Shadow of Victory

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

The Mesan Alignment is revealed, and for Honor Harrington and the Manticoran Star Kingdom, this means war!

Unintended Consequences

Sometimes things don't work out exactly as planned.

The Mesan Alignment has a plan - one it's been working on for centuries. A plan to remake the galaxy and genetically improve the human race - its way.

Until recently things have gone pretty much as scheduled, but then the Alignment hit a minor bump in the road called the Star Empire of Manticore. So the Alignment engineered a war between the Solarian League, the biggest and most formidable interstellar power in human history. To help push things along, the Alignment launched a devastating sneak attack that destroyed the Royal Manticoran Navy's industrial infrastructure.

And in order to undercut Manticore's galaxy-wide reputation as a star nation of its word, it launched Operation Janus - a false-flag covert operation to encourage rebellions it knows will fail by promising Manticoran support. The twin purposes are to harden Solarian determination to destroy the Star Empire once and for all and to devastate the Star Empire's reputation with the rest of the galaxy.

But even the best laid plans can have unintended consequences, and one of those consequences in this case may just be a new dawn of freedom for oppressed star nations everywhere.

©2016 Words of Weber, Inc. (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Voices, accents all wrong!

Story was not narrated by Allyson Johnson. And mostly a waste of time considering most of book is a rehash of the existing story.

Fills in the gaps!

Others seem to have been disappointed, but I really enjoyed seeing these events - which we've seen in other novels - through the eyes of other characters. The story is fuller, more "real" now. I loved it!

A little too much detail

Good book well read. I understand it’s a filler with lots of background to the Honor Harrington series. It does fill in slot of info for what was taking place in the verge. I found many parts almost too much detail. Good book, great companion to the series.

Weber was Disappointing

The book is primarily a rehash of earlier works in the Honor Harrington universe. It covers some new plot twists and ties up the Manticore invasion of Mesa but this is all in the last few chapters of the book. Rabid fans of the series will enjoy seeing their old friends from earlier stories, but fans of space combat tales can only be disappointed by Weber's naval scenes.

Disappointing Entry in an Otherwise Great Universe

Please Please Please get someone who at least speaks a Slavic language when there's going to be such a large amount of Slavic words and names. The narrator simply can't get his tongue around the words without it sounding painfully forced out.

The narrator also needs a better recording system. Listening to his gasps of air as he inhales during his narration is so incredibly irritating.

As for the story, I wasn't completely against the idea of knowing more about Harahap, but it gets bogged down in all the details, like names of characters who immediately disappear or the repetition of details from previous novels in the series.

Genuinely disappointed.

Semi decent Weber entry utterly ruined by reader

Kevin Collins simply cannot read Weber novels. I had to have the book in front of me to tell when the character stopped talking & narration resumed. Voices were extremely hard to differentiate between leading to regular "Wait, who said what now?" moments.

I could only stomach about 30 minutes before I stopped the audiobook & deleted it from my phone (limited SD card space on the Pixel, since system consumers nearly 9GB of the available 32). It should be noted that this was avoidable as the reader was just as bad in the sample available for Midst Toil & Tribulation.

Now to the book itself regardless of the reader.

Basically David has screwed himself up by putting events into entirely the wrong book. The previous Shadow novels didn't back-trace each other, and though there were some overly lengthy copy/paste sections from the main honor verse novels, the subseries maintained its own chronology well, until now when Shadow of Victory completely trips over its feet. It would have been better if the stories I mentioned had been compiled into a short story honor verse compendium & the main novel maintained chronological continuity by starting off around the events which ended Shadow of Freedom.

Poor narration.

Suggest narrator listen to prior audiobook to familiarize himself with pronouciation of proper nouns. Also recommend narrator look up proper pronouciation of SAT level words rather than simply sounding out the letters. Errors of that sort are very disruptive and break the concentration of the scene and storyline.

long Slavic names irritating. redundant book

author MUST retire! new authors needed to write the rest of the series. he has dragged out production to the point the fans of the story hate him. plus this book is 75% filler of the last book. fans deserve better

Too many sub stories and too much detail.

This was a struggle to follow. The non-English names, the multiple stories, and the hyper detail were confusing and superfluous to the story. This is probably the last novel in this series I will undertake.

Always enjoy the Honorverse.

Enjoyed this fourth part of the series not as much repetitive terminologies as in some of the books which was nice. Waiting for the next installment.