Book Review: A Call to Vengeance

The eARC for A Call to Vengeance by David Weber, Timothy Zahn, and Thomas Pope was released within the past few days by Baen Books.  After getting some work for Day Job out of the way, I purchased and read it.  It is the third book in the Manticore Ascendant series, set in the same universe as Weber's Honor Harrington stories.  However, it is set several hundred years before Honor's time, before the discovery of the Manticore Wormhole Junction and the growth of Manticoran naval power. 

This book picks up mere weeks after the end of the events of the previous one.  The young Star Kingdom of Manticore and its navy are recovering from the aftermath of the unprovoked attack by hostile warships whose origin and motivates are a mystery to Manticore.  Of course, Manticore can't just be left in peace to recover. . .

As in the previous two books in the Manticore Ascendant series, the main character in A Call to Vengeance is Travis Uriah Long.  This book, though, spreads the points-of-view a bit more widely than the previous volumes.  The earlier books focused mostly on Travis, with a bit from the view of the antagonists, and only brief segments from the view of others.  In this book, Long's colleague (and potential love interest) Lisa Donelly also gets a good portion of the book, as do some members of the Winton dynasty that rules the Star Kingdom of Manticore.  Various movers and shakers of interest also get some scenes.

These different perspectives and scenes form what seem to be two nearly-distinct plot lines.  One features Travis Long, Lisa Donnelly, and their colleagues in the Manticoran navy and intelligence agencies trying to track down who attacked Manticore and why.  The other deals with the small Winton family and (primarily domestic) Manticoran politics.  The two different plot lines overlap only lightly.  Thus it feels to me slightly disjointed.

However, I also thought both plots are well executed.  The quality of the prose itself was fine, nothing that I took note of but also nothing that got in the way or proved distracting.  Even though this was an eARC (electronic Advanced Reader Copy), there were few spelling, grammar, or continuity errors to distract. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  I hope there are more to follow, because there were too many threads left somewhat hanging at the end.  I should note that it doesn't seem to me a good candidate for a stand-alone novel.  In my opinion, you should probably check out the two prior books in the series, A Call to Duty and A Call to Arms, for the added background before tackling A Call to Vengeance.  I definitely recommend reading this book.