The seventh novel in Robert N. Macomber's ongoing Honor series, featuring U.S. Navy commander Peter Wake in service from the mid-19th century through the early 20th, marks a major shift from previous books. The first six books were presented as straightforward novels, with the story told in the third-person by an omniscient narrator who focuses on Wake but occasionally shifts to the perspectives of other characters (such as Wake's wife Linda or his loyal friend and shipmate, Sean Rork). But now, the book is told from Wake's point of view, ostensibly because it's part of a collection of long-lost memoirs that were recently found hidden in an old lady's attic. Suddenly, Wake is telling his own story.

It's a bit of an unsettling shift in tone. The conceit is certainly unnecessary, and the novel isn't written like a memoir at all; with the exception of the new point of view and a "dear reader" reference or two, it's pretty much the same as before.

But that's not my biggest gripe about The Honored Dead, seventh in a series that, to date, I have thoroughly enjoyed. This book, set primarily in the French Indochina region of southeast Asia, is ... dull.

OK, let's be fair. There are some very cool action sequences in this book, which is often taut with peril from a variety of quarters (including pirates, French operatives and, um, rubber merchants). Some scenes are edge-of-your-seat exciting.

But this book also has an awful lot of exposition. Understandably, the political situations in Vietnam and Cambodia in this era are complicated, and it's a lot for readers to grasp. However, when Wake's scholarly adviser Petrusky sits him down and starts explaining all of the peoples and nations and feuds and factions and lineages and all of the other issues involved, the novel becomes a slog to get through. Hey, I understand that explanations are sometimes necessary, but when they go on for page after page after page, to be broken by a brief bit of dialogue or action, and then resume for several more pages, the book becomes tiresome -- which is definitely not something I have felt in any of the previous books in this series.

And that happened a lot. Petrusky has a lot to say. And, while he might be invaluable on a secret diplomatic mission to unfamiliar territory, he would certainly not be an entertaining dinner guest.

An attack by Chinese pirates on a royal Cambodian yacht is the first real excitement in the book, and it occurs at nearly the halfway point.

Consequently, I kept finding excuses to read other things, letting Honored sit untouched for days at a time,, and that almost never happens when I'm enjoying a book -- and it certainly hasn't happened before with anything by Macomber.

It pays off in the end, with a great deal of turmoil, some poor decisions (despite Wake's excellent advice) and a very short war. I enjoyed the denouement quite a lot, actually, and I'm glad I read it. But damn, it was a tough haul getting there.

The book ends with Wake's and Rork's situations greatly changed. It also doubles down on the memoir motif, with Wake writing this down as a future gift to his son (whom he deems too young to know the horrors of his experiences at the time, but wants him to know all about it later).

Is it too much to hope that the series gets back to its former glory in the next book?