From Library Journal
This latest Honor Harrington novel (Honor Among Enemies, LJ 6/15/96) finds her promoted to commodore and adjusting to home life as her planet's first female feudal steadholder. On a routine flight, Harrington's enemies capture her spaceship, and she must escape execution on a planet called Hell. Weber blends a mix of political intrigue with space adventure for another satisfying tale. Recommended.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Many may think Weber's new Honor Harrington story is the best of the lot, but all will concur that its tone is distinctly darker than that of the other six. Commanding a joint Grayson-Manticoran squadron, Honor is aboard the point ship when it encounters a formidably well led Havenite force. She is captured and scheduled for execution under the direction of People's Commissioner Cordelia Ransom, but she manages to escape. Although she wipes out Ransom in the process, her latest exploit ends up as a true cliff-hanger, with Honor, minus an arm and an eye, and a hard core of 20 loyal followers marooned on a Havenite prison planet. Everything series fans have enjoyed before is here again, with new dimensions filled in. The Havenites, for example, are clearly splitting into camps of ideologues and professionals, and the expected Nimitz subplot has the tree-cat and a contingent of comrades founding the first tree-cat interstellar colony on Grayson. Roland Green

FROM OUR EDITORS

The hardest thing about writing In Enemy Hands turned out to be the size of the story I'd decided to tell, and I think that the fact that it's a volume in a series actually made the difficulty greater. Without going into details and turning this into a "spoiler," I'll just say that many of the events in this novel -- and not just the ones that happen directly to Honor -- are critical to the "future history" of the series. That meant I had to tell about them to be fair to the reader, and before I actually got started writing the book, I had a certain airy confidence that I could make them all fit between two covers. Once I was face to face with the job of getting them squeezed in, however, I found that it would have required something on the order of 250,000 words, which struck me as just a tad long, even for one of my books.

Faced with that fact, I decided to split the story line in two so that I could deal properly with both halves of it. It wasn't an easy decision, but I think it was the right one, and even if all the plot strands aren't resolved, I hope most readers will find the conclusion satisfying...and agree that it isn't really a cliff-hanger. Please?
—David Weber

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Honor Harrington's career has its ups and its downs. She's survived ship-to-ship battles, assassins, political vendettas, and duels. She's been shot at, shot down, and just plain shot, had starships blown out from under her, and made personal enemies who will stop at nothing to ruin her, and somehow she's survived it all. But this time she's really in trouble. The People's Republic of Haven has finally found an admiral who can win battles, and Honor's orders take her straight into an ambush. Outnumbered, outgunned, and unable to run, she has just two options: see the people under her command die in a hopeless, futile battle...or surrender them - and herself - to the Peeps. There can be only one choice, and at least the People's Navy promises to treat their prisoners honorably. But the Navy is overruled by the political authorities, and Honor finds herself bound for a prison planet aptly named "Hell"...and her scheduled execution. Put into solitary confinement, separated from her officers and her treecat Nimitz, and subjected to systematic humiliation by her gaolers, Honor's future has become both bleak and short. Yet bad as things look, they're about to get worse...for the Peeps.

SYNOPSIS

Honor Harrington is back, and this time, she and her crew, ambushed and captured, are aboard an enemy ship, bound for a prison planet aptly named Hell -- and her scheduled execution.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In a surprisingly dreary outing, Weber (Honor Among Enemies) continues the military adventures of his perennial heroine, Honor Harrington. The most powerful officials in the People's Republic of Haven (at war with Manticore and its Royal Navy, for whom Honor fights) have decided to ease up a bit on their space navy, as annihilating officers' families after military mishaps has had a deadening effect on the troops. Cordelia Ransom, head of the Republic's Office of Public Information, takes a field trip to oversee how this and other policy decisions will affect the fleet. When Honor is captured by the Republic's forces, Cordelia uses every excuse to humiliate and try to break Honor. Meanwhile, Admiral of the Green Hamish Alexander and the loyal Grayson clan (including a tribe of the always adorable alien treecats) wait and worry, hoping that some miracle will save their beloved Honor. Far less exciting then previous volumes in the series, this novel is stuffed with backstory and political jockeying. With action sequences sparse until the final chapters, it is likely to disappoint all but the most avid of Honor's fans. (Sept.)

Library Journal

This latest Honor Harrington novel (Honor Among Enemies, LJ 6/15/96) finds her promoted to commodore and adjusting to home life as her planet's first female feudal steadholder. On a routine flight, Harrington's enemies capture her spaceship, and she must escape execution on a planet called Hell. Weber blends a mix of political intrigue with space adventure for another satisfying tale. Recommended.

Kirkus Reviews

Weber's hardcover debut extends an established paperback series (Honor Among Enemies, etc.) about Honor Harrington, a genetically engineered warrior whiz, now a commodore in the service of the good-guy Alliance against the evil-empire People's Republic, or Peeps—the circumstances of which we learn all about during a prolonged and tiresome introduction. Honor's constant companion is Nimitz, an intelligent and empathic treecat. Finally, Honor takes up her duties aboard a convoy escort. But when her detachment is surprised by Peep cruisers, Honor draws the enemy away from the convoy until, her own ship heavily damaged, she's forced to surrender. Vicious Peep bigwig Cordelia Ransom orders Honor imprisoned pending execution on planet Hades, while the battered remnants of Honor's crew are held aboard ship. Honor resists every attempt to break her spirit; her crew stage a breakout, rescue her, and blow up the ship—along with the unspeakable Cordelia—so that the Peeps will think they're dead.

Ludicrously overburdened with titles and honorifics, and with comic-book villains, cardboard backdrop, and invisible plot: an unutterably tedious experience.