This episode divides into three separate threads. The first thread deals with Honor trying to engineer her escape from Hell along with almost 400,000 fellow prisoners. The second deals with the effects of Honor's death on Grayson and Manticore. The third thread deals with the Peeps getting a new, effective military leader in Esther McQueen and its new program of going on the offensive against the Manticoran Alliance.

On Hell, Honor is busy making plans for capturing enough tonnage to remove herself and all her fellow prisoners from the planet, convening courts martian for the many guards who used the prisoners as their personal toys, and retraining the prisoners whose military knowledge is decades out of date to crew the ships they manage to steal.

On Grayson and Manticore, there are state funerals and especially on Grayson a strong desire to get revenge on those who murdered their steadholder. Also the question of what to do with Honor's fortune and estate needs to be settled so that Benjamin's reforms aren't being derailed. We also see how Honor's parents and her closest friends are dealing with her loss.

On Haven, Esther McQueen is building herself a place on the Committee for Public Safety as she gets control of the Navy and makes it a more effective force. There is a lot of in-fighting because no one on the Committee can trust anyone else and everyone has their own political agenda. McQueen's plans to lead to Peep forces bringing substantial losses to Alliance forces and holding but they run into some problems when they try to regain planets that are testing grounds for new and effective weapons being developed in secret by Manticore and its allies.

I liked the way the various threads of this story were woven together. The pacing was fast even though the story was very long. My audiobook spanned more than 25 hours! ( )

This episode divides into three separate threads. The first thread deals with Honor trying to engineer her escape from Hell along with almost 400,000 fellow prisoners. The second deals with the effects of Honor's death on Grayson and Manticore. The third thread deals with the Peeps getting a new, effective military leader in Esther McQueen and its new program of going on the offensive against the Manticoran Alliance.

On Hell, Honor is busy making plans for capturing enough tonnage to remove herself and all her fellow prisoners from the planet, convening courts martian for the many guards who used the prisoners as their personal toys, and retraining the prisoners whose military knowledge is decades out of date to crew the ships they manage to steal.

On Grayson and Manticore, there are state funerals and especially on Grayson a strong desire to get revenge on those who murdered their steadholder. Also the question of what to do with Honor's fortune and estate needs to be settled so that Benjamin's reforms aren't being derailed. We also see how Honor's parents and her closest friends are dealing with her loss.

On Haven, Esther McQueen is building herself a place on the Committee for Public Safety as she gets control of the Navy and makes it a more effective force. There is a lot of in-fighting because no one on the Committee can trust anyone else and everyone has their own political agenda. McQueen's plans to lead to Peep forces bringing substantial losses to Alliance forces and holding but they run into some problems when they try to regain planets that are testing grounds for new and effective weapons being developed in secret by Manticore and its allies.

I liked the way the various threads of this story were woven together. The pacing was fast even though the story was very long. My audiobook spanned more than 25 hours! ( )

I do hate funerals; I cry and my nose gets stopped up. Honor's was no exception. Even knowing the Havenites had faked her death, I still got caught up in the emotion of it all. I suppose that is why I rooted for Honor and her intrepid band of escapees so hard. There had been so much loss, I didn't want them to lose more people.

Watching the Manticore/Grayson/Haven side of things in the alternating books (the six books alternate among the political/military aspects off the prison planet Hell and what is going on with Honor and her people) made for interesting reading as the different reactions to Honor's supposed death hit each group differently. The political fallout from Cordelia Ransom's death (and for her, I exulted at the death of an evil woman) might well be the salvation of the war for Haven, especially as Manticore debates itself endlessly, it seems. Grayson, on the other hand, I cheered for as they decided to use Honor's death to aim higher. Go Grayson!

To understand this book, you must have read the earlier ones in the series. If you like military science fiction and want to understand the reasoning behind the battles, this series is for you. If the background military aspects (what weapons function in detail, for example) get too technical, you can skim through them without missing anything in the story. Well done! And yes, I have the sequel already. ( )

I thought this eighth book in the Honor Harrington series was completely spectacular! I was beyond impressed.

The book started off right where the previous book left off -- with Honor and her crew marooned on the Haven prison island of Hades, trying to figure out an exit strategy after they had escaped the SS star ship taking them there by blowing it up and taking two of its small ships to the surface. However, Haven is devious if nothing else and produces a doctored video shown around the universe of Honor being executed by hanging and Manticore and Grayson's citizens are stunned and devastated. They both hold gigantic funerals in her honor. Then there's the matter of her titles and inheritance. She left no heir, so her cousin is given the Manticorian title of earl, in her stead, while the leaders of Grayson try to figure out what to do with her Key and her steading. The good thing is her physician parents are there, working in the geneticist clinic she set up, and they are talked into giving birth to another child to become her heir and to inherit her steadholder title.

Meanwhile, Haven's wildly successful Admiral Esther McQueen is pretty much sticking it to Manticore while simultaneously juggling her new role as an official member of The Committee of Public Safety. She plans a four pronged attack against Manticore and Haven's navy carries it out, but Manticore has some new secret weapons at its disposal and at two of these worlds that are attacked, they are deployed with heavy Peep losses. That said, Haven's attacks are successful and Manticore is shaken to the bone. All of a sudden, its people realize they're on the defensive for the first time in the war and it's extremely demoralizing.

So Honor and her small crew are on Hades, also known as Hell. They've been spying on a small group of troublemaking prisoners, with the goal of making contact to see if they could ally themselves with them to attack the Havenite SS guards on the headquarters island of Styx. They make contact and befriend these prisoners, some of whom have been on this prison world for as long as 70 years. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of prisoners there. Honor has weapons and body armor for hundreds of them and begins to train them for an assault on Styx. They just wait for the right time. It eventually comes along and they take off. One of their ships takes off for an outlying courier ship that could alert other Havenites to what they're up to and it blasts it out of the sky. Honor's ship blows up Styx's defenses, hell, half the island, lands and disperses its troops, and they quickly take over the island. They hold court martials for the Peep guards who were barbarians and execute many of them. The big problem now is how to get a half million prisoners off the world and back to Manticore. Honor has plans, however. And I'll be damned if she doesn't succeed. How she does it, I'll leave for you readers to find out, but the pages are tense and action packed, particularly the final 150 pages. When she finally arrives in Manticorian space in the last couple of pages, it's simply amazing that she was able to pull this off and survive. It's stunning. It's her best feat yet. And it's the best Honor book I've read to date. Indeed, I know the next one starts off immediately where this one leaves off and I've already picked it up and begun reading it and I'm not disappointed. It's a really exciting book with a lot of suspense and a lot of action and if you're reading the Honor Harrington series, it's strongly recommended. ( )

I love this series!! David Weber tells all teh sides and I love that I can like and respect the "enemies". I believe in the ideals of the military and the whys they fight. I think it fits in our times. The characters have heart and I enjoy falling for them. The relationship between Honor and Nimitz is wonderful. I too reread this series and enjoy it each time I read it. ( )