Yesterday, Handy Solo asked about SF authors/books (tho he called them “sci-fi” and made Asimov spin in his grave) to see if he could pick up something new to read, and then told me that I need to write more reviews…and he’s right lol! So, I’ve decided to write a review about one of my top 3 favourite SF series (the other two series being Asimov’s Foundation and Herbert’s Dune), David Weber’s Honor Harrington Series.
Honor Harrington’s saga is at present comprised of 17 (yes, seventeen :) books, (tho it’s only 16 listed right now in that link…the latest one isn’t in the list yet for some reason). The books can be divided in 3 types:
- On Basilisk Station
- The Honor of the Queen
- The Short Victorious War
- Field of Dishonor
- Flag in Exile
- Honor Among Enemies
- In Enemy Hands
- Echoes of Honor
- Ashes of Victory
- War of Honor
- At all Costs
These 11 books are the story of the main character, Honor Stephanie Harrington, member of the Manticoran Space Navy, and her involvment in the war between The Kingdom of Manticore and the People’s Republic of Haven.
Then, there’s 4 books that are made of short stories in the Honorverse, by different authors:
These books are stories about different characters (and a couple of short stories about our hero’s beginings), and give a new feeling about the Honorverse.
And last, but not least, it’s the novel-sized side-stories, of which at present there’s only two:
These two books are about characters that appear in the main Honorverse books, but that Weber decided needed their own story told.
Through the series we get to see Honor go from a naive and apolitical Capitan in On Basilisk Station to a tremendously knowledgeable noblewoman in two worlds as well as an Admiral in two navies. Weber’s writing pulls you into the story of this woman’s life and of all the people she touches, making you care about them like you care about an old friend, and his descriptions of space battles are the best I’ve ever read…you feel the adrenalin running through your body every time Honor sits at the command chair and sends her ship(s) into another spot in space where the lasers and gasers and misiles fly.
There’s other very important and interesting characters, on both sides of this war. but one I’ve always liked is one of the “bad” girls, named Shannon Foraker. She starts out as a defense tech in the ship of Capitan Caslet during Flag in Exhile and she’s often described as a “tech witch”…she’s the ultimate geek in many aspects, and that’s probably why I like her so much, even if she ends up giving Honor and Manticore hell through the entire war :)
Something that makes this series very very interesting is the fact that Weber manages, at the end, to make it very hard for the reader to root for one side or the other, even if the hero is, without any doubt, Honor Harrington. Yes, it starts up with a very sterotypical Bad Guy called The People’s Republic of Haven, a communist-like regimen taken to the extreme of “enlightenment”…but bit by bit and part by part, you start getting involved in the circumstances that affect the characters that are part of thte PRH (the manticorans call them “the peeps”), until the moment when you stop cheering for Manticore vs. PRH and start cheering for individual characters, no matter what uniform they wear.
It’s a long long read, but it’s worth every hour you invest in it.
SPOILER-SORTA-ALMOST-MAYBE
One of the things I love about Weber is that he doesn’t touch his heart and is willing to put his characters through hell, and even kill some of the characters the reader thinks have become so central to the story that they have to survive to the end. Be prepared to have your heart broken more than once :)
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Tags: Books, Reviews
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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 12th, 2006 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Books, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hmm… I think I read some of these once, many moons ago. I’ll have to look at maybe picking some up.
Got a cite on the Asimov thing? You’ve dinged me twice now about that… While I’ve read pretty much every fictional thing he ever wrote, I confess I have no clue what you’re so excited about! :-p
When the term “sci-fi” was coined back in the mid 50’s, Asimov upon hearing it for the first time said that “sci-fi is what you call crap that has nothing of science in it and it should only be applied to made-for-TV crap about monsters from Mars” (I’m paraphrasing, can’t find the quote..it’s in one of his many many anthologies, in the comentaries he writes to introduce stories}. He always insisted that the good stuff be called Science Fiction or SF, and crap can be called sci-fi…and since I’m a big Asimov fan, I do tend to prefer SF over sci-fi…but I’m not all that sanguine about it…I’ll tell you once or twice, but I won’t crucify you for using it…at least not the first couple of times ;)