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Originally Posted by jgaiser
Ok .. Maybe not *politics*. Maybe my world view after 10 years in the Navy during a wasted war in Viet Nam. The main characters attitudes that the Navy's views are correct and those lefties are just naive tended to push some buttons.
As I said, I'll give "Honor of the Queen" another try. I did like Basilisk and if I can get through the infodumps, it may still work for me.
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Ah. *Those* "politics".
Well, yes; Honor and her peers do have strong opinions. Where they come from becomes clearer from the anthologies and future volumes.
Without them you may have to just take them as the result of group think and very long lifespans (which is something Weber makes very clear from the beginning is a major problem in PROLONG societies).
Mantie politics can be tricky in the early books because at first glance they *seem* to map onto a contemporary american spectrum but they don't. Not to give anything meaingful away, but the clueless pacificists aren't lefties, but rather extreme conservatives. The Navy types are actually centrists and Honor thinks she is apolitical but actually runs a bit left of center in the Mantie spectrum, with some friends that run in the extreme left. (And that is without factoring Grayson politics.)
Weber doesn't get deep into mantie politics early on but when he does you'll get your fill of it.
More important, the way HONOR OF THE QUEEN plays out the politics themselves don't matter. What matters is how Honor reacts to them. She is being tested by her "sponsors" who are grooming her for bigger and better things. The result isn't pretty. The term testing to destruction comes to mind.
In many ways, HONOR OF THE QUEEN is actually the best book of the series, although others may be more enjoyable. When Weber talks about his goals for the SAGANAMI ISLAND sub-series, HOTQ is what he is talking about.