Echoes of Honor

Echoes of Honor is a science fiction novel by the American writer David Weber, published in 1998 and the eighth book of the Honor Harrington series.

The novel is divided into six sections, and three of them follow the war between Manticore and Haven while the other three are given to Honor and her allies on the prison world, so the reader watches a campaign and a prison break in alternating instalments. The faked execution is a useful device because it lets Weber show what the two governments do with the news: Manticore mourns a hero and Grayson is outraged, and the politics of both alliances shift while the person at the centre of it is digging tunnels. Hades is a place without guards in the ordinary sense, since the planet is the security, and the book is interested in the problem of organisation among prisoners who have every reason to distrust each other. Weber is also careful about the arithmetic of the escape, since the prisoners include soldiers, technicians and civilians, and moving that many people off a planet takes as much planning as a battle. It follows In Enemy Hands and leads into the next stage of Honor's career.