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Book Note: David Weber, Torch of Freedom

I read this book about 14-Sep-2010. This is the first time I've read this book. The book is copyright 2009. This note was last modified Saturday, 16-Apr-2016 20:16:49 PDT.

This is book 4 of the "Honorverse" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

 

Actually by David Weber and Eric Flint. An Honor Harrington universe side-story (which is where the most interesting stuff is happening these days). This one centers on Torch, obviously, and has them finding some valuable allies in the Maya sector of the Solarian League, and having the first major space battle in their neighborhood. We also find out about their wormhole terminus, a bit.

We find out about the "Alignment" and the Long Range Planning Board, on Mesa, who are breeding super-humans and planning to force the rest of the human race to be converted. They're also running Manpower, the genetic slavers, as a research cover.

They are, in fact, such not-nice people that members of their own "alpha" bloodlines turn against them when they're forced to really confront what the Alignment has become.

We also meet the family running a defunct amusement park on a mostly-defunct space-station. They've gotten so poor that the adults and children don't have Prolong. They manage to make enough common cause with Beowulf and Torch fix that for the children, so they only really lose one generation.

Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat go, together, undercover to Mesa to make contacts and check things out. Anton is recognized by a security officer, who luckily is prepared to defect, and takes the opportunity. A bit of a mess is made in the process—two nukes, including one built into the Gamma Center by the Alignment.

Meanwhile, Mesa is employing escaped Havenite State Security people (the "People's Navy in Exile", they call themselves) who have hopes of going home and restoring the revoluion, but in the meantime are half a step above pirates. They work for Manpower. And they're sent to run a genocidal strike on Torch (a violation of the Eridani Edict, but Manpower isn't a state actor).

So we have various fleets converge, and we have a fight, and the PNE is defeated at some cost (though not at Honor-scale costs).

Honestly, it seems a bit disjointed, and a bit going through the motions, though lots of the details are quite nice. Of course some of this may be that I read it a bit jerkily and in short segments (it was my phone book).

 


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