Shadow of Freedom by David Weber
Cover art by David Mattingly
Published by Baen Books
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
As the Honor Harrington series succeeded far beyond the wildest expectations of author or publisher, readers clamored for more and more background about the world. In particular, they wanted to read the stories behind the stories, to let those "far trees" become not merely "nearer trees," but trees close enough to come right up to them and climb them.
Baen's first response to this interest was to publish an anthology of short stories about other parts of the fictional universe that was already coming to be called the Honorverse. It was so successful that it became the first of a series of such anthologies, inviting various other professional authors to write in the Honorverse as well as allowing Weber himself to write about aspects of his imagined world that were simply too small for a commercially publishable novel.
At the same time, the primary storyline had become so far-reaching that readers began to complain about several novels, particularly War of Honor and At All Costs being so huge and sprawling they had become unwieldy and confusing. A few readers even worried whether Weber had become Too Big To Edit, and whether it might be evidence of weakness in the Baen editorial regime. Certainly it did not bode well for the health of the franchise, which had already become Baen's biggest seller.
As a result, it became clear to all in decision-making positions at Baen that things could not continue as they had. The various side storylines had to be separated out to create simpler, more streamlined novels that would not overwhelm their audience with spaghetti strands of story tangling with one another and reaching in all directions. One of these storylines was the covert battle against the genetic slavers of Mesa, which began in the novella "From the Highlands" in Changer of Worlds. Although elements of it appeared in a couple of the mainline novels, they seemed almost a distraction. But in Crown of Slaves and Torch of Freedom the storyline has really held its own.
The other one was the story of Honor's various proteges, which began with Shadow of Saganami and has continued in "shadow" themed titles, of which this volume is the third. This series has come to focus particularly on the Solarian League, and particularly upon the activities of its corrupt bureaucracy. Most glaring is the Office of Frontier Security or OFS, which is supposed to be suppressing piracy and other forms of lawlessness among the vast range of systems that were colonized by poorly equipped ventures and as a result backslid technologically, often to appalling degrees.
Under the guise of paternalism, OFS has been exploiting many of these worlds with a shameless rapacity. Furthermore, there's a fair amount of crony capitalism going on, along with the deliberate manipulation of local governments to ensure that agreeable leadership remains in place.
However, these worlds are no longer so isolated that they can easily be duped into believing that they are being rescued. Furthermore, as trade and communication with other worlds become steadily more common, the discontented can actually make connections with people on other worlds outside the Solarian League who are willing to support a resistance movement. Of course a lot of these allies are apt to have motives of their own, but when you're getting doormatted by rapacious colonialists who are claiming to be bringing order and modernity to your "backward" world, you're not apt to be overly picky about the credentials of your allies.
That's the situation in the Loomis system. Its original Celtic settlers may have slipped back to feuding clans that could be played off against one another, but they've gotten fed up with the exploitation. During a brief period of window-dressing democratic rule, they organized a resistance party, the Liberation League, intending to work within the legal system to regain their independence.
However, the government had no intention of dealing with an actual opposition party, and certainly not one that would shut off the gravy train. They called in the Solarian Navy, which began orbital bombardments without warning or even calling for surrender.
If they thought they could thus terrorize the people of Loomis System back into submission, they thought wrong. Instead, they have stiffened the people's resistance and determination, since the leadership of the Liberation League know that they can expect no mercy if they surrender. For them, it's better to go down fighting like a free human being than with a pulser dart in the back of the head in some dank basement.
Meanwhile, young Ensign Helen Zilwicki, daughter of a slain hero and of one of the leading fighters against genetic slavery, is dealing with some of the fallout from the climactic nuclear strike at the end of Crown of Slaves. A lot of people think her dad masterminded that attack, and are now looking at her with some disgust as a result of the vast number of civilian casualties involved in the destruction of Green Pines. But she knows her father better than that -- if he'd been given cause to make an attack on Mesa, he wouldn't have messed with penny-ante stakes. He would've gone straight for the head of the snake, and he would've been a lot more thorough.
And then the news of the Yawata Strike (from Mission of Honor is filtering in, and Honor's old Academy roommate Michelle Henke, now Vice Admiral and Countess Gold Peak, is having to deal with the horror -- from several hundred light-years away. Sometimes it can be almost worse to get the news and be helpless to do anything about it than to be elbow-deep in the mess. However, as an officer of the Manticorean Space Navy, she has duties to keep her busy, which go a long way toward making the situation more bearable.
And those duties will entangle her, as well as several other important characters from other storylines, in the Loomis System's struggle for self-determination. And of course the Mesan Alignment is the spider in the web, pulling the strings in secret to manipulate events as part of its centuries-old plan for the development of humanity.
Overall, it's an interesting piece of the Honorverse, and a book I really wanted to like. But I had one major problem with it -- I had to spend a lot of time and mental energy getting my bearings in it. The first few chapters introduce a whole bunch of brand new characters and complex political relationships, so I had to get all them straight in my mind. And when familiar characters showed up, I had to look for the clues that would help me connect their appearances in this book with their activities in other Honorverse novels.
This has become a major problem with the Honorverse in the last few years. There's just so much material that it's becoming harder and harder to make each book stand on its own and be comprehensible to someone who's just picked up a copy in the duty-free shop at the airport to read on a long flight. And it's not even that extreme -- I've read almost all of the Honorverse novels, but over the past ten or fifteen years, such that details from earlier books aren't always fresh in my mind. There were times when I almost felt like I needed to set the book down and go back to read half a dozen other books, some of which our local library no longer has.
It didn't help that I was reading the book piecemeal as I had spare time, particularly waiting in line at a place that wouldn't let me read e-books on my cellphone. So I'd go days or even weeks between reading sessions, and find that earlier events simply weren't sticking in my mind.
I honestly don't know how to fix this problem. It may be that the Honorverse has reached the point that some of its parts simply are no longer accessible to the average reader, but only to its dedicated fans who are willing to re-read substantial portions of the series before each new book comes out. When I was younger and had lots of time on my hands, I would've been happy to re-read as many of the novels as I needed to fix all the story elements in place. In fact, I remember having checked out some of my favorite novels of those days so many times for re-reads that the librarian expressed concern about my monopolizing them, and making sure they were available for other readers to enjoy.
Unfortunately, these days I just don't have that much time to re-read novels multiple times. In fact, I do well to stay even marginally abreast of my to-be-read piles, physical and digital. So when I pick up a book, even a book in a long-running series, I expect to be able to get up to speed on it reasonably quickly, and not have to struggle to keep track of who's who, what's what, and what's been going on.
Review posted June 20, 2018.
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