Ashes of Victory (Honor Harrington Series #9) Book

Honor Harrington is back from Hell - the Havenite prison planet - along with a few hundred thousand prisoners she rescued along the way. The folks back in the Manticore system thought she was dead, and they're really, really glad to see her. They spend the first 150 pages of this book showering her with honors while she blushes and protests feebly. It's almost unbearably corny and saccharine. But eventually Weber gets on with the story, and I enjoyed the rest of the book. His last 100 pages were as thrilling as usual. I'm eager to find out where the story goes from here, but I find that I enjoy these novels more if I put some space between them.

Weber's prose is very readable, but he overuses a few favorite phrases, and I don't understand why his editor doesn't do something about it. Out of curiosity I downloaded the free electronic copy of this novel and did a word search. The word "chuckled" is used 72 times. Some form of the word "grin" is used 79 times. No fewer than five different characters pinch the bridge of their nose when they're feeling tired.

Surely his editor could catch this kind of repetition? He or she could take measures, like limiting Weber to no more than two uses of the phrase "smoothing out the rough edges" per novel, and perhaps suggest some other mannerisms for the characters to exhibit when they are tired or stressed: there is entirely too much rubbing of chins and noses in this book.