David Weber has written a number of combat-filled science fiction and fantasy novels. He is well known for his "Honor Harrington" series of naval adventures in space. His books tend to be filled by strong characters, a lot of action, and quite a bit of travel.
Weber wrote a number of novels documenting the career of a naval officer, Lady Honor Harrington of the Royal Manticoran Navy, a space opera losely parallelling the life of Lord Nelson:
Several shared-world collections about Honor and Manticore have been published, including
According to David Weber, the projected story arc includes at least nine more books. The war, before its end, will involve all of the known powers.
There will also be some romantic and personal changes in store for Honor, some highly embarassing. Not coincidentally, there will also be at least some moments when Honor will consider making a fur coat of Nimitz and Samantha to be a very good idea :-)
The Unofficial David Weber Fan Club Page by Scott Deering.
David Weber reviews at the Linköping Science Fiction Archive.
Honor Harrington's Universe by Bo Johansson, includes military ranks, date conversions.
Why I Keep Going On Death Rides With Honor Harrington by Cynthia Gonsalves, the maintainer of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for the newsgroup alt.books.david-weber.
According to David, after the events in Ashes of Honor, two things happen. First, the government on Haven is actually trying to restore some measure of order and democracy. On the whole, they make some progress and actually manage to use their naval and technical personnel in their proper capacities (Shanno Foraker, anyone?). Their major problem is the complete unwillingness on the new Manticoran goevernment to come to some sort of a resolution of the conflict and restore the Havenite planets seized by the RMN.
At the same time, the new government on Manticore fires their most experienced commanders, reduces the armed forces, and alienates some of their allies. Naturally, Honor happens to be in one of the worst places when the new Havenite government's patience finally snaps.