Shadow of Victory (Honorverse: Saganami Island, #4)

Overall, I enjoyed this book, although it took me 3 false starts before I could finally get more than a couple of chapters in. Unlike several books in these later stages of the series, I didn't notice any outright cutting and pasting from other Honorverse books; however, it's been a while since I've done a read-through. If there are complaints to be made (spoiler alert: there are), I have two major ones. First, I couldn't be more annoyed by some of the chapters if they had just been written entirely in Polish. Second, as much as I understand the need to set the scene, this book needed twice as much in the way of Manticoran or Havenite point of view and half as much from rebel leaders that we're probably never going to hear much from again.

I guess it never hurts to complain about the incomprehensible numbers being thrown around in the battle chapters. I skim those, but it still hurts my brain knowing they're there.

On the plus side, it's good to see that some characters are still kicking around. Loved that Scotty Tremaine was there captaining the RMS Alistair McKeon. Add in the others from the Saganami Island series, and you get a nice cast of familiar characters.

I don't know if I'll ever read this one again, but I'm glad I finally got through it.

(This is a little vague in detail to avoid spoilers.)

The first half or so is a re-telling of events that have already been told in other books, I think mostly David is making sure that the main series and the sub-series (such as this one) are all, literally, on the same page before the next main series book.

Having said that, I think the book goes into too much detail of these events, which frankly aren't that interesting (even if this wasn't the third re-telling of some of them). The second half or so of the book picks up with some new perspectives on more interesting events.

I would actually rate the first half of this book 1 or 2 stars.