The fourth Honor Harrington novel is definitely the best in this increasingly popular military-sf series. Honor's old nemesis, Pavel Young, takes revenge on her for having him dismissed from the navy by hiring a duelist to kill her lover. This swiftly brings upon him a dire and vividly described fate, which puts Honor on half-pay on the planet Grayson, where she is a feudal magnate. Honor has always been as much a descendant of the Superperson as of C. S. Forester's very human Horatio Hornblower, but Weber has thought enough about her so that, when the time came to produce a character-driven military-sf novel, he could do so quite handsomely. That time is now, and these are a new Honor and a new Weber. With the war against the People's Republic of Haven clearly destined to last as long as the Napoleonic Wars after which it is modeled, expect to see more of both.
