Review: A Call to Duty, by David Weber and Timothy Zahn

Last updated on: November 19, 2014 at 8:00 am by willduquette

Review: A Call to Duty, by David Weber and Timothy Zahn 2014-11-18T19:35:34-05:00 willduquette

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A Call to Duty, by David Weber and Timothy Zahn, is the first book in a new sub-series set in David Weber’s Honor Harrington universe.

The Royal Manticoran Navy was formed shortly after the settling of Manticore, based on six battlecruisers purchased to defend Manticore against pirate attacks. And then the plagues set in; Manticore’s population was decimated and more than decimated, and there were far too few people to maintain the navy. Now, many years later, the RMN is still trying—sort of—to pull itself together. What ships it has consist mostly of cobbled-together repairs, and morale is low. On the plus side, Manticore doesn’t have much of anything that anybody else wants, and not much need to defend itself.

Enter Travis Long, a young man with a bent for engineering and a desire for the kind of order and discipline he didn’t get growing up. Travis is bright, clever, naive, and somewhat socially inept, and the RMN seems to him like just his kind of place—until he discovers that his desire for order, discipline, and doing everything properly is rather at odds with the navy he finds himself in.

And then the shooting starts…

So I read the book, and found it enjoyable enough. It’s got some of the fun of Weber’s early Honorverse novels without the top-heavy, ponderous, let’s-try-to-talk-about-absolutely-everything-going-on-everywhere-ness of Weber’s later Honorverse novels. On the other hand I’ve recently been re-reading those early Honorverse novels, and by comparison this book is definitely a quart low: enjoyable, but nothing special.

In short, if you’re an Honor Harrington fan you’ll want to read this one; and if not, not. Me, I’ll certainly be buying the second book in the series when it comes out; because although it has nothing directly to do with the plot, A Call to Duty ends with the imminent discovery of the Manticore Wormhole Nexus. In book II, the Manticorans are going to discover that they have quite a bit that others might want, and peace is likely to be a long time coming, and I expect that will be interesting to watch.

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