Everything below is In My Opinion. Also I get you (OP) probably know the stories, but I talk about them for context for myself and for other thread participants.

I used to be a huge David Weber fan. Huge. I would preorder the books and devour every snippet, and later the ARCs. I'm much less of one now because he got infected by Flint and a few others and turned to writing political opera instead of military SF.

Honor is a Mary Sue, clearly. Just because a character is such doesn't have to mean they're not fun or interesting to follow along with, and clear through Honor7 (In Enemy Hands) the tales of her rise were intriguing and enthralling.

Honor is one of those characters you dream of getting to meet. A character you wish would be a leader in real life you could follow. Dedicated, competent, just, determined, and honorable. Without any smudge of corruption or selfishness. She was so fascinating and fun to follow along with. Weber excelled at putting her into situations where all of these qualities could be enjoyed and heralded, could be taken as cathartic joy for so many of us stuck in lives where none of these things are true, where evil does always win and gets to laugh hysterically while doing it.

The first Honor book I picked up was Honor4 (Field of Dishonor). At the time, though I found out afterwards when I realized that book was an "anomaly" compared to the prior ones that focused on space naval action, I just took it as a really interesting Space Hornblower tale (which, obviously, was exactly what Weber was going for.)

The passage you mention from Field is so fantastic. When a senior (arguably the senior admiral of the Manticorian Navy she serves) comes to her begging for Honor to do the political thing and swallow her pride and pain, and let the murder of the first and only man she'd ever loved go. The scene you reference comes to a head right here when Honor replies to his plea:

> "Then what's the point, Sir?" The anger had gone out of her voice, and despair softened the hardness of her eyes, yet she held his gaze with a forlorn pride that cut him to the heart. "All I ask of my Queen and my Kingdom—all I've ever asked—is justice, My Lord. That's all I have a right to ask for, but I have a right to it. Isn't that what's supposed to separate us from the Peeps?" He winced, and she went on in that soft, pleading voice. "I don't understand politics, Sir. I don't understand what gives a Pavel Young the right to destroy everything he touches and hide behind the importance of compromise and political consensus. But I understand duty and common decency. I understand justice, and if no one else can give it to me, then just this once I'll take it for myself, whatever it costs."

That is so powerful. And she does it. At that point in the story the reader believes she's not rolling the dice. The question isn't if she can, but what happens to her if she does. And she doesn't care, she wants justice, she wants to see right done even if it costs her everything. Even if it costs her Queen and her Navy both her and a whole lot of other trouble as well, she's going to take that justice no matter what. Because they're all too weak, too political, to give her this one thing after everything she's given them.

It's fantastic. The whole tale is just fantastic.

Honor8 (Echos) and Honor9 (Ashes) started to shift everything that "An Honor Harrington Story" was, from death rides, space and fleet battles, navy life ... into politics, more politics, and still more politics.

Honor10 (War) mostly brought it back to Honor doing what she was at her most interesting doing (fighting a ship or a fleet in battle), but then every subsequent story just shuffled fleet actions further and further off stage. Some that might've been really interesting to see played out were just handled completely off screen, and you'd just hear characters talking about the ramifications of the battle.

Safehold turned it even worse in this direction with Weber's stories. The setup for Safehold was extremely interesting. A literal last gasp of humanity, days from being utterly wiped from the galaxy by a violently aggressive alien race, manages to launch a last gasp colony ship that isn't detected by said aliens.

Then the leadership of that colony fleet decides to create a theocracy, with themselves as the literal angels and gods worshiped by the society of humans who are born and raised on the colony planet humanity's final sons and daughters end up on. A single low ranking officer (who, through plot stuff, has her consciousness transferred into a nearly immortal android body) is put in hibernation by the handful of leaders who opposed the theocratic plan.

Then she wakes up five hundred years later (after the 'gods' are finally dead), and is briefed via recording as to what happened and what her goal is; to prepare humanity for the aliens' eventual discovery of them. She goes out into the world and finds the theocracy has infected humanity and deliberately held all technology at or below medieval levels. The number and mathematics system uses Roman numerals specifically to make any sort of calculations or economics as difficult as possible. Any technological advancement is considered the Devil's work and inventors are tortured or executed.

Her goal is to overthrow the theocracy, and do it in standard Weber fashion (superior technology; all Weber combat scenes revolve around someone, almost always the heroes, having a technological advantage). So our android heroine needs to convince a chosen faction to be her tool to rise up and free humanity from the chains of brutal, misguided, selfish theocratic cretins, and we'd get to have a whole walk through military history as they move from swords and arrows to muskets, repeaters, cannons, sailing ship technology, eventually (I assume) tanks and then aircraft and so on.

That's all fantastic. Great world building. Super interesting character who has a big challenge ahead of her.

But every name in the series is so hard to read, so weird and alien with strange letter combinations. And There Are So Many Of Them. Not just the characters, but the places too, the cities, the geography, the everything. None of it flowed off the page for me, and with half a dozen factions or more, each with dozens and dozens of characters, it was just way too much to try and keep track of. Especially since he would jump around constantly; some setting would appear for part of a chapter, then vanish for most of the book only to reappear and it's supposed to make sense even though they've been lost in the weird wash of stuff.

Obviously a lot of people like "political theater." That's fine. Enjoy the stories. I miss the Weber who wrote about a hero. Not seventeen minor heroes being opposed by seventy-four different villains, split into four or five different factions with varying goals, all being dropped in and out of "the story" in a confusing fashion.

I liked Honor stories because I wanted to read about Honor. She was the draw. The world she was in was interesting because of her, not for its own sake. Same with Safehold. I found Nimue interesting and wanted to follow her, but Safehold stories treat her like a side character.

I really miss what Weber used to be. I really do.