maza's Full Review: David Weber - Field of Dishonor: Honor Harrington
As stated in my review of A Short Victorious War, both that book and this one should be read together. I strongly suspect that Weber started out to write only a third book, but when the set-up for the climactic confrontation stretched near book length, he (or the publisher) cut it off and called it a book. The story resumes immediately in Field of Dishonor and builds toward the resolution of a conflict that started in On Basilisk Station.
In Field of Dishonor, the battle is over but the echoes linger. One echo is the court martial of Pavel Young. Did he, in the heat of battle, turn and flee, disregarding an order given by Honor Harrington? Did Harrington have the right to give the order in any case? Young's father's support in parliament is essential to continuing to pursue the war against the Peeps. Should the Navy even try Young, when pursuing the trial could precipitate a political crisis? Honor's testimony is crucial. The story is a twisting braid of vengeance and retaliatory vengeance. It ends in a duel -- Manticoran society sanctions formal duelling -- that settles the issues in a way that I, at least, did not expect.
A funny comment on the cover art of my edition of the book: the covers on the first three books, by Laurence, or Larry, Schwinger, depict a person not impossibly far from Weber's descriptions of Honor. They seem to be three different women of quite different ages; and the depictions of space craft are trivial and unconvincing; but they don't quarrel with the plot. The cover of Field of Dishonor, by Gary Ruddell, appears to be a grotesque homage to Michael Jackson; and the figure is holding a gun in an amateurish position quite unlikely for an officer who (the text makes clear) is well-practiced in the use of small arms.
In brief, the book, and the series in general is a fast reads for an adult. You could also consider using them as Christmas literacy-bait for a technically-minded youth of either sex. They are full of admirable role-models engaging in intense action, and what little sex there is, is playful and affectionate. From the dedication to C.S. Forester and the opening events, it is clear that, when he set out to write the series, Weber intended, almost as an exercise, to translate the spirit of the Forester's classic Hornblower stories to a future milieu. Weber has worked diligently and cleverly to devise a credible military technology that would still permit something like Hornblower's navy to exist in space. He worked as hard again -- although not, to my taste, as convincingly -- to fashion an interstellar society that would credibly have a hereditary monarch and a landed aristocracy while still exploiting the technologies of genetics, gravity manipulation, and computers.
He succeeded reasonably well at these goals; but the question may arise. why bother? If he liked the 18th century so well, why not just write a historical novel? An astute friend recently challenged me with the claim that all science fiction stories are really historical romances with new labels on the props. I am reluctant to tell him about the Honor Harrington novels for fear he would consider he'd won that debate. And in truth, if you reduce the plot events to abstract schematics, there is little that could not have been set in 18th century oceans as well as in 28th century Manticore.
However, the most striking thing that Weber could not have done, in an 18th-century setting, is to play with gender. Half the Manticoran naval crews are female. True, they don't do anything that an all-male crew, equally well trained and led, would not do. But neither do they do less. Thir presence allows Weber to assert, in dramatic terms, that a gender-blind military might work. He could not have made that assertion in historical fiction without being ridiculous, but in SF it is simply one in a long tradition of using fiction, almost incidentally, to run a credibility test on a social or political idea.
Weber might intend an homage to Forester, but had he made his central character anything close to Horatio Hornblower, his book would have been a pastiche, not an homage. He needed a dedicated, capable naval officer who was yet unquestionably different from Forester's hero. He chose to use a female, and Honor Harrington was born.
And now I must tiptoe cautiously onto the quaking ground of gender politics. There are (at least) four ways to view Weber's choice of a female naval captain. Was it...
...a bold blow against the male dominance of genre fiction plots? Well, no, not hardly. Emotionally strong, physically tough female leads have been portrayed in recent years by Tepper, Cherryh, Moon, Joan Vinge, and others. (Even Ian Banks' potboiler, Against a Dark Background, has as confident a female lead as you could want, and Banks gives her some female-to-female dialogue that I find more convincing and entertaining than any Weber supplies). In the mystery genre, there is a pack of tough female protagonists led by Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawksi. Weber was breaking no new ground here.
Well, was it what my spouse angrily suggested when I gave her a fast plot summary: nothing but a cynical, patronizing attempt to cash in on feminine progress in our society? She was especially incensed at the idea that Honor would have a love affair in THE SHORT VICTORIOUS WAR. "Oh, right, the captain is a woman so it is a huge plot point that she has a lover. If it was a man, that would be nothing but a side-show, nothing would be made of it, but she's a girr-ull so she has to have a guy."
Was it, if not cynical, at least a clever commercial move by a professional writer who wants to sell books? If so, I have to say the gimmick worked on me. I fell for Honor like a ton of bricks, sober work ethic, white beret, treecat, and all. But, thinking about her afterward, it comes to me that Honor achieves nothing that could not equally well be done by a man. That man could wear all the character traits Weber gives Honor: high intelligence, natural skills as pilot and athlete, compulsive achiever, dedicated officer – and he would be dead boring.
It upsets me to realize that, for me, the traits of a fascinating female character became merely laudable but boring when draped on a male character. This self-discovery seems to call all my judgements about these books into question, and I'm still not sure I am seeing them clearly. At least it does suggest that, since the buying readership for SF is heavily male, if Weber's invention of Honor was a calculation, it was right on the money.
Fourth and last, suppose Weber just had a stroke of good luck? I think this is the most likely suggestion: that Honor sprang into his imagination as the result of who-knows-what combination of half-digested social and literary influences, the kind of happy invention that comes to the lucky writer once in a while. Since he was graced by her invention, how has he done by her? And what should we hope he will do in future volumes (which seem inevitable)?
The first problem with this book (and the previous ones in the series) is Weber's generally flat prose style and tin ear for dialogue. The prose is grammatical and clear enough; and Weber does have good plotting skills; so when there is a battle or a confrontation, you can't turn the pages fast enough. But when characters slow down and talk to each other quietly, or when there is scenery to be described -- you can't turn the pages fast enough.
Perhaps a larger problem for some readers is Weber's open admiration for all things military. Most Naval types, indeed almost anyone in a uniform, is honest, reliable, warm-hearted and clear-sighted -- even the military on the enemy side. One of the first things I noted about a Hornblower story, when I reread one to check Weber's inspiration, was that Forester's Navy was peopled with highly fallible humans. Honor has only one discipline problem in three campaigns (a medic who won't serve under fire). She never has to steel herself, as Hornblower does regularly, to condemn crewmembers to punishment, and to watch punishment carried out. Very well, England's navy was crewed by conscripts; the Manticoran Navy is apparently an all-volunteer force. I have it on reliable report that even a volunteer military has more than a fair share of time-servers, shirkers, fools, and jealous in-fighters. And a mixed-sex military might have entirely new kinds of disciplinary problems -- something that these books avoid exploring.
Not only are all Weber's military folk straight-arrows morally; they possess almost the only accurate political perception in Weber's universe. The civilian government perpetually holds them back from doing the right thing (striking hard, first, and fast) and it is portrayed as weak and morally compromising. This kind of fawning after the military really isn't necessary and it unbalances the stories, removing what could be a rich source of irony and plot conflict. Honor simply doesn't understand how to do a bad job; and we are deprived in not seeing how she would cope when she had to work with and through people who never want to do a good one.
But that wasn't the root cause of the dissatisfaction, the vague sense of possibilities unfulfilled, with which these books left me. Finally it came to me: Honor never faces a hard choice. She faces difficulty, hard work, and personal danger with bravery and panache; but in every case the proper, morally good, course of action is obvious; she only has to have the courage to pursue it. That is the essence of military adventure, of course. These books are at a far higher level than a game of DOOM -- so is it unfair of me to want more? Weber could, like Robert Asprin, keep extruding books with word-play titles -- Honor as prisoner -- Honor as admiral -- Honor as ambassador to old Earth.
But in order for Weber to write a story as memorable, as powerful, as Honor Harrington could sustain, he will have to put her in a situation where neither military skill nor physical courage is enough -- a situation in which she has to choose the lesser of two evils or, better, has to choose between two fundamental goods that are of different orders. And in this effort, Honor's gender might at last be useful. Manticore has life-prolonging technology, so an officer like Honor has time to have a career and still bear children. (Incidentally, Weber has not made explicit this key point: that it could be precisely this stopping of the biological clock that makes a gender-neutral society possible.) But ultimately Honor might choose to have a child. That's something that a male protagonist could never do. And on that hostage to fortune a large plot might hinge. I look forward to reading it.
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