Ashes of Victory

Ashes of Victory is a science fiction novel by the American writer David Weber, published in 2000 and the ninth book of the Honor Harrington series.

It opens hours after the end of the previous novel, and a good part of the story is taken up with what Harrington finds when she gets back: that her death was believed and mourned, that her mother has given birth to twins, that her Manticoran title has passed to a cousin, and that the damage she took on the prison planet will keep her out of a warship for years while surgeons work on her. The navy's answer is to make her an admiral and post her to Saganami Island, where the officers who will fight the rest of the war are trained, and the Queen makes her a duchess. Weber uses those months to work on two long-running questions in the series: the intelligence of the treecats that adopted her, which is demonstrated during this book, and the development of a sign language that lets them speak for themselves. Beyond Manticore, both sides believe the war has reached its decisive phase, and the Havenite government that sentenced her to death has its own troubles with the records of what really happened when it took power.