Storm from the Shadows (Honor Harrington - Saganami Island Book 2)

This book is filled with words, and Weber does a good job of tying everything together - which I suspect is difficult. There is a large cast of characters, some new with bits of them fleshed out, and some old ones you may have come across before making an appearance (Honor Harrington, for example). I had a difficult time reading the first in this series - but did so as I have enjoyed overall whatever Weber writes.

I read this on a Kindle - which has the benefit of tracking the percentage of what you have read. Since much of the book deals with different characters talking over the same incidents from their slightly different viewpoints, you are able to read it very quickly. I found it interesting and well written around 80% into the book. And this lasted for three or four percent of the total until it reverted to what was found in most of the book - dialog between different characters talking about the same occurrences. Its well done from a writing perspective- just not very interesting to me. If you're the type who enjoys reading copies of court cases, you might find this interesting. If you have to read the series to its conclusion, you might want to just skim this part of the series

I disliked this enough that after I finished this one I elected to read something else even though my wife had bought the next one - and has read it already. While she likes them better than I do - she admits they are not nearly as good as the early part of the series. I will likely read the next one, sometime, but need a break - maybe I will appreciate it more with some space!

Since the double oughts, Weber's become so caught up in minutia that I'm finding his writing more and more turgid. I found at least 85% of this book just plain tedious. Worse, the background arc is the resumption of war between Haven and the Star Kingdom. After a cease-fire, fighting resumes because the good guys agree that the ONLY people who might benefit from war between Haven and Manticore are the Haven politicos. No other possibilities, period. This brilliant conclusion is reached after the Solarian League starts killing HMS navy ships and personnel. What?!?!? Stupid and nonsensical. The book starts out (almost) with a classic Weber battle scenario. It's good. There are a couple of other stirring scenes, which is why I gave it 3 stars. (Unlike the last book in this hodge-podge, this one at least has a bit to recommend it). Bottom line: a few flickers of classic Weber, mostly tedious with a story arc depending on smart people ALL making really stupid (and really silly and inexplicable) assumptions. Dumm-dee, dum-da-dum. Oh hey look! a fleet of enemy ships! Think I'll just park right next to them and lower my shields! dum-de-dum-da...

Storm From the Shadows by David Weber

I just read my review of Rising Thunder and sadly I am going to cut and paste and use some of the same words here. I loved the initial Honor Harrington books. She plays a bit part in this chapter of the continuing saga of Manticore. Haven and Manticore, Mesa and the Solarian League are all back. Rear Admiral Michele Henke is the main character in this book. It provides a different, not much different, perspective on the Mesa Manticore conflict.

This book repeats the characterization of the entrenched bureaucratic morass of the Solarian League. This book also has the Manticore leaders finally realizing or at least suspecting that they are being manipulated by Mesa.

This book is a disappointment in that it is extremely repetitive. The same events are repeated with a minor perspective change and it brings new meaning to Weber's wordiness.

There are passages that evoke the same emotions of loyalty, honor and courage that use to symbolize Weber's work. Sadly they are few and far between. It became a tedious read.

I do not recommend the book.

This is by far NOT the best book in the "Honorverse," by any standard. As other reviewers have noted, many of the earlier passages of the book are lifted in toto from other novels in the Honor Harrington series, or are recapitulations of actions and events that occurred in "The Shadow of Saganami." There really isn't much of a story here, just another, escalated confrontation with forces of the Solarian League that are being manipulated by the Mesan corporations. There isn't much tension, and until the cliff-hanger ending, there are none of the surprises or plot twists of which Weber is so fond. If it were not for what the book accomplishes separate from the main narrative, I would give it only two stars at best, and that mainly because there are some highly entertaining scenes scattered through the book.

What this book DOES accomplish, and does in four-star style, is tie together all the threads of the various Honorverse narratives--the Honor Harrington Books, the Torch books (co-authored with Eric Flynt), and the Saganami Island series. All of the plot lines are now essentially unified, with a central focus (which is further refined and developed in the novel Mission of Honor), and have begun moving in the same direction, toward a decisive showdown with Mesa.

(One plus for the book is the introduction of Dicey, a new feline character who, if allowed to develop, will, I predict, soon have a following of his own as loyal as the fans of Nimitz, even if he can't "speak"--but then, as we all know, cats (Old Earth felines) are capable of an astonishing range of communication without making a sound!)

Again, Storm from the Shadows will not be remembered as David Weber's masterpiece--far from it!--but it IS essential because of the coherency it brings to the whole of the Honorverse saga. So, two stars for the story, four for what it accomplishes, averages out to the three stars I give it.

The more I read these Honor Harrington books, the more I'm inclined to just read the first couple of pages, the last 50 or so and then return the thing to the library (I've stopped buying them). The development of the main characters is so complete that there's really nothing left for us to know about them. There's never any lasting closure, the conflict just gets extended in each new book as some new weapon allows the Manticoran Navy to win the day even though the numbers are on the enemy's side. Not without a sneak attack and distressing losses of their own, of course but, fortunately, the RMN seems to have an inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder, clever R&D and new spaceships. As the years go by, Weber has to keep coming up with plausible enemies for the RMN to fear. It's getting harder to justify. Maybe there's some hidden gene that provokes self-destruction to avoid the crowding brought on by the technology-extended live these people lead.

In Honor's formative years her enemy was a formerly-corrupt-but-now-cleaned-up neighboring regime called the Republic of Haven (aka "The Peeps"). Along the way there have been some lesser demons in the form of pirates and tinpot dictators, but the Real Bad Guy of the series is Manpower, an industrial conglomerate. Manpower uses asymmetrical warfare, assassination, bribery and puppet insurgencies to set giant governments like the Solarian League, Haven and Manticore against each other in an effort to reap the spoils of the conflict and distract everyone from their odious slave trade. They've been popping up in several books in the form of small cliques of corporate specialists with a lot of autonomy and deep pockets, although Weber is careful not to give his readers a detailed glimpse of the corporate structure. Many of Weber's heroes are coming to realize that Manpower is the real reason they don't seem to be able to stop killing each other, but most of these folks don't have a loud enough voice to convince leadership figures that they're stubbornly fighting the wrong war (let's not draw a parallel with Al Qaeda here, it would be scary).

Maybe this is because Weber figures his payday comes in big, sweeping space battles and a Tom Clancy-like fascination with fictional weaponry. Plus, the inevitable whip-up on Manpower by all of the eventually-clued-in-and-pissed-off former mutual enemies would be a total anticlimax. So we get reams of space explosions, gallant people put in desperate situations and detailed "what do you think, Scotty" micro-analysis until Weber decides to retire from writing. Until then, everything you need to know about each new book (and especially this one) is in the last chapter and you can ignore the carnage in the middle.

I adore military sci-fi. I love action. But in this book, David Weber wallows in almost non-stop talk. There's very little "doing" and a whole lot of yakking going on for over 1,000 pages. Almost all the action - including a major space battle involving Home Fleet - takes place off-stage, as it were. People discuss what happened somewhere else, or else they speculate about what might have happened or else they plan what they're going to do about what happened. This tendency of the author to babble is apparent in his earlier books, but here he really blasts off. I think he's establishing the basis for future volumes of the series - this time involving... well, I won't tell. But really, you could get the gist of the entire thing in a good, short synopsis.

I have read every one of the "Honor" series and most of them were fantastic with great battle descriptions. This book, however, is nothing of the sort. If I had read On Basilisk Station and then read this one I would have sworn two different people wrote it. This book is over 700 pages and it is 99% political and dipomatic garbage. It certainly seems Weber was getting paid by the word for this one. Additionally I do not care what the "bad guys" think and certainly do not care about all the plots they are trying to run against the good guys.

Military sci-fi books are supposed to be about FIGHTING! This book is certainly NOT military sci-fi and calling it that is an insult real military books! You might as well have Eric Flint continue this series so we will be guaranteed no battles. How many battles did this book have...one and it was no more than five pages of the 732! There were plenty of potential battles where Weber would get lazy and skip them or stop much too soon. I am still mad that I read this entire book for five pages of good stuff. He could have gone into great detail on the Battle of Manticore which would have made all the other useless pages worthwhile. If John Ringo had written this book he would have spent 100 pages on that battle and it would have been the best "Honor" book ever written. I have an idea for you Weber, have Ringo take over this series or at least have him do the battles because you have clearly forgotten why guys like me read your books.

If you like POLITICAL SCI-FI then this is the book for you. Weber loves detail and he tells you all the things you do not want to hear just like a politician.

Yes, I know the world of Honor Harrington is complex.
Yes, I know David Weber is writing an epic here.
Yes, I know the next book should have lots of resolution.

BUT . . .

This is a novel and a long one. It's not the middle movie of as trilogy. It's not the cliffhanger season ender of a TV show. It's a NOVEL. And as a novel it is supposed to be something more than a set-up, it should have resolution, at least some resolution.

This book doesn't. And how does the author richly reward the reader for putting up with the book?

By writing something trying to justify this mess by saying he's doing something big, the next books are in the pipeline, in other words asking us to trust him. Some part of him knows the book si bad, otherwise he wouldn't try to justify it.

Well he has written enough and given us clifhanger endings in books which had resolution, that he should know better.

Or someone should have told him that this would be a nice start to one of those novels in the pipeline, not a book on it own.

I am so thoroughly disgusted at having wasted my time on reading this book and not getting anything for my effort, that I don't even care what's coming and you shouldn't either.

In the "authorial note", Weber says, "Scenes which have appeared in one book may very well appear--usually from another character's point of view--in another book. This is not an effort simply to increase word count. It is intended to serve the function of more fully developing additional characters..."

The first sentence is a majestic understatement. The events occurring at the end of the almost-as-bad "At All Costs" are not revealed to the main character here for over 700 pages. Furthermore, by getting another character's "point of view" Weber apparently means "telling us exactly where everyone was sitting and what they were eating when they found out about the event in question".

The second sentence is beyond credibility. Nearly every sentence goes to acrobatic lengths to include as many words and hedging phrases as possible. For example, on pp. 399-400, we get this agonizing sequence: "I can't disagree with the downsides of either of your scenarios, Isabel. Still, I think it comes under the heading of what I said earlier--the fact that we can't allow worry about things which may never happen to prevent us from using necessary techniques where we have to. And as you've just pointed out, the probability of anyone deciding it was us--or, at least, that it was us acting for ourselves, rather than simply a case of Haven's contracting out the 'wet work' to a third-party--is low." Weber urinates on Strunk and White's maxim, "omit needless words". He clearly is being paid by the word and is not being edited. In some of the later chapters, it appears that the text has not even been proofread; it is simply being bound as fast as Weber can type it.

Weber's third sentence might make sense, except that the characters are all identical. They all have the same personality: fantastically competent, loyal, compassionate, and self-doubting. They have the same mannerisms. Nearly every chapter has exactly the same structure: the characters are painstakingly introduced, they take seats, beverages are served, people agree with each other at length, then someone tips back in her chair, launches into a long, expository reverie (scolding herself partway through), mentally shakes herself, and resumes agreeing. A startling number involve a junior officer expecting to be "reamed out" by an "astronomically superior" officer, but in fact being praised and promoted.

The reader hoping for space battles will be sorely disappointed. If the reader's standards are high (a battle we haven't seen before, which takes place on-stage, is not a simulation, and involves both sides firing weapons) there are literally none. If the standards are lower, there aren't very many. We simply get conference after conference. Weber is apparently trying to emulate Jane Austen; this is not something to which a military sci-fi author should aspire, and he fails at it anyway.

One could have political complaints about Weber's universe. Yes, there are plenty of powerful, female characters, but Manticoran society is fantastically hierarchical, even outside the military. This is apparently to be seen as a Good Thing; aside from the odd mustache-twirling villain, nobody abuses their "inferiors" or is jealous of their "superiors". It is discomforting to have heroes unironically fighting for a self-dubbed empire.

The last chapter reads like an ad for the next book, but I'm literally not buying it. There may be Exciting Things in the future, but if they're written at this pace, not even prolong could keep us alive long enough to slog through them.

Storm from the Shadows is the sequel to the "Shadow of Saganami" story arc in the Honorverse. Weber has chosen (and explains in the Forward) that he will be telling the same events from different angles through the three story arcs (Honor, Saganami, Crown of Slaves).

As such, SftS follows Mike Henke through her capture by Haven, parole and then deployment to the Talbott Cluster. Mike, and the other characters presented are written well, though they tend to self-monologue a bit too much for my tastes. (which is to say they do this even more than in previous Weber books) Mike comes across as more interesting to follow than Honor, since she isn't the super-human than Honor has turned into.

The book is primarily scene-setting and politics, with little in the way of combat, so fans of the large starship actions will probably be somewhat disappointed. He throws a couple of tech curve balls at the end that will probably make the tech consistency folks tear their hair out.

Overall, I liked it and think it provides 1) a different perspective 2) a dose of the political stuff that Weber is good at 3) an important bridge for the next big balloon to go up.

Recommended for Honorverse fans. Folks who want the combat may want to steer clear as they can get most of what will happen in this book by the references that will be provided in the other story arcs.

I have been a fan of David Webbers, Honor Harrington character for a long time. I picked this book up while underway on the ship from the ships library to pass some time. First the good: The story line is stellar and intriging as to what will happen next in this glactic drama. I also appreciated all of the Naval doctrine and strategy as well. The Bad: Where all of this falls flat is the basic story telling. There is so much internal dialogue and meaningless back sotry to so manyh characters that everything else becomes lost in the mix. At times it is a chore to read. The complexity that seems to have been forced upon even the most basic aspects of the story, will deter all but the most faithfull and determined fans. Even I found myself occasionally skimming along from page to the next to where the unending banter stopped and something actually happened. This book could been another shining example at 600 pages instead of 1000+.

I have every book David Weber has published except for Empire from the Ashes which I put just below this book. There is way too much dialogue between all the subplots and there are too many of those. Too much explanation of each plot line's reasons for their actions. I know this is scyfy but there is too much tech crap also. It almost seems that Weber is just writing verbage because he is getting paid by the word. I love this author but this book kind of sucks.

Thank goodness for not having an income and not paying for this book at list price. How do you turn a 200 page story into 730 pages of Blather? Ask David Weber. He is becoming the master of Blather.

So we know governments have meetings to discuss things. And that they engage in small talk. I hope you like that, since every bit of a meeting is discussed. Who attends, what they do, how they got the job, what their secret thoughts of, what their middle name is, when they pick their nose... That is the point, that these meetings are pointless to the story. They can be handled in a paragraph rather than in a 10 page chapter.

They are filled with unimportant tertiary characters, characters that the main characters will never interact with. They show things that have been told to you the reader three times. Then there are meetings that are written up many times, and because Weber changes the plot line, those meetings are now 100+ wasted pages that no longer are part of the story.

It is equal to be part of the peace talks with Japan prior to Dec 7 1941, when we weren't at war, but there was tension between the countries. So they set up fake talks to allay the fears of the Americans. Would you like to read the transcripts of all the meetings before Dec 7 1941 that dealt with the preparations for the meeting that was a hoax? Well read this book, it is the same thing.

There are 2 battles and if I have to hear another officer talk about whether the Manticorans are not as good as the Solarians, but they really are, I should go shoot Weber. He says it at least 20 times, with every character he mentions in the book.

But let me clarify the battles, one was in a previous book, and then the second is a big game of Chicken. It is basically the Cowboys and the Indians, and the Indians not believing the Remington can outshoot a bow and arrow, but when it takes the head of the chief, the fight goes out of this war party.

I said before that Honor was too powerful, too perfect, and when she is written, Weber holds to that. She is the Superwoman. But now we still have other things that make no sense. He tries to describe the Solarian government which could never exist in reality. He spends pages on all sorts of inconsequential details that are details. Cut. Cut. Cut. He is no longer paid by the word, why not give a story that does not have to take so much damn space.

Would I ever read this again. No. Why read it now? Because I and a few friends have been reading the series for a long time. We can talk about it. But if you have better things to do with your time. Do them. If needed we can summarize the entire tail in five minutes. For 732 pages, that is pretty lousy exchange for what the author put on paper.

This book continues Weber's series nicely. It joins two previous threads and provides a logical continuation to the series. It can be read standalone but is better read as a part of the series.

While before the reader has been aware of Manpower and Mensa are players the characters have not been as aware. So now that they are aware, what will happen? What about the new attack on Mantacor, and relationship with the Havenites? Big cliff hanger!!

But still a very good read with compelling characters and nice plots.

Reexamining the book after reading the introduction it becomes obvious that this is an essential entry point into the rest of the series. The reprises are to make sure that new readers can "enter here". Weber states that he plans to bifurcate the series into an overt and covert set of related series and this book is the introduction. As such it is an essential read although there is a lot of introductory material for those already familiar with the series. Could those folks skip the book? Time will tell. At least he has not brought the series to an end.

I'm a long time fan of Webber, and unless there's something out there I haven't seen, I've read everything he's written.

In this case, I have to agree with many reviews here: Too much obvious padding for no good reason, and the cheap device of a cliff-hanger ending-that-isn't.
When your favorite snack suddenly turns up with cheap filler you tend to notice, and it's abundantly clear in this case.

Another problem I have is the cliff-hanger ending, which always makes me very unsatisfied.
True, when you're writing a series it's hard NOT to have endings that are at least partially cliff-hangers, but these in-your-face types are disappointing, aggravating, and have a bad tendency to look all too much like obvious sales hooks for the next effort.

I have ZERO problem with 750-plus page books. I've read a number of them before and will quite willingly do so again.
BUT, when the length serves no purpose but to fill pages, it quickly becomes a chore to read instead of a pleasure.

So, we have 750 plus pages of standing around talking about not much of real value or interest, followed by being pushed out the door into a wet alley to wait for a long delayed taxi.

As others have noted in greater detail, much -- too much, in all likelihood, for anyone but devotees -- of this story is a recapitulation of previous developments from the past couple of Weber novels in the Honor-verse: although the back-story is told here through fresh eyes and with added detail and incident, a great deal of the main story arc has been sketched in before.

The author concedes as much in his introductory note, but maintains that this recapitulation affects only the first "few" chapters. That's a fib, however well-meaning -- attentive fans will recognize familiar material much deeper into this book than that. (The introductory note is interesting for other reasons: we learn, for example, that we are lucky to still have Honor with us at all!)

Even past that point, much of this book is best viewed as "development" for what are presumably intended to be galaxy-spanning cataclysms to come.

Spoiler alert: there simply are no grand space opera battlescenes in this book, though there are a few small-scale affairs, including the sabotage of one (possibly unmanned) merchant ship, the ambush and utter destruction of three Manticore dwestroyers and their crews following the sabotage of a space station (with mass loss of life), and the gratifying removal of the Solar League naval admiral (along with his ship and entire crew) who is responsible for the earlier ambush.

Other than that we get plot development (much of which consists of actual, cospiratorial plotting), politics, naval career development, and so forth.

That may not sound compelling enough to earn my four-star rating, but -- despite the "drawbacks" outlined above (and in many of the previous reviews) -- this book nonetheless draw me deeper and deeper into its coils: I blazed through its hundreds of pages in little more than a day!

Weber combines obsessive attention to the smallest details of his creation with carefully-constructed characters. Compared with the first several novels in the Honor series -- in which his villains in particular suffered from cutesy names, and simplistic, predictable black-and-white politics and motivations, Weber's more recent books are vastly more sophisticated.

While some of his villains are still deliciously bad, his bad guy-portrayals now draw upon a considerably greater range and depth of motivation. Some remain sneering, posturing, pig-headed, and short-sighted, but others roam the waterfront of potential motivations, from greed, snobbery, complacency, twisted polities, misplaced altruism, misguided loyalty, to, well, good old-fashioned towering ambition and power-mongering...!

His politics, as well, are now at least somewhat more subtly shaded than the early hyper-capitalism and benign constitutional monarchy versus extreme socialism corrupted into tyranny. The Havenites are now spearheaded by competent and admirable military and political leaders (though still wary and hard-bitten practitioners of realpolitik).

The expansion of Weber's canvas to include additional star clusters and the vast, entrenched Solar League has allowed him the scope to limn any number of fetching or disagreeable proponents of any number of political, cultural, and economic systems. Likewise, stirring in themes of economic and sexual slavery, women's liberation, "good" as well as "bad" terrorists, reformers, conservatives, capitalists, oligarchs, bureaucrats, military personnel, and revolutionaries, has greatly extended the tonal breadth of Weber's palette.

Not to be overlooked is Weber's stubborn refusal to ignore the military, strategic, economic, and cultural implications of his carefully-constructed scientific-technical background. Rather than just wavivg the space-opera practitioner's standard stock of warp drives, force fields, energy weapons, and hyper-missiles at us, Weber insists on strict compliance with his made-up rules and upon treating his technoologies as actual "players" in his tapestry.

Characters are developed in these stories -- hundreds and hundreds of characters! -- they are born, forced to maturity, tested to triumph or destruction, but so are technologies. They don't just sit there, like indigestible lumps or stagecraft cut-outs: ships and missles and gravity drives and bomb-pumped lasers all take on personality. We are drawn to care as much about the fate of ships, weapons platforms, and star sytems as we are about the characters that invent and inhabit them; like characters, these technologies mutate, evolve, and mature.

Weber not only recognizes the explicit evolutionary and developmental analogies and processes involved; he refuses to shy away from that controversial thinker and theory, explicity invoking the name of Charles Darwin and the theory of Darwinian natural selection.

So, despite the sheer number of pages invested in catching us up with what's gone before and setting us up for what's to come, "Storm" remains an arresting and involving entry in this long-running but still-involving series.

Yep, it ends in a doozy of a cliff-hanger, but it's a properly-earned one.

But, please, Mr. Weber, having gone to all this effort to set up the cataclysms to come, DON'T HOLD BACK next time around: you've got us where you apparently wanted us, nestled deep in the palm of your velvet glove. Now throw off the wraps, kick out the jams, and deliver the superdreadnought-obliterating crunch of your iron fist!

I've noticed that as many popular authors get more successful and established, they cannot resist the urge to excercise their power to bloviate. Some,like David Gerrold, will go so far as to re-release their books with all the "good stuff" some mean old editor took out restored.

And those books are bloated and awful examples of why authors need editors. Just as Mr. Gerrold could not resist the urge to go on and on about his philosophies, Mr. Weber is in love with writing endless conversations instead of narrative. "Storm From The Shadows" Is "My Dinner With Andre" staged by middle school students.

Please Mr. Weber, get a decent editor, and for all our sakes, listen to her? Thank you.

Gave up before the end. IMO the only way to salvage this series is if Manpower Inc (who I'm rooting for at this point) blows up Manticore or something equally drastic. I keep hoping David Weber will write another On Basilisk Station or Path of the Fury so I'll have something to read. Still waiting.

This is dialogue heavy, plot thin. And Manpower Inc is a cartoonish evil empire rather than a realistic threat. I know a bit about genetics (microbial to be sure) but the basics are the same whether prokaryote or eukaryote and frankly Weber's ideas about 'genetic slavery' and genetic engineering are so ludicrous that it makes me cring. If you're going to write a story where a major element is genetic engineering then it might be a good idea to have a better than comic book level of understanding of genetics! Absolutely no knowledge of basic biology/genetics coupled with wretched plotting and bad dialouge makes for a rotten story. Not worth reading even at the library.

I absolutely loved all the books up to At All Costs, some were a litttle slow, but oh my God, this one and to a lesser extent the one before this (Shadow Of Saganami) just goes on and on and on and on without the kind of exquisitely crafted timing that the earliest books possessed in spades.

About halfway through it I just started skimming ahead a couple pages until I got through whatever meeting or plot exposition was boring me to tears. And the funny thing? I didn't miss the section I jumped over.

Please Mr. Weber, put out an Encyclopedia with all the stuff you are monologuing in the story. Just do the STORY. This is worse than what the villains in The Incredibles do to the heroes.

I seriously hope the next book gets back to action and battles and interesting characters like Honor and gets away from this tedious stuff DW has decided is his new style.

On a side note, the book he put out not too long ago (Crown of Slaves) was one long series of inside jokes and super characters who could do anything and seemed to do nothing but nod upon seeing other characters, thus giving long time fans some kind of celebrity watch thrills.

I am praying Mission of Honor gets back to DW's better storytelling roots.

David Weber was for a long time one of my favorite authors but I'm afraid this will be the last book of his I will bother reading. For some reason his books have gotten boring. There's no other word for it. Nothing happens and it's full with people talking about stuff I couldn't care less about.

His Honor Harrington series was slowly getting this way, with each successive installment there was less action and more talking heads, but this one takes the cake. Couple this with his book "Hell's Gate", which i read just prior to this one and it's time for me to say good bye to this author.

One could cut the 1st half of this book and not impair its readability.
It doesn't begin much until 2/3s of the way and then doesn't finish what it starts. Bloviate hardly describes it.
.
Weber can write when he feels like it but some things seem fairly obvious: he's paid by the word and he doesn't have an editor who will edit him. Not much polishing here.
.
The good news is that there are plenty of authors making their mark in hard sci fi/mil sci fi these days - something that was less true a few years back.
.
I suggest borrowing this book from the library and saving your cash for the authors who are working a little harder.

This is easily the worst book David Weber has ever written. In structure, it is exactly like WAR OF HONOR, except that this book postpones the confrontation that made WAR OF HONOR worthwhile in it's third act into the next sequel in the series! It isn't even really a novel. There's no central conflict, no unifying story question, and no resolution. STORM FROM THE SHADOWS is simply a collection of scenes-as-holding-action. It has no purpose because NOTHING HAPPENS. Seriously, reading this book is like watching a daytime soap from Monday to Thursday. There's nothing there; Weber's just holding you over until the Friday episode--which from the look of it, isn't even coming soon. Because TORCH OF FREEDOM looks like another of the scenes-as-holding-action sequels; Weber's not going to advance the plot for quite some time.

It's obvious that Weber wants to write a series of tight political/sci-espionage thrillers to accompany his military fiction. The Foreword of SFTS as much as admits this. The problem is that he's not at all good at the political side, tending towards flat political characters stuck interminably in Staff Meetings. In scene structure terms, he gets stuck in the Sequels while leaving what few Scenes he actually writes with far too little conflict. As a whole, this makes the work drag.

Unfortunately, when he's on his game, Weber is still very good, especially in the strict Military fiction mode. I doubt his fans will abandon him. After all, we're still only a few books removed from the very tight construction of AT ALL COSTS. And from reading this, it's clear that at some point, more books in the AT ALL COSTS mode are coming. However, the unfortunate price for something as good as AT ALL COSTS is more books like this one and WAR OF HONOR. Thus, my advice to fans is this: get this book from the library of from a friend and read the first and last chapters but skip the rest. Then you'll be all caught up for when the action picks up again.

Having read all the other Honorverse books, I recognize that characterization isn't something that's emphasized; any character development Just Happens. Similarly, the tendency towards cardboard villains and super-wonderful heros is pretty much guaranteed. Both of those are traits I personally dislike, but I overlooked in order to get to the good parts; the things Weber does well.

They're mostly not here.

Self-examination appears to take the place of actual action. Nobody does anything without a page of details about what they're thinking and what they think others are thinking. And what action sequences are present manage to avoid the excitement that was present in most of his other books.

Most other authors would have covered the same ground in under half the space, and wouldn't have lost anything in the process. That would have left enough room to finish the book--as it stands, it's perhaps half of one, with a cliffhanger ending that doesn't make me want to read any more. (I admit want to know what happens, but I'm not convinced it will be worth the effort to find out.)

NONE of the major plots are wrapped up; there's a half-dozen subplots that were clearly being developed and dropped; there's characters sufficiently far-enough off-screen that their long discussions are simply fill-in; even the action scenes are boring, and that's never been the case before.

Most of the strengths of the other books are missing. There are more weaknesses--superscience never before seen! Ancient Secret Society!--and all the existing ones are present in much greater amounts.

I was very disappointed.

David Weber returns to form with a book which some have low-rated due to its multiple cliffhanger endings. The good news for Weber fans is that the next 2 books, "Torch of Freedom" continuing the covert side of the story, and "Mission of Honor" the next "main-stem" novel, have been turned in by Weber and await publication. Mr. Weber has never before done such a cliffhanger sequence; "In Enemy Hands" doesn't even come close, as that novel left Honor and company in a safe place, at a natural break.

"Storm From The Shadows", however, ends with multiple avalanches approaching our, mostly, unsuspecting heroes, with the one threat they are most aware of being the least dangerous of them.

The result is that this novel does have a truncated feel to it. This book begins during the time in which "At All Costs" is unfolding, but from a different viewpoint, resulting in some whole-sale lifting of passages from that novel into this one, in order to set up those different viewpoints. When it finally passes the end point of AAC, towards the end we get references to events in the as yet unpublished "Torch of Freedom", meaning that book is likely the next to be published...and it's possible that novel won't resolve the cliffhangers approaching the good guys from multiple vectors.

"Storm" focuses on Michelle Henke, Countess Gold Peak, who ends up assigned to the now designated Talbott Quadrant after having been paroled by Haven to deliver the offer of a peace summit between Haven and Manticore, a summit sabotaged by Manpower in "At All Costs".

But, as Weber partially reveals, it is not Manpower, but the now-semi-revealed Mesan Alignment which has been the actual puppeteer, using Manpower as a cutout as part of a 600-year old plan...a plan for what, we're still not told, other than that it will be bad for Manticore, Haven and the bioscience world of Beowulf.

Like an old style burlesque show, much is revealed by Weber, but the good bits remain hidden, for now, a frustrating situation for the reader. Weber hopes the reader won't have to wait long, but 5 months out, there's not yet a listing for the next novel on Baen's website...meaning that, if we're lucky, we'll likely have to wait at least 6 months for the next book, and a whole year for "Mission of Honor". Unlucky, and the avalanches could be hanging for 18 months to 2 years.

Still, Weber sets up matters nicely, revisits characters we've met previously, goes into more detail about the Solarians than ever before. Despite my frustrations, I've given this novel 5 stars, on the belief that this novel will grade far higher in the years to come when the rest of the story is available.

The Republic of Haven and the Star Kingdom is at war and Rear Admiral Michelle Henke is in the middle of a pitched battle. On board her flagship the Ajax, Michele knows the Manticore Navy is losing the fight; she and others go to escape pods before blowing up her vessel so the technology does not fall into enemy hands. She wakes up in a Havenite medical facility before being sent to an island with other POWs. She is shocked to meet Haven President Eloise Pritchett.

Pritchett is willing to free Michelle if she agrees to no longer fight against them and if she passes on a message to Queen Elizabeth III for a summit meeting to discuss peace. After coming home, Michelle is sent to the Talbott Quadrant which is far from the war zone to patrol the newestt star systems of the Star Empire. On the planet Monica, Solarian ships were going to be used to remove Manticore from the new system, but a Manicoran captain destroyed their fleet. In the cluster New Tuscan which did not want to join the empire, they deliberately try to push the Manticorans into a war with the Solarian League. The peace talks end abruptly when the Havenites kill two high profile officials. No one understands that the Havenites, Manticorans, and the Soalarans are being cleverly maneuvered by a fourth party with plans to take over the stars once each group devastates one another.

Nobody writes better military outer space fiction starring heroic females than David Weber has consistently done for years. The protagonist is Michelle who is as honorable and courageous as Harrington is as her tale which fills in the blanks in the story arc and provides a differing perspective to AT ALL COSTS. Both are strong-willed and do what they believe is right regardless of what others might think. There is plenty of action and suspense leading up to the military engagements. Yet with so much going on, the cast is solid and most significant realistic as fans will consider whether the Weber mantle of greatness has moved the torch from Honor to Michelle proving there is life after a hero "falls".

Harriet Klausner

I am a fan, and I have enjoyed the books enough to read every one.

This is the first Honorverse book I have ever quit reading. I just stopped at page 401, after trying to get through it for three days. Internal dialog and meaningful phrases about an ensign delivering a report chip was all I could stand.

The book opens with another view of the battle where Honor's buddy the royal Michelle's ship is disabled and captured. For some reason, Michelle is now Countess Gold Peak even though she is never called that in conversation in the rest of the novels (hereinafter "GP") For some contrived reason, ¼ of the crew is forced to throw their lives away rather than scuttle the ship but GP escapes.

The remainder of the book to p401 is a Jane Austen meaningful conversation. GP wakes up in the enemy hospital, where she has meaningful conversations and tons and tons and tons of internal dialog. Off to the EPW camp, yep, and lots of internal dialog and meaningful conversation about food services.

Sent back on parole to carry a meaningful message, lots of internal dialog on the ship. Back at home, lots and lots of internal dialog -including my personal favorite `Gaze that could wither a forest of Syphnixan picketwood.' The dialog and meaningful conversations reveal the current state of Manticore shipbuilding and their new empire structure. Not in some fun to read way, nor in an executive summary briefing that could have got it out of the way in five pages, but in long long drawn out observations and commentary.

At last GP gets her squadron and is sent off to face the evil Sollies and Manpower. Along the way we are introduced to the fact --through the bad guys' meaningful conversations and internal dialog--that all the bad stuff in the Honorverse is the result of a secret 400 year plot by Manpower. I almost sprained my eyes rolling them.

Once off for the trip, we have a chapter full of maintenance shake down details, and internal dialog about the new staff. Just for fun, lots of the internal dialog isn't even GP's. Once in the new sector, we have a cheesey romance started by a new character we haven't had time to care about because we have only seen him in GP's internal dialog, and that briefly.

At last, the meat of the novel appears. A Sollie social elite admiral has taken command of a lower social class cruiser fleet to disrupt GP. His method of attack? Social disdain and snubs during conversations filled with internal dialog.

In the meantime, the second prong of the attack. Media sources are spinning the Empire's customs inspections to appear like the RMN is rude. Much meaningful conversation and internal dialog--not just about the possible plot that is being uncovered, but about the junior officers who first suspect something is wrong. We must leave GP, and race off to the thoughts of unknown characters.

Do yourself a favor. If you like the Honorverse to date, skip this book. If you love Jane Austen stuff and want to try sci fi, maybe then you should try reading this.

I, too, have been a Weber fan, more specifically a Honor Harrington fan (I've enjoyed the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien, and the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell: not science fiction, but great historical military novels). I get the feeling Weber is feeling the same pressure that O'Brien had when he began his naval series, found it popular, and began running out of room for more books as the Napoleonic Wars drew to a close. I'm not sure that excuses what Weber very clearly says he is doing here, recycling the same materiel, albeit from another viewpoint, in multiple books in an effort to expand his room to write more stories in the Honor universe. His bugaboo may be his desire to satisfy the fixation some of his readers have about consistency and continuity: I wonder that he may lose his larger audience to satisfy that minority. I'm not saying he should lower his continuity efforts to the level of, say, Meluch's U.S.S Merrimack series, but he should not let absolute consistency get in the way of telling a good story (with, as others have said, a lot less interior dialogue,aka preaching). When I think about it, what I like about this series is the heroine and the strong plot line: I skim over a lot of the monologues to get to where the story starts again. If the story is the same, even if it is from different points of view, I'm going to be skimming the whole thing. what's with that?

It's easier to push a wooden pallet piled high with bricks up a hill at high noon during a nasty heat wave than read this. I have read pretty much everything David Weber has written since I discovered Mutineer's Moon the day after Thanksgiving in 1994. The words just blasted off the page in book after book. With this offering, rather than blasting off the page, they're sort of stuck as if by a powerful magnet.

This book is a disappointment on so many levels, but let me focus on four. The Shadow of Saganami succeeded in having a relatively narrow focus, somewhat believable villains, a fairly entertaining story and a minimum of cringe-worthy dialogue. The Storm from the Shadows fails in all four of those categories.

The management at Baen Books needs to sit David Weber down and tell him that continuously putting out books of microscopic entertainment value may result in the dilution of his brand.

Please note: the store does not let reviewers give something zero stars, but the one star rating is somewhat more than this deserves.

This is the last hardcover book authored by David Weber I will ever buy. If his new standard is unreadable, repetitive internal monologues & hundreds of pages in which nothing happens, then it's used paperbacks or the library for me--in the off chance that his next book is readable. On the basis of my experience with this book, I canceled my pre-order for By Heresies Distressed.

Oh dear. I remember the earlier Honor books as being inventive, as the worlds and their navies were set out, and Honor herself fought her way through Manticore's struggles. Has Weber run out of ideas of does it just feel that way, as what content there is is diluted by the ridiculous page count?

The previous Saganami tale in the Talbott Cluster was actually ok I thought, so I went into this one with expectations of at least an adequate read. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Endless, endless text of absolutely no interest at all leads up to well, nothing. It's not the cliff-hanger ending that's the issue, although that is annoying after 1000 pages, it's the fact that nothing happens on the way there. The events should be interesting - fleets are duly shuffled along gravity waves, politicians are duly manipulated by shady puppet-masters - but Weber utterly fails to attach any drama at all to any of this, while spending s...o... l...o...n...g... moving his pieces back, forth and around and around and back and forth... And how many times must his cardboard characters repeat the same 'I believe they have really super missiles Sir/I don't believe they have really super missiles Fool' conversation?

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

90% of this book is pointless. It's like it was written by Mojo Jojo from the powerpuff girls in that every reason is spelled out by the author over and over. It's so annoying. Give the reader some credit!

It like in one chapter a character will get killed. In the next chapter a friend of that character will want to kill the killer except there will be 30 pages of "He wanted to kill the killer because the killer killed is friend and he loved is friend and the killer killed is friend so he wants to kill the killer because killers are evil and a previous friend was killed by a killer and so now he wants to kill the killer." UGH! STOP ALL READY!

REALLY REALLY BAD!

If you are a Honor Harrington fan then this books was made for you because it in detail answered a lot of questions such as who is the head of Manpower inc. and why Manpower continues to have such control over many planets. The books also gives some background on why many starnations fear the Solarian navy even though they are somewhat stagnated in advance technology, but what they lack in advance tech they more than make up that with arrogance and numbers. But it is the People's repubic that I feel more in common with then the Star Kingdom of Manticore. After reading the book I am jumping to read what happens next between Manpower and the Manties. I think that David Weber is smart to focus of other people then just Honor and a few key people of her inner circle, I like the way he fleshes out other people in this series.

This novel overlaps with two others, At All Costs and Shadow of Saganami, and contains extensive references to Crown of Slaves. For those who love Weber's books and the Honor Harrington series in particular, this book reveals how he will keep things going now that Honor is no longer in the forefront of the action. It's a bit talky, as his last 2-3 books have been, but the characters and action scenes make up for that flaw. If you have read his other books, you'll like this one. If you haven't, start at the beginning with On Basilisk Station or you will simply not be able to follow all of the allusion to past battles and people.

Much of this book reads as if it were in response to a bunch of "Yeah, but" questions by physics fans over at Baen's Books. Endless droning explanations of technology, new technology, details far beyond anything I wanted to know. How it was that Manpower got news of the summit in time to break it up, how the missiles work, cladding on the missiles, it's endless. I'm sure this book will be fascinating to those who are really interested in the technical details of the Honorverse, but for the rest of us, this book is at least 25% too long, and bogs down much of the time. I don't require action all the time; in fact, I prefer the politics and character stuff to action. But I'll take action over the nuts-and-bolts of armaments and gravitic drives and compensators any day.

Although the complete Honor Harrington series will require this book, really you can skip directly to Torch of Freedom with fairly little loss. This book fleshes out some plot points, gives us a better understanding of Michelle Henke, and gets us closer to understanding what Manpower is really about - all valuable things. Just not worth the eight hundred plus pages it takes to get there.

I have read a lot of Weber's other books, but after trying desperately to finish this book and "Torch of Freedom" I've written him off. As many others have mentioned lately his books read like meeting minutes. "Storm from the Shadows" could have lost 400 or 500 pages and possibly been readable. As it was I took to skipping entire chunks of the book in an effort to see if I could a) find something of interest in it or b) finish the book. In the end I just put it and "Torch" on my stack for Half-Price Books.

Storm From the Shadows is an attenuated buildup to a double (or triple) whammy cliffhanger ending. Most of the important events in the life of Manticore and its allies happen offstage, and what happens onstage is a backwater diversion that repeats one we've already had, featuring lead characters who aren't particularly interesting and don't seem to be going anywhere. Nice to have something new from the Honorverse after several dry years, and there are some good set pieces, but this is mainly marking time.

Basically by now you either love david weber's style or you hate it. Personally I love that he spends time on certain details that flesh out his story. His entire HH series is one long story with books being chapter breaks. I love the series as a whole and like his writing style though i think he writes villians poorly. If you like battle centered space opera where you can actually understand the tactics and strategy the characters take. there is no better series.

This is the first half of a really excellent book. But it stops suddenly without any resolutions. As part of a series it would have been perfectly proper to leave some issues unresolved for later books, but this stops suddenly on a completely unresolved crisis. If it were necessary to buy it now to ensure that its second half were published I would recommend that you do so - but David Weber is sufficiently established that we can be certain that the next book will be published anyway. Wait until you can buy both and read them together. THAT will be worthwhile - this, on its own, is merely frustrating. While you're waiting read Lois McMaster Bujold's "Sharing Knife" series to see how a four-volume book should be be split so that each work is self-sufficient, even though all four parts are a single, more satisfying, read.

This is the first half of a really excellent book. But it stops suddenly without any resolutions. As part of a series it would have been perfectly proper to leave some issues unresolved for later books, but this stops suddenly on a completely unresolved crisis. If it were necessary to buy it now to ensure that its second half were published I would recommend that you do so - but David Weber is sufficiently established that we can be certain that the next book will be published anyway. Wait until you can buy both and read them together. THAT will be worthwhile - this, on its own, is merely frustrating. While you're waiting read Lois McMaster Bujold's "Sharing Knife" series to see how a four-volume book should be be split so that each work is self-sufficient, even though all four parts are a single, more satisfying, read.

I love the early Honor Harrington novels. Weber's prose has never been much more than serviceable, but there's an energy in them that's irresistable. They're reasonably intelligently written, and if the characters are a bit flat, or you run into a block of infodump every so often, that's fine. He always wraps it up with a great space battle or two, an intriguing bit of worldbuilding, and enough fun to plow through the rough patches.

The main 'Honorverse' storyline, however, has accreted so much dross that it's nearly unreadable. Multitudes of characters, most of whom I either dislike or, worse, don't care about. Badly written intersteller politics. Chapters of 'As you know, Bob' exposition and infodumps. Characters that I did actually like shuffled offstage. Anyone seen Shannon Forraker lately?

'Shadows of Saganami', at least somewhat recaptured the early spirit of the novels. I liked the crew of the Hexapuma. I liked most of the viewpoint characters. He still spent far too much time in worldbuilding and more badly written infodumps wrapped in wooden political debates, but there was a spark that made me hope we'd see more of what I enjoy about Weber's writing. And there was a fantastic space battle at the climax, leading to a very satisfying finish. (And the finish was even more poignant if you know what happened in the following Honorverse title.)

That's not the case here. We get bits of it, but the actual time in book spent with the characters from 'Saganami' is two to three chapters at most. The rest is spent flitting around the galaxy, laying the groundwork for the next big conflict (and more-or-less ignoring Haven and all its characters). There is one big space battle to start with (the result we already know going in), and two new minor space battles, neither of which is particularly interesting. The entire plotline could be exerpted into perhaps four chapters of summary, and little would be missed. Worst, it's not a complete story. The entire book is a middle chapter. The first half of the book is essentially a different viewpoint of what we already knew, and the book ends without resolving any of its plotlines.

If you enjoyed 'Shadow of Saganami' and were hoping for more 'early Weber' style stories, don't bother. If you're a Weber completist, you'll read this book regardless, but unless you really like his writing style, you'll probably regret it. If you'd given up on Weber and were hoping this would be a good place to get back in, just avoid it.

I was very excited when I found out I was first in line to get this book from our local library (Sorry David, I didn't pay for it). I've been a huge fan of the Honor Harrington books, and I check the Baen website frequently to see if there are any new ones forthcoming. And yes, I do own many of them.
Having read this one, I'm glad I didn't pay for it.

The story covers a pivotal part of the saga: the fundamental shift of the focus of the Manticore Star Kingdom from its war against the Republic of Haven to the new threat from the all-powerful Solarian League. At last, (I thought), the shadowy Manpower plot would come out in the open, and Manticore would realize who its enemy really is.
Well, sort of.

The story covers the attempt of the Manpower Co. to destabilize Manticore's newly acquired Talbot Quadrant and engineer an incident between Manticore and the Solarian League Navy. Caught in the middle is newly elevated character Michele Henke, who commands the fleet of battlecruisers assigned to provide security in Talbot. In the background are the events of "At All Costs", which happen more-or-less in the same time period as this book. The reader therefor knows what will happen: the peace talks with Haven will be derailed, the war resumes, and Haven will launch a devastating but unsuccesful all-out attack against the Manticore home system, leaving both sides with very few immediate military resources.

The problems with this book are threefold:
1. Michele Henke isn't nearly as interesting a character as Honor Harrington. She does a competent, if rather predictable, job, but we miss Honor's ability to overcome huge obstacles in inspired ways. Henke isn't really challenged (Sollies, at this stage, are not particularly tough opponents, and are led by predictably incompetent [...]). Also, she gives Manpower what they want, KNOWING that she's doing so, without really trying to find some other, less conventional, solution.
2. There are too many meetings. This is a trap David Weber falls into rather too frequently: conversations in staff meetings are used to inform the reader of a great deal of background. That can be useful, but Mr. Weber overdoes it and the book becomes mostly a series of meetings.
3. The Manpower plot is STILL only glimpsed, and while it gets a lot of pages, the book carefully avoids giving anything away about their multi-century grand scheme to... what? take over the universe? We learn they have developed new ships and weapons, but nothing about how they work. The book would have been more satisfying if Mr Weber had told us something more definite, at least.

I am left frustrated, but looking forward to the next book. This one ends in a cliffhanger: Manpowers new weapons are about to hit the Manticore shipyards. Will they succeed? Did the new superdreadnaughts get out in time? The one really significant development happens at the very end: the Queen finally shows, reluctantly, a willingness to consider that Haven may not be the true enemy. She also shows why she's the Queen, and everyone else is not.

This book could have been just a story in an Honorverse collection of short stories, and would have accomplished the same thing with a lot less tedium.

This book set a new standard in boring, It reads like a very poorly written text book. These books are supposed to bee fun, You should not have to "study up" to read a book for entertainment. This is the last time I wast money on the Honer series. Which should be called the "no fun to read " seres

Although I'm a fan of Weber's Honorverse, I may soon stop reading the books until I see them in a library, and maybe not even then. He has created some very interesting characters over the run of the series, and I'm glad to see him focusing on some of them, particularly 'Mike' Henke. Unfortunately, as the novels become more and more bloated with unnecessary -- and often less than interesting -- exposition, character development seems to be on the wane. Is his editor on an extended vacation? This has the feel of a galley, not a finished product.

Most of what I was going to say has already been said. But let me give you an example. About midway through Chapter 18, Michelle is starting a meeting. Six people are in the room. One of them, a Commodore Shulamit Onasis, has brought his executive officer, named Frazier Houseman, to the meeting. This leads to pages and pages and pages of drivel about Houseman's family, the economics and politics of Manticore, but virtually nothing about Housemann. Thirteen paragraphs, I think. And what happens? The person in question says not one word, nor is he mentioned again in the entire book.

Just padding, I'm thinking. Weber has done better, much better.

I fell in love with Weber many years ago, starting with On Basilisk Station, and continuing with his novels in sequence (on purpose since I came to him so late)...I certainly was not one of his initial readers, having discovered him when his work was in mass paperback format... some of which are in pretty sad shape, I've read and re-read them so much!

part of what I really like about this book is his "authorial introduction"... being my father's daughter as well as bearing a strong resemblance to the Elephant's Child with his 'satiable curiosity, it's fascinating to find out that Weber had the whole concept in his head... and just how does one do that!?!... from Day One... also fascinating to discover that his characters took on lives of their own, which changed the ending, so to speak... and no, I won't give away any secrets!

as usual with Weber, very well written (I have issues with language that "gets in the way" of a smooth read), character development follows "logically", IF one is allowed to say that about a structured environment...

and I can just barely glimpse what we can all hope will come down the pike...!!!

The only disappointing piece, and this is strictly from my point-of-view, is the way Manpower/Mesa is now coming to the forefront, so to speak, of what I'm perceiving as Weber's main story line... Crown of Slaves is, in a way, a side shoot, equally well writen IF one concedes that a plantetary ruler can be less that 20 years old!...I never did understand hereditary rulers all that well...

All in all, would seriously recommend this book - and if you're new to Weber, you've got a treat in store, especially if you go back to square one!

I was ready to love this book. From the blurbs, and from Weber's own introduction, I got the idea that he was going to give us a new protagonist (now that Honor is too senior to be very interesting), Mike Henke, from whose perspective we could enjoy the ongoing rich exploration of this series 'honorverse'.

Unfortunately, Weber forgot that part. No singular perspective to give the events in the 'honorverse' a thread, a plot, or frankly a reason to continue reading what felt like a bunch of badly written historical fiction chapters from different books about the same time period.

(Oh, and Mike? Forget about it. Not only did she not have a story, she wasn't even in over 1/2 of the book.)

Weber can write gripping fiction (read any of the first 10+ books in this series). Fiction that gets you totally caught up in the characters' pains and triumphs, pulls you into a complex, rich, and cohesive world, as well has having you on the edge of your seat when the action goes into overdrive.

But not in this book, not at all.

As a follow-up to the 1st book in the Saganami Island series, this book is actually only chapter in the Saganami Island series, this chapter at least delivers on the after math of the Battle Monica and results of the battle for the characters involved. It then develops a nice story and plot even if far too much time is devoted useless descriptions and explanations. I found it easy to skip through many paragraphs and not miss anything. However, the end falls flat. In fact there is no end, hence I don't regard this installment as a book. It is actually a calculated commercial effort, one that reminds me of several other attempts made by several of the modern SciFi writers of which I never read anymore. I guess I feel so dissapointed by Weber before. March Up Country was a very succesfull multi-segmented series. The Harrington series also was well divided. But, this chapter is far too long and boring to end up with nothing finished at the end.

This is the type of book where halfway through you look at the ending, not to see how it comes out but to see if the rest of the book is worth reading. I did and it isn't (although I did finish the book to be able to write a competent review).
I really have only three things to say about it:

1. The series is approaching the ludicrous, with the introduction of the Flash Gordon-ish element of evil superhumans (with brains doubtless bulging in their heads fore AND aft) using their evil superscience to plot to take over the Universe.

2. I devoutly wish that someone at Baen Books would find the courage to overcome their deification of Mr. Weber and seriously edit his manuscripts. Just for laughs, I took one page at random and was able to excise about a quarter of it without losing either the sense of the prose or any information necessary for a first-time reader.

3. All good stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. In the case of this series, Mr. Weber seems to have forgotton the last of these. The whole series is beginning to resemble an old-timey radio serial, where the heroine ends up in a fresh predicament at the end of each episode and you have to tune in next time to see what happens to her--the "Misfortunes of Manticore", as it were.

I have really loved all of the Honorverse titles David Weber has churned out. Shadow of Saganami, the pre-cursor to this book, was a really good read as well.

This book was however, far far below the standards I have come to expect from Mr. Weber. Nearly half of the 600 pages of the book is a re-hash of events that took place in other books, just detailed from the perspective of Michelle Henke and others in the cluster. Mr Weber stated his reasons for doing so in his forward for the book, and to a point I agree. But there was far too much content dedicated to it instead of advancing the story line.

In addition, the shift of Manpower, a villain that I have always felt to be a little far-fetched / stretched, to an evil genetically engineered master race with a 600 year plan of galactic domination coupled with secret technology far different from that used by everyone else in the known universe only adds to this feeling.

I have really loved the series, and find it amazing that Mr. Weber can keep churning out new books in the same story line that keep you on the edge of your seat....

It seems that he has finally hit a wall, and this book seems to have caused the series to Jump the Shark.

Storm from the Shadows has many of the elements that fans of the Honor Harrington series will recognize: even better weapons and cool gadgets, intrepid good guys, and bad guys who are a little more than 2-dimensional. However, the sheer scope of the universe that Weber has created is starting to look as if he has too many irons in the fire. I found myself wishing for a little stage setting, such as a simple header that said, for instance, "RMNS Tristram," at the start of each scene, as it was difficult to keep the many names connected with their locations. All in all, though, the book delivers what fans of Weber want, even if it takes a bit of effort to keep all of the plot threads in your head at once.

Michelle Henke needs a break.
She has a best friend who has gone from shy Sphinx yeoman middy to Grayson Steadholder (the FIRST woman Steadholder!) and Manticoran Great lady, with a higher social and aristocratic rank than Mike's!
She has been elevated herself to the ranks of the House of Lords by the assassination of her father and brother in an attempt upon her Queen and the Protector of Grayson, which was only foiled by her friend Honor.
She has been severely wounded in combat and taken prisoner; at least she was paroled - by the Havenite President, no less! - and returned as a courier to Queen Elizabeth III, with President Pritchart's request for a peace conference. Only to have THAT shot down in flames by the assassination attempt on Torch.
Oh well, maybe she can get an easy tour of duty out in the Talbott Quadrant, where Admiral Khumalo is cleaning up after he and Captain Terekhov had their brilliant victory against Manpower and Mesa, in the Monica System. After all, those two officers along with Talbott Governor, Baroness Medusa, are getting things well-settled in the newly-annexed areas of the former Talbott Cluster. It should be a relatively peaceful place for a decorated Admiral to catch her breath and get back up to speed and into the game, since the terms of her parole prohibit her from serving in the wars against Haven.
Yes, Mike Henke can get a break in Talbott.

NOT!

Although I really enjoyed this sequel to "The Shadow of Saganami" in the Honor Harrington universe or "Honorverse" it should come with three big health warnings

1) CLIFF-HANGER ALERT - this book has a cliff-hanger ending in which two heavy attacks, one of them a potential game-ender, are set in motion against the good guys, but we will have to wait for future books to find out what happens. It is obvious that the last words of the author's note which comes with this book "I should also warn you that the ride is going to get a lot rougher for the good guys over the next few books" - is a masterpiece of understatement.

If you are likely to be agonised by the wait to find out what happens, you should possibly consider waiting a few months for the publication of "Mission of Honor" which is the next "main stem" book, currently with the printers, and reading both that book and this one together.

2) OVERLAP ALERT - This book continues the story of events in the Talbott Cluster (now renamed the Talbott Quadrant) following on from "The Shadow of Saganami" (TSOS). The main viewpoint character being Honor Harrington's friend and the Queen's cousin, Michelle Henke. Most of the action takes place in the same timespan as "At All Costs" (AAC).

A significant part of the first third or so of this book retells events in TSOS and AAC from Michelle Henke's viewpoint. After that point, Weber, who was obviously concerned that readers who had read those books might be bored with repetition, cut the references to events already covered in AAC down to minimal outlines, just enough to fix the time frame so that readers who have already read AAC will be able to tell what point in that narrative has currently been reached.

This did work for me but might not work for all readers. Those who have read TSOS and AAC may find the first third of the book a bit repetitive despite Weber's efforts to avoid this. However, those who have not read AAC may find the oblique references in the middle third of this book, to the war Honor Harrington is fighting on another front to be aggravatingly incomplete.

3) NOT MANY BATTLES ALERT

There are fewer battles in this book than in any of the "Main stem" books or it's predecessor. This is very much the same kind of book as "War of Honor" which some readers hated because it was all about setting up a major war, but for most of that book, the war hadn't started. If you didn't like "War of Honor" you won't like this book either.

But if you read Weber for the battles, it is very obvious that what follows this book is going to give you plenty to read in the next few books in the series !

THE HONORVERSE

If you have not read any of David Weber's other books in the Honor Harrington universe and have stuck with this review to this point, I owe you an explanation about that universe. This is the fourteenth full length novel (with two more already delivered to the publishers) in a series of space opera novels set two or three thousand years in the future.

If you have not read any of these books and are interested in doing so, do not start with this one: these stories work best if read in sequence, so start with the first book, which is "On Basilisk station."

Despite the futuristic setting, there are strong parallels with Nelson's navy. Assumed technology in the stories imposes constraints on space navy officers quite similar to those which the technology of fighting sail imposed on wet navy officers two hundred years ago. Similarly, the galactic situation in the novels is very like the strategic and political situation in Europe at the time of the French revolutionary wars.

This is quite deliberate, and one of the things this book brings to the party is an author's note by David Weber which reveals some of his thoughts about the overall outline of the series. Until I read that note I was completely convinced that the books were to to some extent a tribute to C.S. Forester, and that the main heroine of the books, Honor Harrington, was inspired by Forester's character Horatio Hornblower. I still think they have a lot in common, and the plot of one of these books, "Echoes of Honor" is an exact parallel of one of the Hornblower books, "Flying Colours" with Honor Harrington as Hornblower. However, I learn from Weber's note in this book that in fact she is more closely modelled on Nelson.

The Honor Harrington series (sometimes nicknamed the "Honorverse") has developed a number of spin-off storylines. Stories set in this Universe fall into three groups, although they link together in a reasonably consistent manner.

There is the main sequence, currently of 11 novels with number 12 on the way, which follow the career of Honor Harrington herself and also give a top level view of the wars between her home nation, "The Star Kingdon of Manticore" and its enemies. The main Honor Harrington sequence is:

1) On Basilisk Station
2) The Honor of the Queen
3) The Short Victorious War
4) Field of Dishonour
5) Flag in Exile
6) Honor among Enemies
7) In Enemy Hands
8) Echoes of Honor
9) Ashes of Victory
10) War of Honor
11) At All Costs
12) Mission of Honor (forthcoming)

There are currently four collections in the "Worlds of Honor" series of short stories by Weber and co-authors set in the same universe, and featuring a range of characters, some from the main series of books, others new.

Some of these are espionage stories, and Weber has produced a book called "Crown of Slaves" co-written with Eric Flint, which brings together several of the most prominent spies from the novels and short stories in a novel of intrigue and revolution. The sequel, "Torch of Freedom" is currently with the publishers.

And then there is the "Next Generation" sequence, which starts with "The Shadow of Saganami" and follows on with this book "Storm from the Shadows" featuring some younger officers in the Grayson and Manticoran navies such as Helen Zilwicki and Abigail Hearns.

Although both books have the word "Shadow" in the title, it clearly is not the same shadow. What this means is that a powerful and evil force which hides in the shadows, known to the world as "Manpower" but to it's inner circle as "The Mesan Alignment" is whipping up a storm against the good guys. Having tricked Manticore and Haven into going to war against each other, they want to keep that war going and drag Manticore into a war against the largest and richest nation in the galaxy, the Solarian league. Everyone assumes that Manpower is simply a rich and corrupt company of genetic slavers. Unfortunately for the galaxy they are much, much more than that ...

For amusement, if you want to try to look for the parallels to nations and individuals from the French revolutionary period and the Hornblower books, one possible translation would be:

Republic of Haven = France
People's Republic of Haven = Revolutionary France
Rob S. Pierre = Robespierre
Former Haven legislaturist regime = the Bourbon monarchy and aristocrats

Star Kingdom of Manticore = Great Britain
Gryphon = Scotland
Prime Minister Alan Summervale = Pitt the Younger

Honor Alexander-Harrington = Horatio Nelson/Horatio Hornblower

Hamish Alexander-Harrington, Earl White Haven = stands to Honor as a combination of Admiral Edward Pellew & Lady Barbara Wellesley would to a female Hornblower. I just can't picture him as Lady Emma Hamilton.

Queen Elizabeth of Manticore - imagine a black female version of George III who is definately not mad, has a terrible temper and really, really hates the French (for good reasons) but is otherwise a very good ruler.

Alistair McKeon = William Bush

Crown loyalists and Centrists = Tory supporters of Pitt
Conservative Association = hardline High Tories
New Kiev Liberals = Whig Oligarchists
Cathy Montaigne Liberals = Whig Radicals

The extreme right & extreme left coalition which held power after Alan Summervale's death = the Grenville ministry of "all the talents" which took over for a while after Pitt the Younger died.

(This is a reference to the politics, not the personalities - Grenville himself, who was a decent guy, cannot have been the model for the ghastly Baron High Ridge.)

Grayson = Portugal
Anderman Empire = Kingdom of Prussia
Silesia = Poland
Solarian republic = United States of America (but a superpower such as America is now, not the tiny fledgling republic of 1812.)

Manpower, Mesa, and the genetic slavers = up to this point, Slave trader interests, but in this book it is revealed that they are much more than that. Imagine a mix of Khan Noonan Singh from Star Trek, the Cetagandan Empire from Bujold's Vorkisigan books, and the Illuminati.

Concluding comment. Some people will really love this book, others will hate it. I was one of those who loved it.

"As Admiral Michelle Henke availed herself of the spacious new head aboard her new flagship, she couldn't help but spend time lost in an internal dialog about how much improved the new Mark 23 dual-ply TP was than the old Mark 16 model, and marvel again at Admiral Hemphill's shop's cleverness in reducing the tendency of the sheets to fail to rip along the perforations, and the annoying lint they would sometimes leave behind, particularly in a battlecruiser under impeller power. Despite herself, she resisted the temptation to spend a few more paragraphs thinking about the technical improvements in toiletries since the first war with Haven, though it would have been just as boring as many of her other long meditations in the book so far. Still, she thought, she could have used that lint to provide her with something to think about now that her life seemed to consist of little more than chit-chat with other officers and officials, tediously described drills, and a neurotic compulsion to worry about how much she was eating (because she didn't have Honor Harrington's endlessly referred-to genetically enhanced metabolism.) The thought of Honor sent Mike into yet another reverie about those she had lost aboard her last ship, because it had been, it occurred to her, at least three pages since the last one was prompted for no apparent reason. But, snapping out of it, she realized she had urgent business to attend to on the bridge, involving the execution of another painstakingly described but essentially boring drill, surrounded by junior officers whose background she would go over in her head in long expository passages, though they served little to either make the characters three-dimensional or to advance any semblance of a plot. As she made her way across her dayroom, she noticed the page count had only reached 320, and, for a brief moment, feared she and her crew might not last for the remaining 400 or so pages the Admiralty had expected this "novel" to last, even when one accounted for the time-dilation effect of traveling through plot points already described (and entertainingly!) in the novels in which they actually took place, without actually adding much to them in this book. Thank goodness there would be many pages involving the evil conspiracy of the Mesans without revealing what their true intention might be, and many other characters who add their own interminable internal dialogs to the page count. Perhaps, she thought, it would be enough to keep the readers, or at least the Havenites, from realizing this book was badly in need of brutal trimming by an editor who remembered when David Weber knew how to build and move a plot along. The commercial fate of the Star Empire of Manticore, if not the entire Honorverse itself, might hang in the balance."

The editor should be shot for letting this palp get printed. Any competent editor would have trimmed this 730 pg book down to a fifty page short story and an introductory chapter in the next real book.

If you're not an absolute die-hard fan of Weber who must read every word printed in the Honorverse you should skip this novel. Its not worth the time to read it.

I am a great fan of David Weber's books having read all of his series. He writes in a fast paced, engrossing style that makes his books a hard to put down. BUT not this time. This book is tedious and 350 pages too long for its story. The numerous regressions and introspective musings of nearly all the characters, not to mention their mental digressions and the conferences between each group of principals drone on for chapters totaling go 100s of pages. This appears to be one 750 page story that was broken up into two books that, depending on the length of the next book will run 1500 pages or so. HST

The Honorverse has to be hands down the best sci-fi/political science/adventure series ever written. This latest issue in the series is no different. Though Harrington takes a more supporting role in the series now, that gives a more rounded picture of the former supporting characters in the series as they take center stage.
The only criticism I had with the book is its sometimes hard to keep track of the timeline. other than that, its a must read for the series.

Not the best of the series, but good for filling in the gaps and telling some of the story that makes the Honorverse as rich a setting as you'll find anywhere. Consider it as one that doesn't move the overall story forward as much as it does solidify it, preparing for it to advance.

For those of us WEBER/Harrington addicts out here. Think again. The book is a waste of paper.
There is nothing much new just a lot of words (David is being paid per word). It was all in previous books, and it should have been about 95% shorter. This book, shortened, would have made a good intro for the next book.
If you liked war and peace for it's Brevity, like angst (of all age groups), and character expansion, this might be the book for you. If you expect action, a decent story, and continuation of the Honorverse plot. Wait for the next book Manticore gets it in the neck yet again. In the next book.
In short save at least one tree, and twenty hours of your valuable time. WAIT FOR THE NEXT BOOK!

Lots, and lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of talking head conference scenes, no action, at ALL. Pretty much sums it up. Weber has been drifting into this pattern more and more over the years - this is the book that finally went WAY too far over the edge.

This book tells a generally good story. With this new wok, Weber moves up the Honorverse main storyline to a couple of months after the huge Battle of Manticore, narrated in his last major Honor Harrington novel - "At all costs".

If you follow the Honor Harrington story lines this book, per se, offers a view into what is happening in the Talbot Cluster while Haven and Manticore are at each others throats and opens up two new possible combat fronts for the embattled Royal Manticoran Navy.

Have in mind that the book ends with a huge cliff-hanger and that you will wish you had the next book in hand when you finish it.

From his first Honor Harrington novel, On Basilisk Station, to this title, David Weber has kept the entertainment level at the top. I have never been disappointed. The only problem I could convey is that they aren't written/published fast enough.

**vague spoilers**

I have really enjoyed all of Weber's Honorverse books as well as some of his other titles, up until now. This book was awful. Unfortunately it would be difficult to give examples of why this book didn't work without giving out spoilers but I will do my best. He stated in the introduction that part of the book would be retelling events in other books from different character's perspectives... and it didn't really do that... but for the effort I found it hard to tell when in the overall story I was supposed to be. It just made the timeline for this book jumbled.

Next, there were too many attempts at subplots and character developments so that no one character or group of characters was focused on long enough for me to get interested in them. Nominally, I took it Michelle Henke was the "main character" but she only had two majour scenes. If you liked the characters from Shadow of Saganami, they're in there too... Aivers Terekhov is mentioned early, and forgotten, then mentioned again later... Honor makes an appearance or two... There's (I think) supposed to be development of Helen Zilwicki's and Abigail Hearn's characters, but Weber never really tells what happens with them, more like gives results in a summary later. (a bit of spoiler here) for example, someone has a problem with Abigail, they bad mouth her for a page or two and get talked to by someone else for a page, then no mention of it until later the Captain reports to the Commodore that "Abigail solved it by being Abigail and working really hard." (no, really, that was the solution.) Another point a competition is mentioned, then chapters later the results are stated in a paragraph... that sort of thing.

There's the main pseudo-antagonist in this but mostly, it's a repeat of what happened in Shadow of Saganami just less-so. There's no big battle.... four ships get blown up total, and none of them fought back...

The books was filled with references to one group's master plan... but they were all deliberately vague and not in any mysterious way... just a "oh, and this group is STILL planning something" way...

The passing touch on any character or group got very old very fast because, among other things, it was people reacting to things that had already happened and reacting incorrectly due to lag time in information due to travel requirements, worse the reader ALWAYS knew people were reacting incorrectly because it dealt with what happened and then with people not knowing about it. Further, one group had secretly developed a faster stardrive and so were always ahead of others, but no one figured it out despite constant references and ponderings about how [that group:] could NEVER have orchestrated all this because the time it would take to coordinate it was too long, or how that group always seemed to know things before others... frankly if every other page that held a reference to how that group couldn't have done something or known something due to travel time had been torn out and burned, there would still be too many incidents of it. Same with talking about other things that happend... an assassination attempt on someone (from another book) gets repeated ad nauseam, as do references to Helen's misadventures in Old Chicago.

By the end of the book, I just didn't care. Nothing really happened. Nothing really got done or was resolved. One group has a master plan. Another group is arrogant. Some people are angry and unreasonable. And most of the things that took place in this book already took place in other books. That about sums this book up. If you read Crown of Slaves, Shadow of Saganami and At All Costs, you'll have already covered about half this book. The other half are pointless hints that something else is going to happen. At some point. But not in this book.

I assume the half of this book that isn't already covered in the other three books will still be repeated in Mission of Honor and Torch of Freedom.

I never give up my books. I buy them and keep them so I can reread them. I have shelves in the attic filled with books, but frankly, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd return this book to the store tomorrow.

This book was insulting to the Honor Harrington seris. One word describes it - Dissapointing! OK, two words - Boring!! I haven't read a book padded with this much garbage in years. Thirteen pages of characters, nine of drawings and seven blank. Not to mention endless pages of non-essential dialogue, weapon analysis and just pure verbage. Hey Dave! You still getting paid by the word?
I'm sorry, maybe it's just cause I'm an old guy, but I fell asleep four times reading this book. That's not why I read "space opera" or military SF.
This was so not intertaining.

Thank goodness I borrowed this before buying it. Jay Snyder isn't a bad voice actor, but his consistent mispronunciation of the term "Manticoran" makes this book almost unlistenable. Doesn't someone give the voice actors a pronunciation guide to the important words in a series? Maybe they should. Someone should definitely be checking that sort of thing before the audio is released.

If anyone not named David Weber submitted this travesty to the publishers at Baen, it wouldn't even arrive at an editor. Straight to the trash can. Wouldn't even send a reply to the sender. Its horrid.

Yes, I am a weber fan, but this is attrocias.

Get the Baen editors book staff off the reviews... they are the only ones who posted anything good as a review. They read like the back flap of the book cover. They are simply trying to prop up a horrid book. Any objective reader can't give this book over a 3*** star at best. If they do they are simply being abundantly generous.

To David Weber: Put down the dictation microphone and try typing the next book David Weber. You might remember how to actually write a book, instead of pontificating so that your readers don't fall asleep. You know, character development? Dialogue. Reasons to actually like the characters or to feel their emotions? Say what? Plot line? Say what? Has none of them.

This was the worst David Weber book by far.
No reasons to like some characters. Given infodumping instead
No reasons shown to dislike characters. Given some infodumping instead.
No character development.
Charters in the previous books vanished. Its as if Shadow of Saganami was never written.

Tons of information simply dumped helter skelter with no rhyme or reason.
Horrible dialogue because all we get are infodumps inside of peoples heads because nothing ever happens in the book. He flits here and there in great microscopic detail without ever getting to an overarching theme unless you have read every last DW book he has written only then would you have any idea what is happening or why.

The highlight of the book? Stuff he had already written in a previous book(At All Costs) which he copied.

The next best highlight? The end if you managed to actually read that far which turns into a cliff hanger as a monetary ploy to get people to buy more of his books. What does he try to do to make up for lack of a plotline? Tons of minuscia from different viewpoints. Its nothing but filler. Waste of Trees and ink. Wait for the paperback in the best case.

Simply Horrid.
Next time tell Eric Flint to get his hands out of your Overall Plotline so you can start a book series correctly, with background and character development, if this was actually the problem.

I'm a huge David Weber fan, but I absolutely DETEST his recent trend of introducing a slew of characters you never really know or empathize with, string you along for 700+ pages, only to absolutely leave you hanging. This is at least the second time he's done this (book 2 of the Off Armageddon Reef being the other case), and with as many projects as he has going, it'll be 2+ years before we figure out what happens. That's just BS in my opinion.

And for the people that liked the book - I just want to ask how? Nothing was resolved after 700+ pages of background information. It's like Weber went all Robert Jordan on us. I know that people have to pay the rent - but this is ridiculous.

As a long time reader of David Weber and the Honor Harrington series in particular, I am delighted with the latest installment. He develops some characters that were somewhat on the sidelines of previous books, and fills in some gaps that were missing also. The writing is very clean and descriptive, and the plot and story lines just suck you along for the ride. I'm eagerly anticipating the next one.

"Fluff" is too deep a word for this stuff. I can picture Weber creating this work with a Weber-esque fractal bot in one hand, and bottle of Jack Daniels slipping out of the other. Unless you need a paperweight, skip this one. The author seems to be saying, "I don't wanna write this crap anymore, let me die"

Storm From the Shadows (2009) is the second naval SF novel in the Saganami Island series, following The Shadow of Saganami. In the previous volume, Manpower delivered fourteen obsolescent Solarian battlecruisers to the government of Monica. Realizing the danger to the wormhole connection at Lynx, Captain Terekhov gathered all available Manticoran ships from the Southern Patrol and took them into the planetary system of Monica.

When the battlecruisers refused to standown, Terekhov destroyed twelve of the ships and captured two more. The Manticorans lost six ships and several thousand personnel.

Admiral Khumalo soon arrived with the relief squadron. After reading the reports and discussing the battle with Terekhov, Khumalo supported his actions. Then the Admiral put even more pressure on the Monican government to furnish records to the Manticoran investigators.

In this novel, Manpower is planning another operation in the region. Their agents contact New Tuscany and set up another incident. Only, this time the warships are manned by personnel from the Office of Frontier Security.

Michelle Henke returns to Manticore as a courier for Eloise Pritchart. She learns that she has been promoted to Vice Admiral. Then she is assigned command of a squadron of Nike class battlecruisers.

Aivars Terekhov returns to Manticore in the HMS Hexapuma. He is promoted to Commodore and given command of a task group of Saganami-C class heavy cruisers. The Admiralty -- and the Queen -- are very pleased with his actions.

Commander Kaplan is promoted and given command of the HMS Tristram within Terekhov's group. Lieutenant Abigal Hearns is now her tactical officer.

Ensign Helen Zilwicki becomes Terekhov's Flag Lieutenant. Although she would have preferred a tactical position, Helen realizes that Flag Lieutenant assignments are usually offered to those on the fast track. So she takes the job with a clear understanding of how much she needs to learn.

In this story, Mike's squadron is sent to Talbott Station to protect the newly annexed planetary systems in the Talbott Quadrant. After the Battle of Monica, the Admiralty has started diverting additional ships to the region. No one is sure what the League will do next.

Mike pays her respects to Admiral Khumalo and meets the Governor and the local officials. Then she takes her squadron to Monica to check out the situation there. To her surprise, Mike finds two squadrons of OFS battlecruisers within the system and learns of a Solarian Battle Fleet task force in the vicinity.

Terekhov is also sent to Talbott Station. Upon arrival, Terekhov is warmly welcomed by Admiral Khumalo and then briefed on the current situation. Except for the withdrawal of the New Tuscany system from the Talbott Quadrant, everything seems to be going well.

This tale puts the Royal Manticoran Navy into a bind. The way things are going, Manticore might soon be at a war with both Haven and the League. And Manpower Alignment has other designs against Manticore.

The novel starts out covering past history, beginning with the loss of Mike Henke's command to the Havenites. It works its way through the aborted truce talks to the Battle of Manticore. Although the first two-thirds were covered in the main series -- see At All Costs -- these events are seen through different viewpoints. Moreover, several incidents are added to the backstory.

After Mike returns from Haven, the story mostly involves administration and personnel. The action doesn't even start heating up until the last third of the book. Unless you really like reading about command, training and personal relationships, this novel might be boring. OTOH, the author can make such material quite interesting. Read and enjoy.

Highly recommended for Weber fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of naval deployments, covert operations, and political intrigue.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Storm from the Shadows happens to be a very good read following in the footsteps of the previous books in this series and a spin off from the Honor Harrington series. I believe a great job of setting up a new direction as well as keeping in touch with the old.

J. Merrick

I have no idea what the quality of this book might be. I have never received it to read. Seems to me its a very bad sign for reliability of the store, that they send out requests for reviews on books they have never delivered. Maybe a death wish of note to formerly good customers?

P R MoranStorm from the Shadows