Overall Nicely done

There are a few, but not many errors in a Weber book, which makes things go so much better. While good overall, I have noticed in this book and some others of his later books an increase in a tendency to be pedantic... First blank, and then so, etc., For several pages, then "but none of that made any difference."! Well, if it doesn't make a difference why are we talking about it!? ( )

I feel like a better title might have been "Meanwhile, the Plot", but things pull together pretty well by the end. I still think Weber and Flint spend too much of the first half of the book literally waxing poetic on how awesome Victor Cachat is. I like Victor, but it's still a bit much to see everybody thinking just how awesome he is. Repeatedly. What was Yana up to? What was Thandi up to? What were Barry and Jeremy and Hugh up to? I'd ask for others but they're questions that could be answered in the main series and "Saganami" books.

Maybe I just haven't read a main series Honorverse book in a while, but there's SO much time spent detailing areas and people and politics that don't directly or indirectly for most of the book involve the protagonists and it's a bit exhausting and somewhat boring. It's all building up and there are reasons that I could see for most of it.

Overall it's a very timely book. There's one soldier's name that I think was not picked accidentally. There are a lot of messages about prejudice, media framing, police brutality, and the distance between political understanding and reality. On that note, it's also a very brutal read, particularly for violence against children. If you're an Honorverse fan, you'll probably be fine. ( )

The threads are starting to come back together. There's still the intensely confused timeline - this starts before, and ends after, various other books. The whole Filareta thing happens during this - early on - and the news filters out at various times, for instance. This is, however, pretty much a single timeline - it's Victor and Anton plus a few, in various locations. Lots of short scenes with other people, including some who are introduced and don't survive their scenes, and others who reappear from previous stories - both novels and short stories. But the major thread is Victor and Anton, and mostly Victor (and Thandi) - on, among other places, Mesa. Isn't this fun? Victor has a detailed, organized plan - which he abandons on the fly. And then abandons the new plan, in favor of...yeah. That really would be a spoiler. But the Alignment's plans are leaking in the oddest directions - yay! And the story ends in the same place (effectively) as the last one - Michele seems to have inherited Honor's sense of timing. Lots of interesting new people. Very few space battles, and those very small - so Weber has to indulge his penchant for numbers-in-battle with the weight of ceramacrete and the like. A good story in itself, some major advancements on the series arc, and as I said, the threads are starting to come together. Very rich. I read the eARC, and found quite a few errors (including one "[name of attack] and [name of attack] aren't going to stop us!" that was quite funny. But I presume they'll be fixed up in the final edition - I didn't notice anything major. ( )

Cauldron of Ghosts is the third book in the Wages of Sin series and, I suspect, the end of the series. The side path the series has taken is most likely wound back into the main Honor Harrington series. My favorite spies, Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat, are back on Mesa, doing what they do best: ferreting out information on the Mesan Alignment. I love seeing all the angles in this book and being in the know while the spies try to figure it out. The downside is that unless you've read the other books in the series, you are being dumped in the deep end of the pool without a life jacket. Don't jump in the deep end; start at the beginning and read through. You will be rewarded with a well-developed universe that grows more complex.

Highly recommended for fans of the series. ( )

This episode concentrates on Zilwicki and Cachat's efforts on Mesa to discover more about the Mesan Alignment. A lot of time is spent learning about the culture of the planet which is divided into three groups: the full citizens, the seccies who are descendants of manumitted slaves, and the slaves. The concentration is on the seccies.

The problem is that the Mesan Alignment needs to get its essential people off the planet without alerting anyone to their disappearance. The solution they decide to implement is to execute a number of terrorist attacks which they can blame on the Audubon Ballroom and Manticore. The result is that the law forces and army of the Mesan planet which are composed of full citizens blame the seccies who they claim are sheltering the terrorists for the attacks and decide to teach them a lesson.

What they don't know is that the seccies have been gathering armament for years because they feared just such an event. And now they have the assistance of Cachat and Thandi Palane to help them defeat the invaders. Zilwicki escapes to Manticore to try to get help before the seccies lose the war and he loses his friends Cachat and Palane now knowing that Admiral Henke also has plans to visit Mesa along with her fleet.

The story also follows the journey of Zachariah McBryde who is one of the people the Mesan Alignment is evacuating to their new stronghold. He seems to be starting to have some second thoughts about the goals of the Alignment but is still generally in agreement with the master plan.

There are a number of other subplots including the revolutions the Alignment is fomenting on Verge planets and in the Maya System.

All in all, a long but interesting entry into the Honor Harrington series. ( )