat, Reginald Houseman, a man so vastly unpleasant that when Honor slaps him down, initially metaphorically and later more literally, you can help feeling pleased. My only real problem with him is that he's styled as a Liberal, whereas he's actually more of a neo-con buffoon: he refuses to accept the evidence of the military threat to Grayson in favour of a foolishly simplistic economic approach, then when the topic does come round to the use of military force, he expresses a casual, Rumsfeldian, disregard for obvious consequences of his views.
At a party to celebrate the recommissioning of HMS Fearless, the replacement for the ship that got pounded into scrap at the end of On Basilisk Station, Honor discovers she's being tapped to escort a convoy to Casca, with a pause en route to drop off a diplomatic mission on Grayson. But, all is not as simple as it first seems: Grayson is a relatively backward world, founded by religious extremists who weren't big on either technology or female emancipation. Fortunately the most zealous elements, the Faithful, were exiled to nearby star system following a civil war many hundreds of years before, but despite their new home being somewhat less poisonous than Grayson, they will do anything to seize possession of their former world from the Apostates.
Upon arrival in the Yeltsin, Honor realises that her gender is causing problems for the diplomatic mission, lead by her mentor, Admiral Raoul Courvosier. She decides to change the order of the Casca escort so that it includes her own Fearless, Alice Truman's Apollo and Alasdair McKeon's Troubadour, leaving the destroyer HMS Madrigal in system to assist the diplomatic mission and fend off any raids by the Faithful. Unfortunately, Honor is missing a key piece of the puzzle. The forces of the Faithful do not merely consist obsolete cruisers, for which Madrigal is more a match, but also a pair of modern Havenite warships. Thus when the Faithful come calling whilst Honor is away, Madrigal is destroyed and the Grayson navy devastated.
Horrified by the consequences of her decision to absent herself, Honor attempts to take charge of the defence of Grayson but falls foul of the entranced misogyny and is not helped cowardly snivellings of one of the senior Manticoran diplomats. She deals with the situation by manipulating the planetary ruler, Protector Benjamin, into installing a more suitable officer into the position of fleet admiral. Thus set up, she takes a joint task force composed of Grayson and Manticoran ships to kick the Faithful back to their own star system. Although the mission is successful, the victory is somewhat pyrrhic: although the Havenite destroy has been captured, Apollo has taken heavy battle damage, and the battlecruiser — which substantially out-masses and out-guns Fearless — is not present but is expected back at any moment.
I suspect that The Honor of the Queen is probably one of my favourite novels in the series. There's a certain freshness to the Graysons and their distinctly unenlightened view of the world — a view that is explained, at least in part, by the sheer toxicity of their planet and the fact that women out number men by four to one — although it's pretty clear that they're going to turn out to be alright in the end.
I even like the objectionable diplomat, Reginald Houseman, a man so vastly unpleasant that when Honor slaps him down, initially metaphorically and later more literally, you can help feeling pleased. My only real problem with him is that he's styled as a Liberal, whereas he's actually more of a neo-con buffoon: he refuses to accept the evidence of the military threat to Grayson in favour of a foolishly simplistic economic approach, then when the topic does come round to the use of military force, he expresses a casual, Rumsfeldian, disregard for obvious consequences of his views.
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Date: 2007-09-16 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 09:23 pm (UTC)Politically, it's a bit odd, with the liberal and conservative viewpoints portrayed as caricature, whilst the centrists are taken seriously. Again, I suspect it's a plot device because the political motives of the external enemies, the Havenites — modelled on pre and Revolutionary France, right down to having leaders called Saint-Just and Robert Pierre — are taken relatively seriously.
Despite, or perhaps even because of, its political and military views, it's something of a guilty pleasure.