I would have given this four stars except for the unevenness of the writing. The beginning was slow with political maneuvering and doesn't start to pick up until Honor is at Basilisk Station with the intrigue of figuring out what's really going on with the natives and the ships in orbit. The surprise trap on the planet and the ending battle both drag out too long, with incredibly grotesque descriptions of injured people. Finally, the ending is triumphant and worth reading to find out what happens to all the characters that actually survive (too bad Honor's Academy nemesis wasn't one of those involved in the battle...). 
 On a page-by-page basis, there are some pages of intense action and orders given and space maneuvering, and then in the middle of a scene, there will be pages of digression where Honor drifts away to think about military history or the physics of space travel or her issues with her first officer or all the various tactical scenarios possible in the current situation. The pace was extremely uneven and could drop or rise very suddenly. Perhaps this was a subtle commentary on the pace of life on a military starship, where something could appear to change the situation very suddenly, but as a book it was problematic.