The first half of this book is a dead loss. The second half is much
better, but unfortunately it isn’t long enough to stand on its own.

The first half of the book is intended to put Honor Harrington into
a position where she must necessarily be captured by the People’s
Republic of Haven. (Given the book’s title, this hardly counts
as a spoiler.) Further, because Honor is such a paragon her capture
mustn’t be her own fault. It can’t be due to cowardice; it can’t be due
to making a stupid tactical decision; no, it must be pure bad luck
mingled with heroism.

And it doesn’t work. Honor is commanding a squadron of cruisers on
convoy duty. According to her deployment, one cruiser leads; the
remainder trail. The point position is the most dangerous, especially
as the convoy enters a new system–the ship on point will be the first
to see any lurking enemies. If there are any, it will probably be able
to warn the ships the follow, but it will probably not be able to get
away. Weber explains this to us in great detail, and has Honor
reluctantly agree that her ship can’t take the point position. As the
squadron commander, it’s her duty to be where she can best protect the
convoy as a whole.

So far, so good. So how come, a few dozen pages later, we find her on
the bridge of her second-in-command’s ship, in the point position, as
said ship enters a system? Well, she was there for a birthday party,
and there was no time to lose, so instead of returning to her own ship
she stayed where she was and got captured.

Now, really, that’s just dumb. Visiting the point ship while they were
in hyperspace is one thing. Staying on board while the point ship
recon’d the system the convoy was approaching is quite another. No matter
how you slice it, Honor blew it.

And Weber lets her get away with it. Ugh.

Aside from that, quite a bit of nothing goes on during the first half of
the book; there are few scenes that set things up for later books in the
series, but most of it could have been cut without damaging the story.

The second half, now, the second half is why the book was written at all.

Some books back, the People’s Republic of Haven underwent a revolution
led by (for goodness sake) one Rob S. Pierre. (Sometimes I wonder if Weber
regrets having chosen such a cheesy name.) Things have stabilized
somewhat since then, and Haven is now governed by the Committee for
Public Safety, or practically speaking, by Pierre; by Oscar St. Just,
head of the Office of State Security; and by Cordelia Ransom, head of the
Office of Public Information. Yes, our Cordelia is the chief
propagandist of the Revolution; she’s also a True Believer of the most
militant stripe, and a sadist to boot.

As the book begins, Ransom has gone to visit the front lines in the
Office of Public Information’s private cruiser, the Tepes (and isn’t
that a name that’s fraught with atmosphere). Honor has the bad luck to
be caught just after Ransom arrives in-system, and though her naval
captors do their best to see that Honor and her crew are treated decently,
Ransom has other ideas. For her actions in
On Basilisk Station, Honor was tried and convicted of murder (in
absentia, of course). Ransom sees the publicity coup of her
life–Honor Harrington, war criminal, is on the short road to Hell and
death by hanging.

Naturally, our heroine can’t be allowed to end that way…and therein
lies the tale, and it’s a good’un. Once you get past all of the garbage
at the beginning.