A Rising Thunder [Hardcover]

Probably NOT the worst, but not great. It's compulsively readable. BUT. The story is being painfully stretched. Since At All Costs, only the Weber/Flint collaboration Torch of Freedom has had sustained vitality.

This book has battle set pieces that fizzle; yes, we get that war is hell and the Mesans are really, really evil.

There are lots and lots of repetitive political machinations, which consist mainly of the good guys reacting to external forces and the bad guys and incompetent guys proving that they are bad and/or incompetent. At length. And on and on and on.

There are myriad brief check-ins with various good guys and bad guys (but not necessarily the ones you care about) to keep them in mind, one assumes, for later books. We also get glancing views of various naval officers, space station crew, etc., each of whom is given rank/title and full first name(s) and last name(s), carefully chosen to represent the multi-national origins of the galaxy of the far future. The character list for this series--including all minor characters--must be enormous. Most of these people are spearcarriers and don't need names.

We have an improbable seemingly instantaneous complete trust between two sets of good guys formerly sworn enemies. Once the leaders become best buddies, the people fall in line. The people in all these books, especially the later ones, always go along because they are completely manipulated by government-run propaganda machines. This is convenient for plot.

Thing is, Weber does better with individual relatively small groups/units (the early Harrington books, the first Saganami book, the Cachat/Zilwicki adventures), but he gets pretty tiresome when we have to spend so much time with the leaders and their plotting (if they're bad guys) and planning (if they're good guys).

There are incremental improvements in military tech that by this time have become little more than chrome

Then we get an extraneous royal wedding that MAY be set up for a later book because if it's meant simply to show life goes on (especially if you're part of the leader group and even if half your family was wiped out several books ago), it's a waste of pages.

Treecats get more involved, only to be merely decorative.

And so on. At this rate, we're not going to get the final confrontation with the ultimate bad guys for 2-3 more books.

Problem is, I'm not sure I have the patience to stick with it, especially since I don't care very much about the characters Weber focuses on anymore. They're virtually immortal (unless killed in battle or assassinated), and I am not.

This review is based on the e-book version (not the e-ARC) bought directly from the publisher. There were a very few typographical errors, none critical, which I suspect are also in the print version.

This is a review I didn't want to write. I genuinely like David Weber's writings. I own most of the books he's produced and loved On Basilisk Station when it first came out. This series has been a huge breath of fresh air in the world of science fiction writing.

Sadly, this series is also a wonderful example of a storyline that has been extended far past the original scope. David Weber seemed to be flailing around more than a bit as he tried to hold the pieces of the plot together.

There are many things that have gone wrong in this world. At first it was about one person and her uncanny ability to get a ship's crew to excel in combat. Yes, the combats were in some ways simple. Originally missles were described as more of a standoff weapon while energy weapons and fighting in a line like 18th century warships was the standard. However, the technology kept becoming more and more powerful, and missiles have become the uberhammer in the universe. This book not only notes it, but emphasizes it with many of the discussions the characters get involved in.

And sadly, the bad guys are showing almost no character development. Haven and its people were textured and deep with many of the characters showing shades of gray in their personalities and motivations. The "five mandarins" of the Solarian League and the Detweiler clones who run the Mesan Alignment are extremely 2-dimensional. Sure the supposed plots that Weber has them conducting might appear complex, but the foundations are simple and the motivations are just too obvious. There is no attempt by David Weber to add nuance to the characters.

And as others have said, this read like a very long setup for later books. Overall, it was like one of hte middle books in The Wheel of Time, there was a lot of filler and exposition, but the plot moved incrementally.

This series has been suffering since the first "Podnaughts" appeared, and has seemed to almost lose it's way. Mission of Honor had many unnecessary deaths and new technologies that appeared to exist solely to help boost the power of a new bad guy. It was almost like reading a bad comic book where the villain suddenly gains a new power just to add in more danger. The early books were character driven, with the personalities of the characters being a major component of hte story. A Rising Thunder downplays the individual characters.

This story is lost in "epic" mode. Weber is best when he can keep the story focused on a few specific characters, rather htan try to write about every action taking place in his universe.

For lovers of the series, this will add a few details and does push towards a couple of major confrontations in later books, but in my opinion it is a major disappointment.

First, if the name of the NEXT book in this series is named "A Breaking Storm", I think I'll track Dave down and smack him on the head with a wet noodle.

Second - well, this had better not be your introduction to the Honorverse, because you'll be confused as hell.

In reading the other reviews, I think what many of the readers are missing is that this is, literally, a bridge work. Right now we've SO much going on from a political stand point that David had two choices. He could blow things off in a couple of paragraphs - or he could lay things out. And since, effectively, this entire book is research that had to be done by Weber to make and keep things consistent in the Honorverse - well, here it is. Not two paragraphs, but an entire novel dedicated to all the back story and notes that an author must do when such a detail story is written.

So that sums this book up in a nutshell. This is a foundation work on where the next book in the series are going to go, and gives you background so that, two books down the line when the suddenly a group of four Solarian officers and police take over, you won't go, wait, what? You'll know why and when things started.

I also can't see this series going much past two more decent sized novels. Not because I don't WANT it to continue - it's just that it's reaching a crescendo. Mesa is going to get blown up, the Solarian League is going to break apart, and the new force in the galaxy will be the Grand Alliance.

Quick edit: I came up with the name "A Breaking Storm" on my own. It's nice to see that other Weber readers think the same way I do - which is scary...

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