The Honor Harrington books have never been solely about Honor Harrington;
her adversaries and the various players in the governments of Manticore
and Haven have always had their turn on the stage. But starting with this
book, Weber ups the volume. I mean that literally; it’s longer than its
predecessors and although it’s nominally about Honor’s escape from Hell,
the prison planet run by Haven’s Office of State Security, at least half
of it is devoted to a variety of goings on in other places. It’s a fine
book, and I enjoyed it; but I fear the cast might be getting a bit too
large, and I suspect a little judicious cutting would have made it a
better book. It’s not so bad here, but becomes more pronounced in later
books.