As I continue my series of Honor Harrington reviews, in the hope of eventually reviewing the entire almost-completely-free e-book series from start to finish, I notice some news from David Weber has popped up lately: Weber and an unnamed CGI/3D movie studio are in the process of finalizing negotiations over the movie rights (Baen Bar link; free registration required) to the Honorverse series. 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...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy A Beautiful Friendship Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen The Short Victorious War Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble Field of Dishonor Continuing my review of Honor Harrington stories and novels in chronological order: Flag in Exile by David...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen The Short Victorious War Irresponsible captain, itinerant noble 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...

Lately, I have been working my way through the works of science fiction writer H. Beam Piper. Piper was one of the great science fiction writers of the fifties and early sixties, and, tragically, he committed suicide right before his works' popularity really took off. 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...

Long before Harry Potter, there was another young-adult series about teenaged wizards. Diane Duane began her “Young Wizards” series in 1980 with the novel So You Want to Be a Wizard, an exciting adventure about a pair of bookish, unpopular-at-school teens who discover they can do magic and proceed to save the universe together. To this day, I wonder how I managed to miss that book in my voracious middle and high school reading years. It, and its first sequel Deep Wizardry (1985) should have been around, and High Wizardry (1990) came out when I was a junior in high...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen The Short Victorious War 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...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen 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...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances On Basilisk Station 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...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy Young Honor and Elizabeth Prince Michael rescues and Honor dances 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...

Since today is the day that Phil Foglio asked that people who plan to buy it from Amazon wait for (as well as Kaja Foglio’s birthday—happy birthday, Kaja!), today is the perfect day to review the novelization of the first part of the Girl Genius webcomic story, Agatha H. and the Airship City. This story covers the beginning of volume 1 through the end of volume 3—23 months’ worth of comic;, or a bit more than 1/4 of the comic’s overall run so far (not counting the various side stories that show up as filler). If I were to...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy Young Honor and Elizabeth 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...

Previously: Introduction Treecat Trilogy 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...