Reviews for Storm from the Shadows (Disciples of Honor Series #3)

The average rating for Storm from the Shadows (Disciples of Honor Series #3) based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-08-05 00:00:00 Robert Hahn I own many of Weber's earlier efforts. This one was a library read which pretty much confirms my assessment of what's gone wrong with Weber's writing lately. Big book, interesting developments in the Honor-verse plot-lines, but filled with stylistic and writerly choices that really depress me. Most of the book reads like a series of reports, not characters moving through a story. New characters are name-checked and have one physical attribute and one psychological attribute attached to them immediately; characterization rarely goes much deeper than that clunky writer's exercise. Most non-combat scenes involve characters discussing what other characters might or might not do, followed later by another scene with the other characters discussing their plans and what the first characters might think they're doing. Early on in the series, the advantage of superior knowledge made these scenes somewhat interesting, but when most of the book consists of them, they strike me as the literary equivalent of cruise control. I always respected Weber for the wargamey background to his space combat scenes. But the "logical" developments of weapons tech in his universe have pretty much turned any combat into a predictable (and fairly mechanical) affair. No more close-quarters strike and counter-strike. Now, we get dry data on missile ranges and numbers. Maybe the first two or three times he presented combat as X missiles fire from Y pods and tubes, with Z missiles hitting after countermeasures doing A damage, it worked dramatically, but now it's as dramatic as reading an Excel spreadsheet. I've gone from being uneasy at the political implications of the hero kingdom being an aristocracy to being wistful about the treecats--whose inclusion at least causes character's emotions to become relevant--and wondering how much longer investment in this series will prove worthwhile.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-01-07 00:00:00 Derek Cheung This book represents, in many ways, Weber's sequel to At All Costs. In that regards, this book has been a long time coming. And, in many ways, it doesn't disappoint. But in some ways it does. The plot concerns the aftermath of the events in Shadow of Saganami and At All Costs and as you read it you can definitely see where the author is completely changing the enemy of the Honorverse from the Havenites to Mesa. This group, with a more sinister objective than the Peeps ever really had, continues to manipulate events from behind the scenes to try to control Manticore's rise. The book itself goes back over a lot of the events of At All Costs from different perspectives - readers may well be put off as Weber goes about re-telling Henke's capture and the immediate events after that. Henke is, ostensibly, the main character in this book - but it must be admitted that she gets that title only because her name is in the book jacket. SftS definitely works on the same scale as At All Costs, or War of Honor, or any of the recent Honorverse main works - focusing on many different groups and protagonists as it spins a very large story. This is in marked contrast to Shadow of Saganami which was much more in line with the earlier books of the series, focusing most of its attention on a single Manticoran ship. This is, to my mind, regretful - I liked the idea of a Shadow of Saganami series because I thought that was the intention. The major problem with this book, though, was pacing. The pace of events in this story is very slow - and even the climaxes turn out to be somewhat anti-climatic. Aside from the first chapter, which really is a prologue, there is all of one combat. Worse than this, both of the big events that this book is clearly leading up to are left out of the book - making this book not so much a stand-alone entry in the series but, instead, a prologue to Mission of Honor (due out in July). All in all - this is definitely a book anyone who wants to continue following the Honorverse plot needs to read. That said, though, this is one of the weaker entries in that plotline. Oh, and minor nitpick - the author really, really, really needs to find another expression to replace "such as it was, and what there was of it". The same expression shouldn't come out of three or four different characters, frankly, it breaks the idea that these are supposed to be separate voices if they're going to use the same expressions.