I didn't really expect to like it. The reviews weren't that good, and the empathic cat put me off (at first, even though I'm an avid catlady).
But despite the heavy Mary Sue-ness of Honor Harrington and the uneven writing (most of the story is gentle YA scifi, but the battles are unexpectedly gritty and clearly written for their shock-value), I liked it.
I would actually rate it 2.5 stars, between "It was OK" and "I liked it". Why then not round it up to 3 stars? The infodumps. Those terrible terrible amateuristic infodumps. Writers should really know better. The writing is fairly OK within the story, but the flow of that story is broken up by heaps of dry infodumps that bring down the pacing to a slough.
With a better (and more stern) editor, this could have been a terrific fast paced jewel, but instead, they decided that massive infodumps were OK.
And a second thing that detracted from the rating: Viewpoint. The story switches from viewpoint to viewpoint. That's OK. But what's not OK is doing that from sentence to sentence, and without clear indications in whose head we are at that moment. That, as well, slows down the pace in action scenes. I understand it is meant as a device to engage the reader more with all parties involved, and evoke more empathy, but the way it is done, is way to crude and it just doesn't work.

But overall, this story has a lot of potential. I will continue with the rest of the series.