This book begins a phase of the series expressly focused on the politics of Haven, with a turn to focus expressly on the politics of Manticore a few books away. Still later in the series, it will swing around again to focus on the politics of an entity that doesn’t even have any (obvious) pieces on the board yet. And at the same time, Honor’s love life starts to resemble a soap opera even more than it already did. Small wonder it loses a bit of audience here!

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. A Beautiful Friendship
4. Young Honor and Elizabeth
5. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances
6. On Basilisk Station
7. The Honor of the Queen
8. The Short Victorious War
9. Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble
10. Field of Dishonor
11. Flag in Exile
12. Honor Among Enemies
13. Of treecats and grapeshot

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• In Enemy Hands by David Weber

Honor has returned from her (costly) success fighting pirates with fragile Q-ships in Silesia with a new treecat member of her family—Samantha, whose human bond-mate was killed in action during the last great battle of Honor Among Enemies. She gets a much-overdue promotion to Commodore, and returns to Grayson on the way to her new duty as a squadron commander, and happens to encounter Hamish Alexander, Lord White Haven,

Harrington and Alexander have met a couple of times in previous books, for short periods, but they’ve never really gotten to know each other. And it just so happens that at the start of this book, they do get to know each other—rather better than either of them had anticipated or expected. In fact, during a flaming row over the advisability of new types of naval weapons, they quite unexpectedly fall in a sort of psionic-assisted love at first sight.

This is problematic for both of them, because Alexander is married to one of the Star Kingdom of Manticore’s most-beloved and tragic figures, Emily Alexander, who has been confined to a hoverchair since a terrible aircar accident many years ago. Because of that, Alexander, who fell in love first, was determined not to let his new feelings show in any way—but of course Honor, whose link to her treecat Nimitz lets her sense the emotions of other, could tell the moment it happened. And to her horror, she discovered she reciprocated those feelings herself.

So, desperate to put some distance between her and Alexander, Honor returns to duty several weeks early, and her squadron is assigned guard duty over a supply convoy. And not to spoil the book too much, but it should be obvious from the title where Honor eventually ends up.

Meanwhile, on Haven, Rob S. Pierre and Oscar St. Just are dealing with the aftermath of the coup attempt chronicled in “A Whiff of Grapeshot”. They’ve decided to bring Admiral Esther McQueen into the Committee of Public Safety as the new Secretary of War. Even though she’s known to be ambitious, clever, and sneaky, they think that they can manage her—and she has a pretty clear stake in seeing to it that Haven wins, too. They hope that she can undo some of the damage done by the Committee’s policy of shooting military officers and their families in reprisal for failures.

Cordelia Ransom, another of the Committee’s original members, does not like McQueen’s appointment at all (given that she has a pathological dislike of the navy), but allows herself to be persuaded. Then she hops aboard a State Security cruiser, the Tepes, to go out and shoot some footage of Admiral Thomas Theisman, who has been assigned to defend a star base that is the obvious low-hanging fruit for Manticore’s next attack. (Perhaps this is at least in part so she doesn’t have to deal with McQueen herself.)

Like an irresistible force heading for a fateful encounter with an immovable object, Harrington and Ransom are destined to meet—in an encounter that will try the souls of Honor and her crew, and also those of sympathetic Havenite navy officers Thomas Theisman, Lester Tourville, Shannon Foraker, and Warner Caslet, who happen to be on hand for the encounter.

But after you get into enemy hands, there’s only one way to go from there—and without giving too much away, the scheming of Honor’s crew to enable their escape is a section I like to read over and over. The sneakiness of one particularly-intelligent non-commissioned officer plays a major role.

As the first book to go really in-depth in its focus on Havenite politics, the political situation is interesting. Rob S. Pierre’s situation really does illustrate that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. As I’ve mentioned before, he instigated a coup because he honestly thought he could do a better job running the nation than those who came before him—and to an extent, he has been right. But he has also carried on many of the same excesses as his predecessors, because he felt he had no choice—and because of the sort of people he had to get in bed with to pull the coup off.

In particular, Cordelia Ransom. We haven’t gotten a good look at her prior to this book, but the more we see of her the more it becomes apparent what a “prize” she really is. Her extreme antipathy for anything to do with the military, including military concepts of honor even among enemies, have already damaged the relationship of Haven’s government with its military. In this book, they are set to do more than that.

I wonder if anyone on the Manticore side, in the later books in the series, is ever truly aware just how much of the change that is to come in the next few books traces directly to what happens to Honor while she is, well, “in enemy hands”. The confrontation between her and Ransom crystallizes the attitudes of a number of sympathetic Havenite officers (and People’s Commissioners) and sets the stage for important events in future books.

Something else that could have major implications is the way Harrington is accompanied to Grayson by a gaggle of treecats who’ve decided they want to start a colony on another planet, to the consternation of Sphinx’s human authorities. Among other things, this starts to demonstrate the native intelligence of the little critters. And something that happens to Nimitz in this book is another seed that will grow into something more important over the next few volumes.

And finally we come to the strange empathic romance, the “love at first psi” if you will, between Honor and Alexander. Fortunately it barely shows up in the first part of the book, and then is absent save for occasional angst on White Haven’s part over the next couple of books, but it hints at a bit more annoying angst to come.

It’s not really fair to complain about it being needlessly soap operatic—it’s not as if this is the first time a romantic relationship has been milked to give characters something to agonize over. But it is a touch…abrupt. The potential for this attraction wasn’t even hinted at in any of their previous encounters, and then bam, there it is. I suppose I’ll have more to say about it when it pops up again in future volumes.

I look forward to reviewing the next book, Echoes of Honor, which is one of my favorites—or at least half of it is.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. A Beautiful Friendship
4. Young Honor and Elizabeth
5. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances
6. On Basilisk Station
7. The Honor of the Queen
8. The Short Victorious War
9. Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble
10. Field of Dishonor
11. Flag in Exile
12. Honor Among Enemies

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• “Changer of Worlds” by David Weber (Changer of Worlds anthology)
• “A Whiff of Grapeshot” by S.M. Stirling (More than Honor anthology)

“Changer of Worlds” is another story concerning the treecats, told from the treecats’ point of view—and is currently the only such tale apart from the three stories in the “Treecat Trilogy” above (plus the novel A Beautiful Friendship), It’s also the only story where we actually get to see Nimitz and Samantha (or “Laughs Brightly” and “Golden Voice”, as they name themselves) as other treecats see them.

The story forms a sort of companion piece to the much earlier treecat stories, as in those stories the treecats decided to conceal how clever they truly were. Now, after their experiences in the humans’ war, Nimitz and Samantha have concluded it is time for the treecats to end their charade and expand, with the humans’ help, to form colonies on other worlds. The question is whether the older and wiser treecats at Nimitz’s home clan can be convinced of that.

The story brings out a number of revelations about the ‘cats which the humans in the story don’t get to learn until several books later. For example, Samantha is an extremely unusual treecat in more ways than just being an adopting female. She’s also a memory singer, one of the treecats who is gifted with an extraordinary memory and psychic projection abilities that she can use to pass on accumulated treecat knowledge.

As with the other stories, treecats’ psychic conversations are rendered as idiomatic English, which some may find a trifle unrealistic given how treecat communication is presented from humans’ point of view. But it helps to demonstrate the treecats’ distinctive personalities, and even rendered into English the treecats still speak differently than human characters.

From an action standpoint, not a lot happens in the story: it’s basically one long psychic conversation. But the decision the treecats make is an important one, and the first direct result is seen in the next novel, In Enemy Hands. It’s not strictly necessary to read the story to understand what happens the novel, of course, given that Honor pretty correctly pegs the reasoning behind it at the time. Still, it’s interesting to see it from the treecats’ point of view.

I wonder why there aren’t more treecat stories, or treecat points of view rendered in the novels? Perhaps it’s because a little goes a long way, and Weber doesn’t want to dilute the specialness of treecats in his stories—or doesn’t want to annoy further the people who find treecats annoying enough already.

(And as an aside: I think that the story collection Changer of Worlds has one of the most awful covers of any of the Honorverse novels. It does have the starships at least roughly correct, but on the other hand it has a couple of rather awful depictions of treecats, not to mention Honor Harrington’s giant…blue face in the background. What a mess!)

The other story, “A Whiff of Grapeshot,” represents the first chronological appearance of Esther McQueen, another one of those characters who is a direct analogue of a historical figure from the French Revolution. McQueen shows that, despite giving Pierre, St. Just, and Admiral Lester Tourville similar names to their historical antecedents, Weber does have some sense of restraint—otherwise he would have named McQueen “Esther Bonaparte.”

Indeed, the phrase “a whiff of grapeshot” harks back to Napoleon clearing the streets of an angry mob in 1795 by firing cannons into it. (It was coined by British historian Thomas Carlyle, not said by Napoleon himself.) And that is essentially what happens in this story, albeit scaled up to futuristic military levels.

Rob S. Pierre and his Committee for Public Safety are under assault by a huge mob, prompted by a group of anarchists that wants to unseat them in a coup. With its communications paralyzed, almost every unit in the Havenite navy is unwilling to act lest the rest of the navy think it is taking part in the coup. It’s left up to Admiral Esther McQueen, already under suspicion from the Committee for her demonstrated ambition, to rescue the Committee and disperse the angry mobs with her own form of “grapeshot”—much more lethal than anything the original Napoleon ever had.

McQueen is shown to be very clever—perhaps too clever for her own good, as she demonstrates to her political minder Erasmus Fontein that she had a squad of marines on call ready to charge in and rescue her on a moment’s notice. But Fontein (and his superiors in the Committee of Public Safety) soon have ample reason to be glad she did.

This is the first story, chronologically, that goes into any real depth concerning Pierre and cohorts in their tenure as the rulers of the People’s Republic of Haven, which means it is a sort of introduction to the politics that characterizes subsequent books in the series. The events covered here set up some changes in leadership that come during In Enemy Hands—as well as certain climactic events further down the road.

Rob S. Pierre makes an interesting contrast to Weber’s usual run of villains. Unlike the rest of the cavalcade of self-important idiots or scheming manipulators, Pierre always struck me as something of a tragic figure—spurred into taking out the Harris government by the death of his son in a military action, he started out thinking that he could make great changes and rescue his society from the rut it was trapped in. But when he got to the top, he found the seat of power was as much prison as throne, because the old system simply had too much inertia to allow the reforms he wanted to make—Haven’s citizenry might well turn violent if he tries, and as this story shows there are those who will try to unseat him no matter what he does.

Pierre seems to be a decent person trapped by circumstances, unlike his fellow rulers—the sociopathic Oscar St. Just, the psychopathic Cordelia Ransom. He is often troubled or even horrified by their excesses, but there isn’t much he can do except continue to ride the tiger and hope he doesn’t fall off. But even if Pierre manages to survive the mob attack in this story, it’s pretty clear that things are probably not going to end well for him.

Of course, both the Committee and McQueen will see much further action in the next Honor Harrington novel, In Enemy Hands—as will the treecats. I’ll have more to say about that in the next Honorverse review.

Weber is very optimistic over the studio’s intentions to be as faithful to the books as possible (especially since they’re also fans of the series), and has been doing a lot of consultation with them on how best to adapt it. It will probably be five years or more until the first movie actually hits the big screen, and there’s plenty of time for the process to derail (as happens to lots of movies we never hear about, and as happened to the Mutineers’ Moon anime project with ADVFilms), but fans have at least some hope of seeing ship-to-ship combat on the big screen eventually.

Now, on with the reviews.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. A Beautiful Friendship
4. Young Honor and Elizabeth
5. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances
6. On Basilisk Station
7. The Honor of the Queen
8. The Short Victorious War
9. Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble
10. Field of Dishonor
11. Flag in Exile

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• Honor Among Enemies by David Weber

Jesus said that no prophet is ever respected in his home town, and that seems to hold true for military prodigies, too. After spending a year or so as the second in command of Grayson’s growing space navy, Honor Harrington is recalled to active duty as a captain in Manticore’s navy. A couple of her worst domestic enemies—Klaus Hauptmann, who threatened her parents in On Basilisk Station, and Reginald Houseman, who she slapped for cowardice in The Honor of the Queen—have arranged for her to command a squadron of “Q-ships” to protect shipping from piracy in the Silesian Confederacy (the setting’s equivalent of Europe’s Balkan states).

Fighting piracy in Q-ships—civilian vessels converted to pack a disguised military punch, but not much armor—offers a pretty good chance of killing Honor, which is just fine with Hauptmann and Houseman, but Hauptmann also recognizes that whatever else she is, Honor is a damn good naval officer, and might just do a lot of good against the pirates before that happens.

As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, the Manticoran navy’s personnel office is tightly pinched for able bodies at the moment, so Honor gets a mixture of so-new-they-squeak academy graduates and the bottom-of-the-barrel discipline problems who would have been chucked out the door in a heartbeat in a peacetime navy. And when Honor gets to Silesia, she will find that not only is the piracy more organized than it should be, but the Peeps—the space navy of the People’s Republic of Haven—are dipping a toe into commerce raiding as well.

Meanwhile, in a subplot borrowed from The Karate Kid (and every other 90-pound-weakling-takes-a-level-in-badass story), a young enlisted tech named Aubrey Wanderman runs afoul of some of those bottom-of-the-barrel hardcases but is too scared of potential retaliation to report them to his superiors after one of them beats him up. So he gets taken under the wing of none other than Chief Horace Harkness, who along with some Marine buddies sees to it that Wanderman learns how to fight.

More of our favorite characters from previous stories return, most notably Warner Caslet and Shannon Foraker. We briefly meet Admiral Javier Giscard and his political watchdog Eloise Pritchart, who become much more important in later books. But there’s not a whole lot of stuff from a Havenite viewpoint (apart from Caslet’s) in this book, in sharp contrast to later books in the series. The book also introduces the treecat Samantha, who will play an extremely important role in books to come.

There are also some great humorous moments, such as Nimitz and Samantha’s courtship, or learning that Chief Harkness has gone from picking fights with Marines to marrying one. It’s also amusing to learn the real reason behind Harkness’s brawling, and great fun to watch Wanderman have his Karate Kid moment. It’s a fun little book all around, really, and makes a great break from the heart-wrenching angst of the previous books—just what the pacing of the series needed at this point.

Give or take a book or two, this is about the point in the Honorverse where many people feel it “jumps the shark”. It’s easy to see why. Honor Among Enemies marks a turning point in the series. It’s the last book that could be considered a simple space navy story, without much attention given to politics. (The previous pair of books involved some politics, but mostly relating to the Star Kingdom and Grayson, and mostly surrounding Honor herself.) It’s the last book where Honor gets to command a vessel directly (at least in a normal naval situation), and the last one where she only has to worry about beating down the bad guys.

Starting immediately after this book, the Honorverse takes a screeching U-turn into interstellar politics, beginning by devoting huge chunks of the books to Rob S. Pierre and his Committee for Public Safety as they try desperately to stay on the back of the hungry tiger that is the “Mob” of Haven’s citizenry, and on the higher-ranking officers in Haven’s navy as they try to survive the politically-charged climate. They’ve only rated the odd chapter or two up to this point, as the story has focused tightly on Honor and friends, but they’re about to become a major focus. And that’s only the beginning, as it won’t be too long until the seeds of the next political crisis front are planted.

The next book is also where Weber starts to graft on some soap operaish aspects that don’t sit well with some readers. Even I find them a bit silly, but I’ll go into that more at the time it happens.

Given that readers who like space navy stuff may not care for politics (or soap operas), it’s easy to see why some people are put off by the series’s sudden change in direction. I appreciate the series for what it is, and I think so will anyone able to wrap their head around the sudden change in direction, but I can see why other people think it took a downward turn at this point.

I will, of course, discuss the change further in the next review, where it happens.

I’d also like to mention the cover art for this book. The American cover art for the Honor Harrington series has never been all that great in terms of accuracy to the series. They get the look of treecats wrong, for one thing, and they don’t seem to pay much attention to the description of the actual starships. Take the one shown in the background (and foreground) in the picture above. (Click on it for a closer view.) It looks like a standard science-fictiony starship—and nothing at all like the cylindrical spindle shape that Weber’s ships are described as having. Sheesh.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. A Beautiful Friendship
4. Young Honor and Elizabeth
5. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances
6. On Basilisk Station
7. The Honor of the Queen
8. The Short Victorious War
9. Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble
10. Field of Dishonor

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• Flag in Exile by David Weber

And here comes the second part of the one-two angst punch that can make it hard for some readers to get past the first few Honor Harrington books.

After having caused a political scandal at the end of Field of Dishonor with her Roaring Rampage of Revenge for the death of her lover Paul Tankersley, Honor retires to her steading on Grayson to lick her wounds—and at the same time, see what improvements she can make in the lives of the people who have been placed under her rule, and help whip Grayson’s fledgling space navy into shape.

Her stay does not begin auspiciously—some of the more conservative of Grayson’s religious community take umbrage at having a steadholder who is not only a woman, but also an unbeliever (and, thanks to her relationship with Paul Tankersley, an adulterer as well). And behind the scenes, some of these conservatives are planning to get rid of her once and for all.

Honor Harrington’s plans for improving her steading include creating domed cities and farms to keep out the planet’s hostile environment. When an act of sabotage leads to tragic loss of life, Honor is put through yet another emotional wringer—followed by yet another, a little later. How much guilt can one woman take? Coming on the heels of Paul Tankersley’s murder, this doesn’t give Honor (or the readers) a lot of time to catch their breath. There are also more deaths of sympathetic characters—not at all unusual for Weber, of course.

But again we get catharsis, in one of the more memorable scenes of the series, when Honor confronts the guilty party and treats him to Grayson’s own harsh brand of justice. And before we can turn around, Honor is out in space defending the system against a Haven sneak attack.

In some ways, this book is a little hard to read. We just witnessed Honor having a near-total breakdown after her lover died in Field of Dishonor. Now she gets to have another one when she thinks her improvements are responsible for killing innocent people. It seems as though the shocks are piling up a little quickly.

And the central villains are more of those scenery-chewing caricatures of vileness—perhaps all the worse because their internal dialogue shows how firmly convinced they are that God is on their side and they are Fighting The Forces Of Evil. But as I’ve mentioned before, the fact that the rest of Grayson’s inhabitants are depicted as more temperate fundamentalists helps to salvage the book from seeming like unrestrained fundie-bashing.

And there is a lot to like about Flag in Exile, too. In this book we spend the most time on Grayson that we do in any book before or since, and as a result learn a lot more about the culture. We see Honor applying her own unique brand of integrity to the conflict between her own religion and Grayson’s—even if she doesn’t subscribe to the Grayson religion, she clearly respects it enough to have learned all about it. And there’s an interesting bit where Honor discusses just how many religions can be represented on a single ship in the Manticoran navy:

"I was saying Manticoran ships don’t have official chaplains. Of course, we’ve got so many religions and denominations that providing a chaplain for each of them would be the next best thing to impossible even if we tried." She smiled suddenly. "On the first SD I ever served in, the captain was a Roman Catholic—Second Reformation, I think; not the Old Earth denomination—the exec was an Orthodox Jew, the astrogator was a Buddhist, and the com officer was a Scientologist Agnostic. If I remember correctly, the tac officer—my direct superior—was a Mithran, and Chief O’Brien, my tracking yeoman, was a Shinto priest. All of that, mind you, just on the command deck! We had another six thousand odd people in the ship’s company, and God only knows how many different religions they represented."

That certainly makes for a great contrast to the religious situation I mentioned in my review of the Lost Fleet novels.

We meet a number of interesting characters, including Honor’s maid Miranda LaFollett. On the Haven side of things, we get to catch up with Tom Theisman again, and meet a few new characters who will become increasingly important as time goes by: Esther McQueen, Warner Caslet, the adorkable Shannon Foraker, Dennis LePic. We learn about the rather charming Grayson traditional sword fighting style, based on a long-lost samurai movie. And Honor’s reaction to seeing her first baseball team is absolutely hilarious.

After being largely missing from the last book, the Havenite war returns with a vengeance. Indeed, it seems that the war with Haven will eventually follow Honor wherever she goes, as a significant portion of the book is devoted to setting up a military confrontation that, naturally, puts Honor at center stage.

We also get a chapter from Rob S. Pierre’s perspective, in which it turns out he has found being the ruler of Haven is not all it was cracked up to be: in fact, it’s more like riding a tiger, It seems that, no matter the revolutionaries’ good intentions, there’s just too much inertia in the system for it to be reformed easily, and they’ve ended up in essentially the same position as the administration they displaced.

And the revolution perpetuates its own evils, in the form of political officers who have been assigned to every Havenite navy ship to make sure the naval officers toe the line. Some Naval officers work better with their political officer leash holders than others, as we will see over the course of the next few books.

As I rediscovered when I read Field of Dishonor during my first re-read, and again just now, for all the angst that comes Honor’s way, the book really isn’t that hard to reread. Though it’s more than a little melodramatic in places, the good overall outweighs the annoying.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. Young Honor and Elizabeth
4. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances
5. On Basilisk Station
6. The Honor of the Queen
7. The Short Victorious War
8. Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble
9. Field of Dishonor

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• A Beautiful Friendship by David Weber

For this book, we actually jump back to the beginning of the chronology, because this novel is an expanded version of the novella of the same name, which I reviewed as part of the “Treecat Trilogy”. In fact, it also serves as a partial sequel to the second story in that group, “The Stray”, as well. Unlike most books in the Honor Harrington series, A Beautiful Friendship is not free to read—yet. I expect it will be bundled on the CD that will probably accompany A Rising Thunder next year.

The first third or so of the novel is a slightly expanded version of the novella. It is mostly the same, but has a few infodumps added—mostly in the form of Stephanie’s or the treecat Climbs Quickly’s internal monologues.

The second part picks up where that story left off, with Stephanie Harrington and her family fighting for treecats to be accorded the respect they deserve as the autochthonous sentient race of Sphinx. The problem is that Sphinx developing sentient inhabitants would cause a great deal of political trouble, particularly to land speculators whose options would suddenly become worthless.

This second part also incorporates Dr. Scott MacDallan and the other main characters from “The Stray”, as Stephanie seeks them out in the hope that they might prove allies in her quest for treecat recognition. In the meantime, she has to deal with well-meaning anthropologists who might potentially harm treecats’ cause in the name of studying them—and with one individual who turns out not to be so well-meaning after all.

The story is kind of what we’ve come to expect from Honorverse stories: heroic character must contend with well-meaning but naïve supporters, outright idiots, and a villain with nastier motivations. People who find the Honor Harrington books a bit repetitive in that regard will probably find this one about the same, but those who enjoy the formula in general will enjoy it here too. There’s a rather blatant tuckerization in the latter half of the book that I find just a wee bit too twee, but Weber will be Weber.

The book’s biggest problem has to do with “The Stray”. The story is heavily referenced, and its events are of direct consequence to what happens in the last part of the novel. The fact that the story itself is not actually there can leave new readers scratching their heads and wondering how they missed something. Ideally the story should have been reprinted within the book between the first and second parts, but since it was written by another author that would undoubtedly have led to complications.

With that being said, I’m not so sure how well the story works as a jumping-on point for new readers. It will be a treat for existing Honorverse fans who might have wondered what happened to the characters in “A Beautiful Friendship” and “The Stray”, but I’d suggest even those fans might want to revisit the free-to-read “The Stray” in between the two parts of the book.

A Beautiful Friendship is ostensibly a young-adult novel, but it’s one of those novels that gains the label simply because its protagonist is a teenager. There’s nothing about it that should turn off any adults, especially any adult Honorverse fans.

Perhaps the worst thing about the story is that we know that, no matter what Stephanie and friends do, treecats won’t get the true respect she wants for them until “What Price Dreams?” 170 years later, well after Stephanie is dead. I would rather like to see a novel expanding that story.

Coming Up: Getting back to the chronological reviews with Flag in Exile.

Perhaps as a result of the disorder brought about by his untimely demise, the copyrights on many of Piper’s works were never renewed. They now reside in the public domain, where they can be read for free on sites like Project Gutenberg, or the Baen Best Of Gutenberg Science Fiction CD.

Recently, writer John Scalzi looked at one of Piper’s books, Little Fuzzy, and started thinking about how he could "reboot" it in the same way that the recent Star Trek movie rebooted the franchise. And then he wrote that reboot, a novel called Fuzzy Nation. At the time, he did not actually have any expectation of publishing it—he simply wrote it as a writing exercise to get his mind off of a contract negotiation that had not turned out well. After he finished it, he took a look at it, thought it was pretty good, and contacted the H. Beam Piper estate for permission to publish it.

As Scalzi explained on his blog, even though Little Fuzzy is in the public domain, there were enough "fuzzy" legal areas to make publishing it without permission tricky, and since he meant it as a tribute to Piper he felt better about having their permission anyway. Happily, he got the permission, and the book quickly found a publisher. It has recently come out in print and electronic form, and I have read it. I am now going to compare and contrast the original Little Fuzzy, and the reboot Fuzzy Nation.

In an author’s note, Scalzi writes that "Fuzzy Nation is not intended to supplant or improve upon Little Fuzzy, which would be impossible to do." He calls Little Fuzzy a " wonderful book" and hopes that Fuzzy Nation will inspire more people to read that original book. I certainly can’t argue with that, and I’m happy to note that Fuzzy Nation is itself also worth reading.

Little Fuzzy

Written in 1962, Little Fuzzy is the story of Jack Holloway, an aging prospector on the frontier planet of Zarathustra, who happens to encounter a new sapient life form indigenous to that planet. He calls this life form "fuzzies", because they are small, fur-covered humanoids.

This discovery has the effect of upsetting the corporation that holds the charter to exploit that planet. If this species is confirmed to be sapient, they will lose the charter and their entire investment—and since Zarathustra is the only planet in the galaxy where rare sunstone GM’s can be found, the corporation’s executives have a significant stake in seeing that these creatures are not found to be sapient at all.

The matter escalates, until it ends up in a fairly unorthodox courtroom battle, a double headed murder trial with a clever twist: the court uses a device called a "veridicator", a sort of advanced lie detector that reliably displays whether the person speaking actually believes what he is saying.

Little Fuzzy is a fun book to read, especially if you enjoy fifties and sixties science-fiction in general. It is full of the same sort of generally hopeful themes that science fiction of that era had—see the original Star Trek for another example. It also features some of the standard male-female relationship themes of the 1960s, though it does subvert them a bit in that the main female character is a professional, fully competent in her field, and ends up making an extremely important contribution to the protection of the fuzzies.

A number of Piper’s works focused on the relationship between human colonists and native species of planets that humans had colonized. Sometimes Piper’s humans come across as a bit paternalistic—as in the case of his story "Oomphel in the Sky", which revolved around a human quelling a native religious uprising by explaining to the shamans that humans don’t have an afterlife and need the natives’ help to try to create one. But here, the story revolves around fuzzies’ right to self-determine, with the sympathetic humans firmly on the fuzzies’ side.

In the end, Little Fuzzy is a really fun book to read, and since it’s available electronically for free, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t start reading it right now. Go on, be my guest!

Fuzzy Nation

And now we come to the reboot. In Fuzzy Nation, Scalzi approaches the same situation—small, furry humanoids discovered on a profitable mining planet—from the point of view of a modern understanding of corporations. Whereas in the original Little Fuzzy, the Miners were all independent claim-stakers, like ’49ers in the gold rush days, in Fuzzy Nation they are all contracted labor who work at the behest of the corporation. And that’s not the only thing Scalzi changed.

Whereas in the original, Jack Holloway was at least middle-aged—a recapitulation of the stereotypical "miner ’49er"—in the reboot he is a much younger disbarred lawyer…and kind of an unlikable asshole. He is a self-centered, manipulative, smart-alec, and is more than once shown to be too clever for his own good. He’s on the outs with his ex-girlfriend because he lied at a corporate hearing, resulting in a black mark in her file. (Naming a hill after her and then having it strip-mined didn’t help, either.) A lot of Scalzi’s characters can be like that—more anti-heroes than heroes.

It’s tempting to cast this as a story of the rebooted Holloway’s redemption, in which he finds something more to care about than just himself. And to an extent, there is an element of that. But far more, it seems that this is just a story of Holloway finding a good cause that he can bend his natural, unredeemed assholishness in service of—he does not seem to be a significantly different person at the end of the story than he was when it began.

As might be expected from having its protagonist be a former lawyer, Fuzzy Nation has plenty of courtroom drama in it as well—though nothing like the original’s veridicator. Undoubtedly that was a far too innocent and optimistic idea for these cynical times—indeed, an important part of the story turns on some characters being able to lie in the courtroom.

There are some other similarities, as well, such as those having to do with discovery of the fuzzies’ method of communication. But there are also some important differences—and going too deeply into those differences would be to give too much away. Suffice it to say that readers of the original will be in for quite a surprise at the climax.

Scalzi puts the story together like a stage magician. There are enough loaded Chekhov’s Guns scattered here and there in the text to form a veritable mantelpiece arsenal—but part of the fun is that these guns are not always obvious until right after they go off. And then the reader is grinning, slapping his forehead, and laughing at what was so obvious in retrospect but he didn’t see it until that very moment. (Or at least, the reader is if he’s me.)

Even if the protagonist is a bit unlikable, and I think Little Fuzzy is the better book overall, Fuzzy Nation is a fun book to read. I’m not sure that I would say it’s worth the $11.99 that Tor wants for the e-book version, but the price will come down if you wait, and there are libraries in the meantime.

Now get out there and do some fuzzy reading!

However, it took until relatively recently for me to find the series and lose myself in it, and now I wait impatiently for each new book to come out. Perhaps at some point I will post reviews of each book in the series individually, but for now I’ll cover the series as a whole.

Long before the term “urban fantasy” was in popular use, Duane was writing it in these books. The premise of the series is in some ways similar to Harry Potter: there is a secret world of magic hidden from view of ordinary mortals. But Duane goes about it in a much more scientific and less silly sense: magic is simply a way of talking to the universe in a way it understands,

And wizards—mortals of any species with a talent for magic—are the guardians of the universe, fighting the good fight against entropy to preserve life for as long as they can. They may, at any time, be called upon to journey through time and space to wherever a problem exists in order to put it right.

Kids love this sort of stuff—stories about someone their age who is able to take on adult responsibilities successfully, suggesting to them that they might be able to do the same. I know I would have eaten it up with a spoon at that age—and the nice thing is, it’s written well enough that I still find it engaging even now.

Even though Duane now lives in Ireland (where the fourth book, A Wizard Abroad, is set), she used to live in New York City, and the stories are set in a present-day version of it that I imagine would be immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the city. She provides a wealth of detail, and the setting in a real place it makes the stories feel that much more real.

Because the books were written over such a long period of time, but covering the same characters, an element of “comic book time” can’t help but creep in. The shiny new computer Nita’s family gets in the third book is an “Apple IIIc+”—but just a few books later, and only a couple of years later in the characters’ lives, the events of 9/11 are mentioned and characters are using iPods.

Duane has mentioned that “Author’s Cut” revised and expanded versions of at least some of the books are due out later this year, and I imagine they’ll probably be modernized significantly. I can’t help but fear this will deprive the books of a little of their charm—the Apple II series was the computer I grew up with, and it was fun to see it get a sort-of mention in that third book.

The first three books form a sort of trilogy structure, with elements introduced in the first two brought to fruition in the third. But happily, the series didn’t end there, and is now up to nine novels in the main sequence, and three more in a spin-off series, Feline Wizards.

The Feline Wizards series for the longest time had only two books in it—as sometimes happens with books in a series, they did not sell well enough for a publisher to want to continue the series, so the final book in the trilogy languished unwritten. Then Duane decided to try a Storyteller’s Bowl-style project to write that third book, The Big Meow, in return for reader donations. It took a while for that project to complete, but it finally finished last month, and I’ve finally read it. And I’m pleased to report that it was worth the wait.

In the Feline Wizardry books, Diane Duane creates a secret culture among housecats, who can speak to each other in their own language, Ailurin, and who have their own internal history and a rich, distinctly feline, mythology. Duane does a wonderful job of building this secret world, and depicting the frustrations inherent in the job of wizardry for cats (such as being able to speak to their human wizard colleagues, but not permitted to speak to their non-wizard human “masters”)—as well as the benefits.

The Big Meow is the final volume of the trilogy, and sends worldgate technician Rhiow and her team back in time to 1946 Los Angeles. Here they are assisted by famous newspaperman and crime story writer Damon Runyon (and his cat Sheba) in preventing a threat from beyond from destroying the entire multiverse.

Duane’s penchant for research and for making locations real through description serves her well here—the reader is readily transported back to one of Hollywood’s most glamorous eras, as the entertainment world breathes a huge sigh of relief at the end of World War II and returns to business as usual. The characters are colorful, too—Runyon himself most of all, presented in a sympathetic and fascinating light, and in a way that will hopefully interest modern readers in his stories.

All thirteen chapters of The Big Meow are available for free on-line reading by anyone at the project’s website. The pages are locked down so that they can only be read on-line—the text can’t be copied and pasted or otherwise extracted. (Those who have paid to subscribe to the project can access DRM-free versions, including Mobi/Kindle and EPUB format files, on a different site. Subscriptions are still available for $22.50.)

The version currently available is just a draft, of course, with a few typos and even one “insert Ailurin term here” placeholder. It will be professionally edited and revised, then the final version will be made commercially available (with subscribers getting a print copy and e-book as part of the deal). But even in its preliminary form, it is a fun and exciting read,

Those who haven’t read the earlier Young Wizards books, or at least the first two Feline Wizards books, may be a little lost, however (not to mention that the book spoils some of the dramatic events in the first one if you haven’t read it already). But those who have read them will almost certainly be entranced as the magic of the series continues.

If you haven’t discovered this series yet, the rest of it is available as e-books through Amazon or Barnes & Noble. The first eight Young Wizards volumes are sold at paperback price, averaging a little over $5 each. (I would expect the revised versions, out later this year, to be higher.) The latest Young Wizards and the two Feline Wizards books are $9.99 each. Readers outside of North America can buy them from Diane Duane’s web store, too (not sure of the DRM situation on these editions; if they’re DRM-free it’s kind of annoying that US residents don’t get to buy them that way too). (Or you can read them for free in your local library.) I highly recommend them.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. Young Honor and Elizabeth
4. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances
5. On Basilisk Station
6. The Honor of the Queen
7. The Short Victorious War
8. Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• Field of Dishonor by David Weber

I’ll be honest. When it came time to reread the entire Honor Harrington series thus far, this book (and the next one, Flag in Exile) was the big one I was dreading encountering again. My recollections of it were vague, but I remembered it as being something of a low point in the series—loads of angst on the one hand, cartoony villains on the other.

When I reread it, I was pleasantly surprised to rediscover it was not as bad as I’d recalled. I would still consider it a low point in the series, and it did have plenty of angst and cartoony villains, but there was a compelling story as well. This book sets the stage for a lot of personal growth on Honor’s part over the next few books, and in this case there is definitely no gain without a lot of pain.

The book begins with the trial of Pavel Young, whose cowardice at the end of the previous novel resulted in a lot of unnecessary loss of life. As the result of a political compromise, Pavel is spared the death penalty, and indeed any penalty worse than getting drummed out of the service—but that leaves him with a hefty dose of anger to work off—and a convenient target in the person of Honor Harrington.

Honor, meanwhile, is beginning to come to terms with the sorts of responsibilities required of a Grayson Steadholder, and making plans for the betterment of the Grayson citizens for whom she is now responsible. She is also beginning to enjoy a budding romance with Paul Tankersley. It seems as if her life is finally coming together—and then tragedy strikes, in the form of an arrangement between Young and the professional duelist Denver Summervale, last seen as a minor villain in On Basilisk Station. And Honor’s life is shattered.

The rest of the book covers what passes, on Manticore, for Honor’s “roaring rampage of revenge.”  Her friends discover who was responsible for the tragedy, and who hired him, but not in a way that would be admissible in court. And so, to her friends’ trepidation, Honor turns to an archaic custom that is still legally permissible on Manticore: the public duel—even though Honor’s justice could come at an incalculable political cost to the Centrist and Crown Loyalist political parties that are currently in power in Manticore’s coalition government.

Prior to this book, we’ve seen Honor depressed, but never seen her completely crushed. We see that for the first time here, and it will not be the last time by a long shot. Weber has a habit of being cruel to his characters, though barely not more so than they can take. Of course, it’s pressure that makes diamonds—and if that’s the case, by the end of this book Honor is just about ready to put on a ring.

And there’s a certain satisfaction to reading the scenes where Honor Harrington puts her revenge plan into motion. As in this scene, when Honor seeks out Summervale after learning Young had hired him:

“We’re all waiting, Mr. Summervale.” That icy soprano cut through his whirling thoughts, and he realized he was staring at her like a rabbit. “Aren’t you a man of honor?” There was emotion in her voice now, contempt that cut like a lash. “No, of course you’re not. You’re a hired killer, aren’t you, Mr. Summervale? Scum like you doesn’t challenge people unless the odds and money are both right, does it?”

“I—” He shook himself, fighting for control. He’d expected her to challenge him, not for her to goad him, to force him to challenge her, and shock had him off balance. He knew what he had to do, what his only possible response was, but it was as if the stunning speed with which she’d upset all his plans had blocked his motor control. He couldn’t—literally could not—get the words out, and her lip curled.

“Very well, Mr. Summervale. Let me help you,” she said, and slapped him across the mouth.

And we’re all standing right there on the sidelines cheering, “Atta girl, Honor! Hit him harder!” And the actual duel itself brings more of the same. After all that build-up of tension, there’d darned well better be some catharsis.

The downside of all this is, of course, that the angst heaped onto Honor in this book essentially descends to the level of melodrama—and the villains are cartoonish enough in their evil that all they lack is a mustache to twirl and a damsel to tie up across the railroad tracks. Of course, they don’t think of themselves as “evil” in their own internal monologues; they think of themselves as right, and build elaborate self-justifications around their schemes. But in a way, that almost makes it worse. They’re so over-the-top, chewing scenery external and internal, that it’s hard to take them seriously as characters.

Weber does get a lot better about creating believable villains later in the series—characters not driven so much by cowardice and hatred—but here the flaws are on full display. It doesn’t get much better in Flag in Exile, either, though I’ll get to that in the next review.

A number of memorable characters are introduced and not killed, Georgia Sakristos, formerly known as Elaine Komandorski, has her first appearance in this book as the head of Young’s dirty tricks department. She’ll become much more important later. And likewise, we meet Andrew LaFollet, Simon Mattingly, and Jamie Candless, Honor’s original trio of armsmen who would stick to her through thick and thin from then on.

But there’s one character who is killed off that bothered me for a number of reasons. (Those who’ve read this book know which one I mean, but it’s a spoiler I’ll not state explicitly until the next review in keeping with my policy.) He had a lot of potential as a character, and it’s a little sad to know he was introduced in On Basilisk Station solely for the sake of being killed off down the road. It feels a little like a cheap trick on the reader. But Weber has long been clear that even (or especially) sympathetic characters could be killed off at any time:

Military fiction in which only bad people—the ones the readers want to die—die and the heroes don’t suffer agonizing personal losses isn’t military fiction: it’s military pornography. Someone who write military fiction has a responsibility to show the human cost, particular because so few of his readers may have any personal experience with that cost.

Sympathetic character deaths make stories more powerful. As a fan of the animated TV series Robotech, I’m well familiar with that. But in this case, in retrospect that particular character feels a little too much like a designated redshirt, rather than a developed character.

As this story ends, Honor moves away from the Manticoran Navy for a while, heading off to Grayson to administer her steadholding for a while, and undoubtedly causing considerable consternation to those who expected this to remain a space navy series. For the moment, the greater political situation with Haven remains in abeyance, with Rob S. Pierre and his Committee of Public Safety consolidating their hold on the planet but not intruding overtly into the narrative. But sooner or later, both elements will return.

• “Deck Load Strike” by Roland J. Green (Worlds of Honor anthology)

This is a story that I really can’t find much to say about. It is competently enough written, but for all that it has to do with the “main” Honorverse, it could just as well be from some other setting altogether. It takes place on a world we never see again, featuring characters who never appear elsewhere, in an action that has little significance to the overall outcome of the war.

The story involves a couple of military consultants for Manticore and its allies leading local forces of one country on a small planet in the backwater of the galaxy against another country that’s occupied by Haven. The story of the battle, and individual heroic sacrifices, is exciting and well-enough written, but I’m all about the epic storyline and from that point of view, this piece is largely forgettable.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. Young Honor and Elizabeth
4. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances
5. On Basilisk Station
6. The Honor of the Queen
7. The Short Victorious War

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• “A Ship Named Francis” by John Ringo & Victor Mitchell (The Service of the Sword anthology)
• “A Grand Tour” by David Drake (More than Honor anthology)

Does John Ringo watch animé? That was the question that came immediately to mind after reading "A Ship Named Francis". This story is a humorous look at the wackiest ship in Grayson’s space navy, a "Siberia" where incompetents and other people who just don’t fit into the rest of Grayson’s space navy end up getting dumped.

Through whatever peculiar twist of fate, Manticoran medical technician Sean Tyler is assigned to this ship as part of the personnel exchange Grayson has going with Manticore…and he soon discovers just how badly he’s rolled the dice.

The premise of this story bears a remarkable degree of similarity to the premise of the animé Irresponsible Captain Tylor, which is also about a dumping-ground-of-the-Navy starship and the peculiar crew it accumulates. In fact, both stories feature an irresponsible captain, an alcoholic doctor, a martinet first officer, and, of course, a protagonist named Tylor (or Tyler, which is pronounced the same at any rate). Did Ringo watch it? Is this an intentional homage? There are quite a number of differences as well, but there are so many similarities it just makes me wonder.

"A Ship Named Francis" is utterly hilarious (much as Irresponsible Captain Tylor is, for that matter; anyone who enjoys one of these stories will undoubtedly also like the other), but the mood of the story doesn’t exactly fit with…well, the entire rest of the Honor Harrington series. For that reason, it’s probably not meant to be taken as canonical.

Probably.

"A Grand Tour" by David Drake is another story that doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the setting. This probably won’t surprise anyone who has read Drake’s later "Leary, RCN" series. Whereas Honor Harrington follows C.S. Forester, "Leary, RCN" is more inspired by Aubrey Maturin. (Of course, I’ve not read much Forester and not read any Maturin, so I’m only going by what I’ve heard.)

As it happens, Drake used this story as a prototype to develop the characters he would later place another setting for that series—so “A Grand Tour” is really a Leary story in Honorverse clothing. Thus Sir Hakon Nessler is Daniel Leary, Edith Mincio is Adele Mundy, and Beresford is Hogg.

In this story, Nessler, Mincio, and Beresford have come to a planet called Hope, somewhere in the armpit of the galaxy, to study ruins left behind by the Alphanes, a spacegoing species who mysteriously vanished thousands of years before mankind ever came to the stars. (Weber also adopted the “Alphane” name to refer to another, quite different, still living alien race in the “Empire of Man” books he co-wrote with John Ringo.) They encounter one Lord Orloff, a boor of a nobleman who is attempting to make off with an immense Alphane artifact, and also an older woman named deKyper who has devoted her life to studying the ruins.

And then they encounter the escaped crew of a Manticoran navy vessel attacked without warning in a supposedly neutral star system—and hatch a plot to use the decrepit ex-Haven navy starship owned by Orloff to teach the Peeps a lesson. It just requires winning a high-stakes game of cards played with a rigged deck…

“A Grand Tour” is a great “Leary” story, but I don’t know that I’d call it so much of a good fit with the Honorverse. As with “A Ship Named Francis,” the overall mood of the story is just too different from the rest of the universe (though for different reasons). And none of the new people, worlds, or alien races mentioned here are ever touched on again anywhere else in the series. Still, it’s nice to see another iteration of characters I’ve come to like a whole lot in their own series of novels.

My next review will cover Field of Dishonor, the first major angst locus of the Honor Harrington series.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. Young Honor and Elizabeth
4. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances
5. On Basilisk Station
6. The Honor of the Queen

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• The Short Victorious War by David Weber

Just prior to writing this, I finally finished my whirlwind re-readthrough of the entire series, including the 3 novels I had not yet gotten around to. I noticed an interesting thing along the way—I was honestly enjoying it, even the books I dreaded rereading again, a lot more than I expected I would. And I suspect I’ve found a clue as to why so many people seem to think it “jumps the shark” soon after this book I’m reviewing tonight.

The Honor Harrington series starts out as, essentially, “Horatio Hornblower in space,” right down to the initials of the protagonist and a system of starship propulsion that smacks of “how can I shoehorn broadside-style naval combat into a science fiction book without it looking like Captain Harlock or Space Battleship Yamato?” The SF is too hard for true “space opera”, but nonetheless it has that same simple, adventurous feel to it. (It’s worth noting that the original Star Trek was also influenced very heavily by the Horatio Hornblower novels, something that was largely lost in the franchise’s subsequent revivifications.)

But starting with this book, the series begins to shed those roots. To lapse into TVTrope Speak, it either “grows the beard” or succumbs to “Cerebus syndrome”, depending on the reader’s point of view, gradually morphing into a galaxy-spanning political epic with less military involvement and more political involvement by the titular character. In fact, the level of political involvement in the books in some ways mirrors the political growth of Honor Harrington herself.

In these early books, Honor is still a political neophyte who dislikes politics immensely—somewhat ironically so, given that she is now one of the less-than-one-hundred most powerful people on the planet Grayson. In The Short Victorious War, after convalescing from the wounds she took in The Honor of the Queen, Honor has fled politics back into the arms of the military, taking command of the battlecruiser Nike—the biggest, baddest ship she has yet commanded. With her friend and academy roommate Michelle “Mike” Henke, cousin to the Queen, as her second-in-command, she is assigned duty as the flag officer for Admiral Mark Sarnow at Hancock Station, an important space station located between Manticore and its cold-war enemy Haven.

Honor is sailing into a tricky political situation, as Sarnow was responsible for talking a nearby star system into signing onto an alliance with Manticore, but he is too junior of an admiral to hold the command of the station on a permanent basis so has been superceded by Admiral Yancey Parks, but is staying on as a subordinate.

Parks is uncomfortable with taking over for a commanding officer who is staying around, as he feels he might be suffering in the inevitable comparisons the rest of his (formerly Sarnow’s) staff make—including Sarnow himself., He is even more annoyed when he learns about Harrington’s assignment—he has been influenced by some of the tales going around painting Harrington as a loose cannon, and not the sort of person he wants to have anything to do with.

And as if Honor hadn’t had enough on her plate already, one of the ships sent along to Hancock Station is the Warlock, captained by Pavel Young—the noble who attempted to rape Honor at the Academy, and was last seen setting her up for failure at Basilisk Station only to end up hoist on his own petard when she ended up a hero. Neither of them is exactly thrilled to see each other again.

But if Honor has more than her fair share of stress to deal with, she also has some more pleasant experiences. Paul Tankersley, last seen as Young’s reluctant executive officer in On Basilisk Station, is now in charge of maintenance at Hancock, and he and Honor have the chance to get to know each other better—indeed, better than either had ever thought possible.

But this comes against a backdrop of coming war. After failures at Basilisk and Yeltsin in the previous books, Hereditary President Sidney Harris and the rest of the People’s Republic of Haven ruling cabinet have concluded that they need to start another war to distract the unruly mob of Dolists, some of whom have been committing assassinations on the cabinet.

Harris and company determine that what they need is a good, quick war to polarize public opinion (and decrease popular support for the assassination campaign). And what do you know, it just so happens that the Star Kingdom of Manticore happens to be the nearest likely prospect.

Little do they know that the war they’re about to kick off is going to be anything but “short”—except for them. Rob S. Pierre and Oscar St. Just—whose names will probably make any pun-sensitive French history student cringe—are about to engineer a major change of management.

As the war progresses, people on both sides are swept up in it. One particularly poignant case involves the story of Captain Helen Zilwicki, who sacrifices herself and her ship to save the freighter carrying her husband Anton and her 4-year-old daughter (also named Helen). And another character who will also become important later—a certain Havenite marine named Kevin Usher—also makes his first brief appearance.

This is the book that lays the ultimate foundation for a lot of things that are to come. In particular, the events chronicled herein have implications that will resonate through the next few novels in both the political arena and, especially (and tragically), Honor’s personal life. This book shows that Weber really isn’t afraid to shake things up, as he changes one side’s entire system of government. But despite the best intentions of the revolutionaries, is it really a change for the better?

This is a great book, but rereading it is also sad in a way—partly for knowing what’s going to happen next, and partly for knowing how the timbre of the series is going to change in the books to come. The naval battles are going to begin to take a back seat (at least for the protagonist), which will turn off those who came to the books for the space-navy action. And Honor’s personal life will see both romance and tragedy, which will turn off those who dislike “mushy stuff.”

But change is what life is about. Everything’s changing; the only things that don’t change are dead. The Honorverse feels like a living, thriving place. Even when people we like die, the universe itself lives, and it’s big enough to contain something for just about everybody. And there are still plenty of exciting events left to come.

The next Honor Harrington review will cover a pair of quite interesting (and often amusing) filler novels.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. Young Honor and Elizabeth
4. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances
5. On Basilisk Station

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• The Honor of the Queen by David Weber

The second novel in the Honor Harrington trilogy commences a tradition of giving every alternate Honor Harrington book a title that puns on the name of its protagonist. Where the first book set the stage, the second one kicks off events that will have repercussions felt throughout the entire rest of the series. This book sees the introduction of the yin-yang of fundamentalist religious states, Grayson and Masada, and represents Honor’s first serious test of character.

Honor is still a very young character in this book—odd as it is to say given that she’s 44 years old at the time the story takes place. But thanks to Prolong, a medical technology that allows its recipients to live for several hundred years, her physical age is considerably lower, and her relative inexperience contributes to this perception as well.

As the story opens, Honor is assigned to escort a diplomatic mission led by her mentor, Admiral Courvosier, to the Yeltsin star system for diplomatic talks with the planet Grayson. Since Grayson lies between Manticore and Haven, Manticore feels an alliance could be desirable—if the strongly-anti-feminist world of Grayson can come to terms with allying with a nation ruled by a woman.

Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of Haven has been talking with Grayson’s enemy Masada, a world peopled by the losers in a religious civil war several hundred years back. Haven has sent Masada some ships, and soldiers to crew them, and with their help Masada sees an opportunity to pay Grayson back for its long exile—and Haven sees an opportunity to move in after that and take over the system for itself. Haven’s economic system is such that it must continually keep conquering new planets in order to maintain its welfare-state citizens in the standard of living to which they are accustomed.

And into this mix ride not one but two female captains—Honor is joined by Captain Alice Truman, who will also figure prominently into future books in the series. Grayson is, needless to say, not thrilled. In fact, relations between the female captains and the planet are so bad that Honor finally decides to remove them from the equation by escorting a convoy to a nearby star system and back. It’s not her fault that disaster strikes while she’s gone—but she’ll probably think it is for some time to come.

This story sees Honor make her first big mistake, and is perhaps the first proof t hat Honor isn’t quite as perfect as some detractors claim she is after all. It’s an error that anyone could make especially under the sort of pressure she is facing at the time, and dealing with the aftermath turns her into a stronger character. And just as important is an incident where Honor is pushed entirely too far, and learns something about herself she would perhaps just as soon have left unknown.

And she’s not the only strong character. The book sees the introduction to a whole host of remarkable characters, both on the Grayson side and the Haven. We meet Protector Benjamin, Howard Clinkscales, and a number of others who will become important as time goes by. And we also encounter Thomas Theisman and Alfredo Yu for the first time. And it also presents the first face-to-face meeting between Honor Harrington and Hamish Alexander. The stage is still being set for what comes later, and on these foundations a great epic is built.

Without going into detail about the ending, this book shows that Weber is not afraid at all to mix things up over the course of the series. Honor undergoes a considerable change in her status as a result of her actions, though she has no idea how much that’s going to end up affecting her down the road.

This book also offers one of the clearest demonstrations of political ambivalence to be found in the series. On one hand, we have two different sets of conservative/fundamentalist stereotypes: the Old-Testament-only polygamous wife-dominating Masadans, and the considerably more moderate (but still polygamous) Graysons. On the other hand, we have Reginald Houseman, a strawman political if ever there was one—one of those fuzzy-thinking liberals who is absolutely certain that there is no problem in the galaxy that can’t be solved by just having both sides sit down and talk to each other. Even both sides of a centuries-long civil war that almost ended in planetary genocide. Not surprising that, with a few notable exceptions, most of the “good guys” on Manticore come from middle-of-the-road Centrist or Crown Loyalist political parties, and most of the “bad guys” come from Conservative or Liberal extremes.

And, of course, the space battles are exciting. Once again, Honor is outgunned, but she and her crew (many of whom return from On Basilisk Station) manage to get the job done—though at a cost she will always feel is too high.

It’s no secret that I like this series, but I’m finding I like it even more the more I reread it. Before starting my reread, all I really remembered was the annoying parts—the parts where Honor’s life dissolves into one huge puddle of angst. But the more I read, the more it comes back to me that there were enough good parts as well to make the whole thing well worth reading. This book is no exception.

My next Honor Harrington review will cover The Short Victorious War.

If I were to describe my reaction to this book in one word, it would be “ambivalent.” If I were allowed two words, it would be “extremely ambivalent.” For starters, Girl Genius is one of my all-time favorite webcomics, and one of those that I check religiously as soon as (and sometimes before) it’s gone up. I love it for the story, but I also love it for the art (even if sometimes these two likes come into conflict—I’ve been known to grumble when there’s a single or double splash page because I don’t get as much story out of those posts).

As for the novel, for starters it seems pretty obvious that the Foglios are hoping to appeal mainly to people who don’t ordinarily read comic books—get them hooked on the story and hence broaden the readership of the webcomic, which is the main way they make money. Of course, having people who are already comic fans buy the novel is going to make them money, too, but there are or will be fully eleven printed volumes of the webcomic, plus several smaller collections, to sell to comic newcomers as opposed to just a single novel to sell to comic fans after all.

You can see this emphasis in the way that the cover art style does not resemble the comic’s style in any way, shape, or form—a bit of a false note for fans of the comic, but not a turn-off for people who aren’t into comic books. And it also seems to be the intention behind Phil’s plan to have everybody buy the book today in the hope of getting it on the best-seller lists so it attracts more attention.

There’s nothing wrong with this strategy. When you give content away for free on the Internet, coming up with ancillary works that make money is how you can afford to continue giving the stuff away for free that you do. It’s just that I’m not sure how well it will really work in the case of the novel.

Try as I might, I can’t project myself into the mind of someone who’s never read the comic before. It’s too deeply ingrained in my psyche. So I can’t tell how well the prose book will attract newcomers to the comics. Some reviews I’ve seen indicate it’s doing its job; others are less impressed.

On the other hand, comic fans have been anticipating the novel for getting to see more detailed information about the way the world works than graphic novel pages can convey, and there is some of that. But I’m not sure the addition makes up for what’s missing.

The novel is a faithful reproduction of the Girl Genius story—perhaps even a bit too faithful—but leaving out the art loses half the appeal to me. Of course, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a thousand words should be worth a picture, so the book attempts to fill in with descriptions what it leaves out in images. And the descriptions are good, but they can’t replace the delightfully quirky, highly-detailed, and often Easter-egg-filled art that is fully half of what I read the comic for.

The problem is that the comic story is very visually-oriented. That’s the way comics work. There are plenty of sight-gags, or multiple-frame build-ups for end-of-strip reveals. A lot of these just don’t work as well in text; to me they come off like explaining to someone why a joke is funny. But the aggravating thing is that, to be fair, I’m not really sure whether this is because the writing falls flat or just that the images are so good they’ve spoiled me for even good writing about the same events.

As I was reading the book, I kept thinking back to the comic book and wishing I could see these things again rather than just reading about them. From that perspective, it might have been nice if they could have included some of the splash pages from the comic as full-page illustrations, in the same way Phil did art for the Myth Adventures novels.

As for extra material, there is some of it, including some David-Weber-style infodumps, but for the most part it only adds color to the story, not new facts. Even the prologue with the original Heterodyne Boys only recapitulates (“precapitulates?”) material that came out later in the comic story.

Still, the story itself is the same, and it’s a good story, a classic hero(ine)’s journey about a college student who can’t get anything right who turns out to have a secret heritage she never imagined, in a wild and crazy steampunk alternate history setting. Those who’ve never had any exposure to the comic might very well be able to enjoy it on its own merits, though they might then come to the comic and find that things don’t look at all quite like they were led to imagine them.

The book is available from Amazon in print, Kindle, and audiobook formats. It’s cheaper and DRM-free from Baen, though buying it this way doesn’t have the effect on Amazon’s bestseller list the Foglios hope to achieve today.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. Young Honor and Elizabeth
4. Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

• On Basilisk Station by David Weber

This first-written novel in the Honor Harrington series, which introduces the character to those who did not read the prequels first, is easily one of the best novels in the series. Part of the reason for this is that it does not rely on any necessary background from stories that came before; it’s completely self-contained. It does an excellent job of introducing Honor herself, as well as a number of characters who become more significant later on.

We first meet Honor as a Commander in the navy of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, fresh from advanced tactical school, anticipating her first command of a vessel of any significant size. She is at first delighted to be given the light cruiser Fearless—until she learns that, as the result of an ill-considered experiment in new weapon and strategy development, it has had almost its entire armament gutted and replaced with a set of experimental weapons that will be completely ineffective at anything longer than knife-fighting range.

Furthermore, Harrington’s crew is a surly and maladjusted bunch who take her in strong dislike after the ship performs extremely poorly in fleet exercises due to those new weapons and is, as a result, assigned to an “unimportant” star system in the middle of nowhere. To add insult to injury, her commander in that sector turns out to be Pavel Young, an overweening nobleman with whom she has a history. And as soon as she gets there, he immediately pulls out and heads home for repairs, setting Harrington up for failure as her tiny cruiser is expected to police the entire system alone.

But from there, Harrington has nowhere to go but up. And she finds that sometimes problems solve each other, as improving the situation in the Basilisk system also improves her standing with her crew. And it turns out that their presence is fortuitous when Manticore’s cold war enemy, the People’s Republic of Haven, comes sniffing around with a scheme to expand its grasp.

Just as “coming of age” stories are called bildungsromans, there should be a name for this kind of story—the kind where a hero rides in and cleans up the town not so much by doing anything heroic or above and beyond the call of duty, but by actually doing his duty and refusing to back down. This is essentially what Honor does when she starts enforcing stellar trade laws and customs inspections in a sector where they have been allowed to slide for the last twenty years or so.

In a way, it rather reminds me of the first City Guards novel by Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!. In this story, Carrot Ironfoundersson comes to Ankh Morpork and starts enforcing all the laws from an old lawbook that was all he’d had to read on the long journey in, and so he had memorized. Carrot does this out of naiveté, but Honor starts enforcing the laws because it’s the job she was assigned and just because other people don’t do their jobs is no reason for her not to do hers. In both cases, one officer’s actions lead to far-reaching repercussions.

The story lays the foundations for the series that is to come by introducing a number of characters who will become important down the road. We get our first glimpses of Paul Tankersley and Hamish Alexander, who will both eventually become significant to Honor in more ways than one. We meet Alistair McKeon, Mercedes Brigham, the unlikely duo of Scotty Tremaine and Horace Harkness, and many others who will pop up again and again. And we also meet Pavel Young and Denver Summervale, two enjoyably vile characters with lots of promise if relatively little screen time, and the obnoxious Klaus Hauptmann.

We also get an introduction to the political situations in Manticore and the People’s Republic of Haven. Haven’s political system is particularly interesting, presenting as it does a vision of the end results of a plunge down a liberal slippery slope of welfare into a state where two thirds of the population are on welfare and it is necessary to keep conquering and looting more worlds in order to keep paying the welfare bill.

Mantcore, on the other hand, is a considerably more stable kingdom, enjoying considerable commercial advantages from its ownership of a lucrative wormhole travel nexus, with a significant political bloc opposed to anything that smacks of “foreign adventurism”. It has a Queen, a Prime Minister, a House of Lords, and a House of Commons, seemingly based very much on the British system of government though with a monarch who is a bit more than just a figurehead. (Not too surprising given that the series begins as an analogue to the Horatio Hornblower books which involve England and France.)

As the start of a series, the book shows a lot of promise. There are characters we can love to like, and characters we can love to hate. We get acquainted with Honor’s laid-back-but-firm command style and get to see it bear results as the members of her crew begin to open up and become better officers. This is something that is repeated throughout the series, in fact: much like the time-traveling Doctor, Honor Harrington simply makes those around her better.

In fact, Honor’s given name has no little significance (as her mother pointed out at the end of “Let’s Dance”). More than most other characters in the series, her honor and her personal integrity are her defining traits. Despite what some would say, she’s not perfect—she has quite a temper that she is usually careful to keep restrained, and she is as capable of making mistakes as the next person. But her personal integrity serves as a beacon to those around her who are capable of seeing its light. It draws them closer to her, until they reflect that light themselves—while repulsing those who lack it, like sunlight to a vampire.

I probably should say a word here about Weber’s tendency toward “infodumps”. They come from right out of the blue—right in the middle of something happening, Weber abruptly pauses the action and inserts an essay that goes anywhere from several paragraphs to several pages in length, about some technical, scientific, political, or other matter germane to the situation at hand. (It is usually couched in the form of an internal monologue by some character thinking about the matter.)

Some people complain that these essays come off as distinctly unnatural and play havoc with the pacing—especially ones that come right in the middle of a climactic fight scene or battle. Others see them almost affectionately as a hallmark of Weber’s writing style. Either way, they can be found all through every David Weber Honorverse novel, and On Basilisk Station is no exception.

On Basilisk Station is a great start to the series, and one of the high points of Honor’s early career. She doesn’t have any political or romantic entanglements to worry about; she’s just stuck in a bad situation and the readers get the fun of watching her make bricks without straw. While I don’t agree with some claims that the series “jumps the shark” after four or five books, I have to admit that this first novel is nonetheless one of the best.

• “With One Stone” by Timothy Zahn (The Service of the Sword anthology)

Shortly after the events of On Basilisk Station, Honor Harrington’s tactical officer Rafe Cardones is temporarily detached to play secret agent with an Office of Naval Intelligence team who is trying to track own a new “secret weapon” that someone (presumably the Peeps) is using against Manticoran shipping with deadly effectiveness. Meanwhile, Harrington’s new Fearless is tasked with protecting shipping in the area that new weapon is targeting.

The only short story to cover Honor’s post-book career, this short story also seems to be the only piece to feature Honor as a major character that was not written by Weber himself (apart from a later story in In Fire Forged, also by Zahn, that I will cover when I get there). And it shows. Honor’s voice just seems “off” in the parts of this story that feature her. It’s not anything I can really put a finger on, but she doesn’t feel like the same person who just finished kicking butt in Basilisk.

Cardones fares better, however, perhaps because he’s received considerably less screen time than Honor so there’s not been as much time to build up an impression. His parts of the story read considerably better, and he has some fun and clever moments.

The story also introduces a character named Charles, a rogue of a weapons dealer who apparently returns in that other story I mentioned. He seems a clever and resourceful type, and it will be interesting to see what happens to him in that future story.

My next review will cover The Honor of the Queen.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy
3. Young Honor and Elizabeth

Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order:

The final three prequel stories to the Honor Harrington novels, chronologically speaking, cover the last ten years before the first novel kicks off. Two of these—”Promised Land” and “Ruthless,” both written by Jane Lindskold—concern themselves with Prince Michael, brother of Queen Elizabeth, who was introduced in the story “Queen’s Gambit.”

The third—”Let’s Dance” by Weber—depicts Honor just prior to the events of the novel, taking a controversial action that could end her career before it even begins. (Well, theoretically, anyway. The fact that an umpteen-book series begins after it offers a clue that it sort of didn’t.)

All three of these stories—especially the latter two, which both come from the upcoming In Fire Forged anthology—serve in one way or another as backstory to the much later Crown of Slaves spinoffs, dealing with a rebellion against slave traders from the planet Mesa. The Prince Michael stories deal with the parents of one of the characters from these books, and in “Let’s Dance” Honor encounters members of the Audubon Ballroom who will resurface in those later books.

Considering that the first three prequel stories all dealt with treecats, and the second three dealt with young characters from the main novels, I find it interesting that these stories so readily group themselves into thematic trilogies. (For that matter, swapping “Queen’s Gambit” for “Let’s Dance” would just as easily make for “Young Honor” and “Royal Family” trilogies.) Do good things come in threes?

• “Promised Land” by Jane Lindskold (The Service of the Sword anthology)
• “Ruthless” by Jane Lindskold (In Fire Forged anthology)
• “Let’s Dance” by David Weber (In Fire Forged anthology)

“Promised Land” is the first chronological introduction of the religiously-intolerant extreme fundamentalist Masadans, and by inference the less intolerant but still fundamentalist Graysons with whom they share the Yeltsin system. In 1892 Post Diaspora when the story is set, Manticore is still feeling the two states out for an alliance, and this first time around they have decided to visit Masada. And it just so happens that Prince Michael is being sent along on his Middy Cruise.

Michael is a bit more fortunate than Honor in that he does not have a martinet superior to put up with—but he is also saddled with diplomatic duties, as the diplomatic mission has decided to adopt the pretense that he is “the power behind the throne” since the misogynistic Masadans are put off by the idea of Manticore’s ruler being female. What’s more, a series of misunderstandings has alienated him from the otherwise-understanding superior he does have.

Meanwhile, Judith, a young girl captured from a Grayson ship to serve as one of a Masadan magnate’s multiple wives, has joined a conspiracy of those wives to steal a starship and escape from the planet. Her plans are going to bring her into a collision course with Prince Michael, which will change both of their lives forever.

“Ruthless” picks up two years later, with Judith living in a community with the other Masadan escapees and still seeing Prince Michael—who has rapidly fallen in love with her but isn’t sure if it will ever be the right time to say so. But though he thinks he is being circumspect about his feelings, other have noticed—including a married couple of unscrupulous Manticoran business magnates-cum-politicians who think they can gain leverage over him by kidnapping Judith’s daughter, Ruth.

Needless to say, Michael is not so easily controlled—as the kidnappers learn to their chagrin. Both his Navy background as a communication technician and his resources as a member of Manticore’s royal family come in handy in tracking the kidnapped girl down.

“Let’s Dance”—the only story of the three not currently available on-line for free, though it will undoubtedly be whenever the next Honorverse novel with a bound-in CD comes out—has Honor at the conn of her first independent command, the destroyer Hawkwing. On patrol in the Silesian Confederation, a balkanized collection of system-states with almost uniformly corrupt governors, Honor stumbles across the location of a space station used for trading galactically-proscribed genetic slaves. She also stumbles across a chapter of the Audubon Ballroom, a slavery-fighting organization of ex-slaves and their children who want to take it out.

The Audubon Ballroom’s bloody methods have led to their proscription as a terrorist organization by Manticore—but when neither they nor Honor have resources sufficient to take down the station on their own, a partnership of necessity is formed. Though she is fully aware that her actions could lead to the end of her naval career, her repugnance for Mesan slave traders and their methods leaves her with no other option.

I may touch more on this when I come to review the second novel Honor of the Queen, which constitutes the first real introduction to Graysons and Masadans, but I find the portrayals of these fundamentalist states rather interesting. They are not the only fundamentalist, polygamous cultures depicted in recent science fiction, as it happens; Elizabeth Moon’s Heris Serrano series involved another such culture in the planet of New Texas—and like the Masadans, the New Texans also got painted as villains. But there is a remarkable contrast in the depictions of the two.

I suppose it’s most notably that Weber and Lindskold’s depiction of Masadans does not seem to carry the sort of anvilicious “fundies bad” message that permeated Moon’s New Texans. Part of this might be that they are counterbalanced by the fundamentalist good guys, the Graysons, but it also seems like Weber has less of a personal ax to grind. Moon is from Texas, after all, and her fundamentalist polygamists could be seen as a reaction to the events surrounding the Waco cult. Coming from a fundamentalist family myself, I find the Graysons rather charming—even if today’s fundamentalists might have a few problems with their doctrine.

Prince Michael and Judith come across as very well-realized characters. Michael is clever and resourceful, with a strong sense of honor and justice. Judith is also clever, with a strong determination and sense of self-reliance that seems to be rare in a Grayson woman.

I really hope that Jane Lindskold writes more about them, and the other members of the royal family. She does a very good job taking these characters back to their roots. I can’t remember how much Michael shows up in the later books (that I haven’t gotten to in re-reads yet), but her version of Elizabeth is very consistent with Weber’s later (earlier-written) depictions.

I’m not really sure I can say as much for “Let’s Dance”. The story is workmanlike in its construction and well-written enough, but there aren’t many of the exceedingly clever naval or personal maneuvers Honor is known for in the novels. It almost seems like it was written more out of the need to do a “Forrest Gump” number (“Oh, let’s have Honor meet these prominent characters from this spinoff before the series even begins!”) than out of a desire to tell a compelling story.

This especially stands out in light of continuity issues that you encounter if you read the first novels immediately after these stories. You see, Crown of Slaves shook up Weber’s plans for the Honorverse considerably (which, I can say from experience on collaborations, often happens when you let other writers in to play in your sandbox). By moving some events up chronologically, it kiboshed Weber’s original plan to kill off Honor in a naval battle and pick up twenty years later with her children as the protagonists. And it also necessitated some backfilling.

Thus, these stories were all among the latest-written of Honorverse short stories—“Promised Land” is from the fourth and the other two are from the upcoming fifth anthology. The problem is that these stories added some events that are conspicuous in their absence from the early Honor Harrington novels. Most notably, Honor’s actions in “Let’s Dance” sparked a diplomatic incident. As the commander of the Manticoran Navy tells Harrington afterward:

“It’s not every day a mere commander finds herself the focus of a cabinet-level exchange of notes between star nations, Commander Harrington. Indeed, I can’t remember the last time it happened . . . assuming it ever did. Before, at least.”

Even though the governments agree not to make public mention of it afterward, it’s not exactly the sort of thing that nobody in the Navy or the government would know about. Yet it is never mentioned again, at least not in any of the first few novels—even when high-ranking Navy or government characters hostile to Honor recite a litany of everything she’s ever done to give her a “loose cannon” reputation. One would think that this sort of event would be too big to leave out. Though Hawkwing is mentioned a few times, how she lost her command of it never comes out.

And likewise, the second novel, Honor of the Queen, involves another diplomatic encounter with the Yeltsin fundamentalists, in the form of a diplomatic mission to Grayson. It’s rather odd that it does not mention at all the relationship (that is to say, the marriage) a member of the Manticoran royal family has had for over ten years with a Grayson expatriate ex-Masadan captive.

Again, that’s a pretty big thing to leave out. You would think that it would tend to shape diplomatic considerations a bit—or at least rate a simple mention, either by the Manticorans or the Graysons. It could in fact be quite significant in establishing common diplomatic ground between the two star nations (much like Emperor Gregor’s marriage in Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels). But nobody on either side even seems to know about it. Gee, I wonder why that is.

Of course, we really know why that is—these events weren’t devised until well after the earlier novels were written. It’s the sort of thing that sometimes leads authors to publish revised editions of early books in their series once they’ve written enough later works that contradict them. (No idea whether that will ever happen with the Harrington books, as busy as Weber otherwise is.) Sure, you can handwave it—and I’m sure a number of Honorverse fans will feel “Honor bound” to do so—but when you get right down to it, it’s still a jarring note in an otherwise excellent series.

Now that the prequel stories are finally out of the way, my next review will spend some time On Basilisk Station.

Previously:

1. Introduction
2. Treecat Trilogy

The next three prequel stories move into the “present-day” era of the Honor Harrington setting. In the “Post Diaspora” calendar of the Honorverse setting, they range from 1880 to 1890. The first novel, On Basilisk Station, is set in 1900.

There is nothing in particular about these stories that would necessitate reading them before the novels, but nothing in them really spoils the novel story either. A few events brought up in later books are alluded to here, but they’re also covered in those later books so readers will be fine either way.

• "Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington" by David Weber (Changer of Worlds anthology)
• "Queen’s Gambit" by Jane Lindskold (Worlds of Honor anthology)
• "The Hard Way Home" by David Weber (Worlds of Honor anthology)

The first and third of these stories feature the young Honor Harrington, presenting the only glimpses (thus far) of her early career. Between them is a story about Manticore’s royal family, depicting the death of King Roger and the ascension to the throne of the young Queen Elizabeth.

The Honor Harrington series is acknowledged to be inspired by C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series, and the title of the novella “Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington” alludes to the first (chronologically) Hornblower novel, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. The story follows the young Honor Harrington on her first cruise out of the academy as a midshipman, the lowest rank of commissioned officer.

Honor’s cruise does not go smoothly at first, as she encounters another of those irredeemably evil/incompetent villains in the person of Elvis Santino. Like so many of these villains, Santino is a member of Manticore’s nobility and a friend of another noble named Pavel Young.

Young’s embarrassment by Honor in an incident at the academy and connections in Manticore’s “old boy” network set up a lot of trouble for her down the road—including the sadistic Santino’s abuse of the midshipmen he’s assigned to train. But Honor eventually manages to overcome this adversity, and as might be expected from the protagonist, eventually plays an important role in saving the ship.

Three years later, “Queen’s Gambit” takes place. King Roger dies in a suspicious grav-ski accident, and his daughter Elizabeth asks her fiancée, Justin Zyrr, to investigate. This story provides background into Queen Elizabeth’s temper, and her implacable hatred of Haven. It also introduces Prince Michael, who plays a bigger role in the next stories I’ll review, and Honor’s friend Michelle Henke.

I actually find one of the minor characters from this story rather compelling: Jean Marrou, a blind woman who was one of the members of the conspiracy to kill the king. She uses a pocket computer with optical recognition technology—a descendent of the type of device I’ve covered for TeleRead here and here—to make up for her handicap. Unlike other members of the conspiracy, she at least has some form of conscience. I often wonder what her final fate turned out to be after the story ended.

The third story picks up Honor’s career ten years after her middy cruise. She is a Lieutenant Commander taking part in trials of a new pinnace—a type of aerospace fighter/transport craft—and putting up with another idiot noble superior officer. But she is actually not the main character of this story, which focuses on young Susan Hibson (another character who plays a role in the novels).

Hibson is a fan of Manticore’s marines, and wants to join when she comes of age. But first she has to survive being buried alive by an unexpected avalanche that strikes the ski resort where she and her brother Ranjit are vacationing. And Honor has to deal with her commander’s incompetence potentially costing lives.

The young Honor is an engaging character, though there is not as much room to go fully into her character in these shorter works. But that will come soon enough. She does stack up an impressive set of heroic deeds even in these early works, but that’s only to be expected for the hero of the story.

These stories come from the second and third story collections, written fairly early on in the series, and cover events that had already been conceived by the time the novels were written. As a result, they fit in pretty well with the established continuity. The same can’t quite be said for the stories that I’ll cover in my next review.