This is book 1 of the "Honor Harrington" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

First of the Honor Harrington series. The mainstream of the series, as I remember, is stuck in something of a rut, but the early books are still fun.

In this one, Honor gets her first cruiser command (I think he's intending to make it analagous to frigates in the Hornblower era, where all the glory and money was), and has to deal with the stupid plans of the R&D department. She wins one and loses 13 in war games (loses every time after the opposition discovers what the new weapon is), and gets assigned to Bassilisk station, which is a stupid place anyway, or at least the Star Kingdom of Manticore has treated it stupidly. She shakes everybody up by actually doing her duty, and prevents a native uprising and Peep takeover, and loses only about half of her crew (it'll get worse as the series progresses).

These books are a lot of fun, especially the early ones, and in this first one the really stupid parts of the parallels between Haven and revolutionary France haven't started to show up yet (I mean, "Rob S. Pierre"? Come on!).