Here we are at the end of the main series set of novels—sort of. You’ll certainly find this book listed that way by some fans, and that’s just fine. However you bin this book, it’s characterized as a stand-alone novel, but it does what we’ve seen others do previously in the Honorverse: it gives us new information and perspective on events we’ve already seen. It also sets the stage for what is referred to as the Expanded Honorverse. Your hosts have discussed this before to a limited extent, and in our interviews with him, Mr. Weber also gave us some detail on the way the Honorverse will move forward in the future. Toll of Honor seems to be a stage-setter or bridge from the Honorverse we know and love to what lies ahead.

Featured in this novel are the events revolving around Honor’s duel with Pavel Young. As painful as the events were that ultimately brought the duel about, we get some more color here and it didn’t come across as simply filler material. Along these lines there’s some important and very touching storytelling about a key event or two tied to when Honor officially becomes a Steadholder on Grayson. We also learn a good bit about how the relationship between Horrace Harkness and Iris Babcock begins. This was a lot of fun and a wonderful way to balance the heaviness of Honor’s duel.

Related to all this, there’s an author’s note at the end of the book that’s definitely worth the time to read, so please don’t hit the end of the last chapter and shut the book.

Your hosts rated “Toll of Honor” with a trio of 5s (out of 5), resulting in an overall rating of 5.

Next time we’re going to cover “Friends Indeed”, the fifth novel in the Star Kingdom series by David Weber and Jane Lindskold.

For first-time readers, please grab your copy, invite a friend, and join us again for our continuing voyage through the Honorverse!

You can find us, and all our episodes at http://honorverse.net, and email us at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

Now, let’s be about it!