I'll start with the painful truth: David Weber is not, technically speaking, a good writer. His writing style is full of awkward constructs, purple prose and impossibly stilted conversations.
That said, I love the series, because while Weber's writing skill may be sub-par, his imagination is top-notch, and he managed to build a setting that combines relatively hard sci-fi with massive space battles.
This last bit needs a bit of explanation. Weber's sci-fi is 'hard' in that its rules are internally consistent and aside from a bunch of Necessary Weasel technologies, the laws of physics (and common sense) are generally obeyed. It still has FTL travel and gravity control, and it's much less hard on the biological side of things. But Weber's focus has always been on space, spaceships and the people commanding them, so that's where the reader's attention tends to be as well...and that's the part that hangs together extremely well.
A secondary (and growing, in the later novels) focus is on interstellar politics and the decision-making processes of governments and military forces, and this is one frequent source of criticism. Not only do these scenes run into problems with Weber's writing style (it's hard to imagine even people in the 4020s CE would talk like that outside of very formal occasions), they also frequently end up used as an opportunity to skewer one Strawman Political or another. Weber has strong political opinions on a number of subjects, and they can get somewhat grating at times if you happen to disagree with his views. And finally (probably the biggest sin in the eyes of disgruntled fans), they take away 'screentime' from the space battles. That said, they're not all bad and can be quite entertaining in their own way.
Weber has also collaborated with other authors (most notably Eric Flint), and those works are a mixed bag as well. Flint brings some fresh viewpoints (and some characters who seem to be in equal parts loved and hated by the fans) to the series but has his own problems with writing style and strawmanning, they're just different ones than Weber.
To summarize:
Don't go into this series expecting high literature, because you won't find it. You will, however, find some rather entertaining military sci-fi that manages to capture the reader's imagination despite all its flaws.
Flawed but fun
I'll start with the painful truth: David Weber is not, technically speaking, a good writer. His writing style is full of awkward constructs, purple prose and impossibly stilted conversations.
That said, I love the series, because while Weber's writing skill may be sub-par, his imagination is top-notch, and he managed to build a setting that combines relatively hard sci-fi with massive space battles.
This last bit needs a bit of explanation. Weber's sci-fi is 'hard' in that its rules are internally consistent and aside from a bunch of Necessary Weasel technologies, the laws of physics (and common sense) are generally obeyed. It still has FTL travel and gravity control, and it's much less hard on the biological side of things. But Weber's focus has always been on space, spaceships and the people commanding them, so that's where the reader's attention tends to be as well...and that's the part that hangs together extremely well.
A secondary (and growing, in the later novels) focus is on interstellar politics and the decision-making processes of governments and military forces, and this is one frequent source of criticism. Not only do these scenes run into problems with Weber's writing style (it's hard to imagine even people in the 4020s CE would talk like that outside of very formal occasions), they also frequently end up used as an opportunity to skewer one Strawman Political or another. Weber has strong political opinions on a number of subjects, and they can get somewhat grating at times if you happen to disagree with his views. And finally (probably the biggest sin in the eyes of disgruntled fans), they take away 'screentime' from the space battles. That said, they're not all bad and can be quite entertaining in their own way.
Weber has also collaborated with other authors (most notably Eric Flint), and those works are a mixed bag as well. Flint brings some fresh viewpoints (and some characters who seem to be in equal parts loved and hated by the fans) to the series but has his own problems with writing style and strawmanning, they're just different ones than Weber.
To summarize:
Don't go into this series expecting high literature, because you won't find it. You will, however, find some rather entertaining military sci-fi that manages to capture the reader's imagination despite all its flaws.