ARC Review: Toll of Honor by David Weber

Toll of Honor
Author: David Weber
Series: Honor Harrington Book 20
Publication: Baen Books; 1st edition (April 2, 2024)

Description: A NEW SOLO NOVEL IN DAVID WEBER'S NYT BEST-SELLING HONORVERSE

“It is our duty to pay for our liberty with our own blood. The freedom that we shall win through our sacrifice and exertions, we shall be able to preserve with our own strength.”—Subhas Chandra Bose

Lieutenant Brandy Bolgeo has come home from the Battle of Hancock station wounded in both body and spirit. She will need months to regenerate her lost leg, but how long will it take to heal her heart?

She’s come home to find that her wounds, her ship’s brutal damage, the deaths of so many friends, were the fault of an arrogant, aristocratic coward who broke and ran in the face of the enemy. Who left her ship to pay the price for his craven desertion under fire. And whose powerful political allies are determined to protect and preserve him at any price.

They have held hostage the declaration of war until Lord Pavel Young escaped the consequences of his cowardice. They didn’t care what it cost the Navy. They didn’t care what it cost the entire Star Kingdom of Manticore. Their tactics have cost the Royal Navy the priceless initiative as revolution and military purges wrack the People’s Republic of Haven, and that lost window of opportunity will cost the Star Kingdom seventeen years of bloody warfare and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Now Young is free to seek vengeance on the people he feels have “wronged” him. People like Paul Tankersley and Honor Harrington. Paid duelists, smear tactics, hired assassins in public restaurants . . . nothing is beneath Pavel Young. But Captain Harrington can look after herself, and Pavel Young is about to face the fury of the woman the newsies call the “Salamander.” Yet who will save the Star Kingdom from the repercussions of his actions?

Women and men like Brandy Bolgeo are about to pay the toll for the Star Kingdom of Manticore’s honor.

My Thoughts: This is the first book in The Expanded Honorverse series which are novels dealing with earlier periods in Honor's life. Therefore, much of the first half is very much a repetition of events written about in other books in the long-running series. It deals with a critical part of Honor's life centering around her disputes with Pavel Young and the death of Paul Tankersley and the way Honor deals with it. 

This first part of the book is also concerned with political issues regarding the declaration of war against the Peeps. None of this political maneuvering is helped by Honor's actions in the aftermath of Pavel Young hiring the murder of her lover. Lieutenant Brandy Bolgeo is watching these goings on mostly from outside as she is going through regeneration of her lost leg and rehabilitation after the events of the Battle of Hancock. She's an Honor partisan even though she's never met her. 

The second half of the book focuses on Lieutenant Brandy Bolgeo who is an engineer on the Prince Adrian commanded by Alastair McKeon. Also on board are Scotty Tremaine, Horace Harkness and Sargeant Major Babcock. The Prince Adrian is part of the Sixth Fleet's mission to harass the Peeps and chip away at their superior tonnage while waiting for the Manticore industries to ramp up to war standing. 

Around the raids and battles, we get a chance to see the courtship between Harkness and Babcock which has been something fans of the series have wanted since both characters were introduced. 

I enjoyed this story especially the second half which contained mostly new material. It has, however, made me want to reread the whole Honor Harrington series of which this is book 20 so that I can go back and spend time in this world and with these characters. 

Favorite Quote:

"There was plenty of evidence that he was a waste of oxygen, and we should have acted on it long before we ever got to this point. Right after that business in Basilisk, at the very latest! If there's ever been a better example of an overbred cretin using his family's connections to cover his incompetence, I've never seen it."

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.