Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsHonor, Treecats and Politics
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 18, 2001
Changer is worth having, bottom line. Ok? It's on the keeper shelf, and I had to move my sagas (the real thing) to fit it and begin leaving room for the next set of Honor Harringtons. Now to what's good and bad.
Again, I complain that the treecats are getting too cute. I'm sorry, David, but they just aren't plausible to me. Not because of size, or a great many other easy objections, covered with a certain amount of neatness in the "teach them to sign" part of Ashes of Victory. I just can't quite believe in them as written. Annoying, by the bye, because I really want to believe in the treecat sentience. Sigh. Their society doesn't feel workable, as it is shown. Granted, oral history can be remarkably accurate up to 500 years back, and sometimes, in traditional societies without literacy, there are feats of memorization that astound us urban, literate types. I am objecting here to feel - it's all too damn pat.
So anyway, onward.
I really loved Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington, even if I did nearly type in Hornblower. I liked the portrait of an incompetent and cruel superior, who needed to be worked around by the command. I'm glad they did. Honor gets to be a hero - we knew she had been from early in her career - and handle having command fall on her head in a bad situation in a beautiful bit of space combat. I loved that - the whole battle sequence was so well written I was literally holding my breath until spots began dancing before my eyes. Very, very good stuff!
Nightfall answered my objection in Ashes of Victory that Weber shouldn't kill off major characters off-stage. I enjoyed it, though I admit that knowing the ending kind of took the edge of tension off it. I rooted for Esther McQueen. I did think Weber offed Rob S. Pierre a little to fast and casual, but it was well written and I wish the sequence could have made it into Ashes. Although given the length of that book, perhaps that was a good editorial decision on Weber's part.
Does it sound like I've been holding off on commenting on Eric Flint's contribution? I'm afraid I have been.
Now, to be absolutely fair: Flint's "about the author" description describes him as an unregenerate Trotskyist. Having spent my college career on the Soviets, and exploring the really interesting splitting of semi-Marxist sects in America, I have developed some very strong opinions, and they aren't flattering to the ideology and its true believers.
It makes me uneasy to comment on From the Highlands because it was better written than many of Flint's other efforts, and he didn't editorialize quite so badly. Oh, yeah, he did editorialize and lecture the reader, mostly about politics and who should believe what. I liked the plot, I liked the writing (and I'm thrilled that Flint managed to restrain his verbal tics, this time out) and the action sequences. The combat was good.
Now, my objections crystalized in the moment where Flint has the State Sec officer heroically standing as a true defender of the Revolution, hard as steel. ARGH! To reach a truly disgusting level of brutality, bring on the knights of the revolution. Anybody remember Felix Dzerzhinski besides me? Anybody remember what Trotsky did to restore discipline in the Red Army in 1920? The defenders of the revolution will cut your throat quite impersonally. Isn't that nice, to know that you were just of the wrong class, or in the wrong place?
That style of politics, the Gryphon Highlanders one and all haters of their aristocracy, and willing to contemplate blood feud. The renegade noblewoman (oh, please, can we please lose the notion that this is somehow a great thing?) who views her class through that particular lens (let's not forget that the notion of a class traitor, once introduced, however positively, leads inexorably to the negative and justifies a lot of bad stuff)and the Solly masses being kept down, dumb, and ignorantly happy...ARGH! again.
Look, it's not that it wasn't fun. But the century just past has made me wary as can be of ideology (I almost misspelled that on purpose but decided it would be too cute), and the notion that all a messianic movement needs is pure enough hearts willing to defend it. Flint managed to make a mess of my enjoyment of the story with this, and I wanted to cry. I wanted to just enjoy the story, and I got this.
So much for my opinions. I'd give this a four if Flint had managed to restrain his politics.
