Why
I Keep Going On Death Rides With Honor Harrington
Disclaimer:
I'm not practiced at editorial omniscience, I just thought it
would be fun to try describing why this space opera series made
it to my short list of SF books I reread often.
Dedications:
To Elaine Kinsey...watching you get hooked on this series and
reading your comments has been a major distraction to my work!
Your humor and insights are always appreciated!
To Soren Fanning...you've reminded me why I like history so much,
and you've made it onto my very short list of men I can talk
seriously with!
To the denizens of rec.arts.sf.written and alt.books.david-weber...your voluminous comments
on this series have provided lots of food for thought!
Lots
of spoilers are here, so newbies should beware! Also, newbies
really need to read this series in order of publication because
there's a lot of references back to events in previous volumes
in the later books.
My reactions to each of the books...
On
Basilisk Station
Honor of the
Queen
The Short Victorious
War
Field of Dishonor
Flag in Exile
Honor Among
Enemies
In Enemy Hands
More Than Honor
(an multi-author anthology by David Weber, David Drake, and S.M.Stirling)
Echoes of Honor
- Worlds of
Honor (the second anthology, with stories by David Weber, Linda
Evans, Jane Lindskold, and Roland Green)
- Ashes of
Victory
- Changer
of Worlds (the third anthology, with stories by David Weber and
Eric Flint)
My quibbles
with the series as a whole
What keeps me
reading
What I want
to see in the future
On Basilisk Station
Once I got through the initial war games and the quick immersion
into a military future that pays a lot of homage to the Royal
Navy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, I watched an
interesting female character demonstrate what it takes to be
a real leader and react to a situation that looks like it's going
to spiral out of control. Honor takes command of the light cruiser
HMS Fearless after graduating top in her class at the Advanced
Tactical Course. Her immediate task is to take an experimental
piece of weaponry, championed by a politically influential admiral,
into war games and make it work. After the war games show that
the new weapon is more trouble than it's worth, Honor's reward
is to have HMS Fearless assigned to the worst duty station in
the Royal Manticoran Navy in order to minimize the embarrassment
to the powers that be at the Admiralty. Worse yet, the senior
officer at Basilisk Station is an avowed enemy of Honor, whose
emnity dates back to when they were at the Academy, and he manages
to hightail out of the system back home to leave her holding
the bag full of intrigues both foreign and domestic. Honor's
leadership takes a bunch of dispirited individuals, shakes them
out of their despair, and gives them the focus they need to effectively
deal with the Havenite intrigues on Medusa and Pavel Young's
delegation of almost unreconcilable priorities. The secondary
characters have personalities of their own that make you want
to see more of them in their own right and I enjoyed rooting
against Pavel Young and Klaus Hauptman. The book ends with what
becomes the series' signature death ride against a relentless
enemy, and Honor has to use her experimental weapon in a last
ditch effort to survive. This book captured me hook, line, and
sinker and made me quickly move on to her further adventures.
back
to list of books
Honor of the Queen
How does a very strong woman deal with a patriarchy where she
is the antithesis of proper female behavior and she can't pass
the buck to someone else? Often not all that well, as Weber takes
pains to show. In this book, Honor gets assigned a squadron command
to help Manticore form an alliance with the planet Grayson, whose
culture is dominated by a powerful religion that considers women
inferior to men. The diplomatic mission is led by Honor's longtime
mentor, Admiral Raoul Courvosier, and even though the two cultures
have little in common, they both need to work together. Manticore
needs Grayson as an ally against the People's Republic of Haven,
and even though Manticore's culture clashes with all Graysons
hold dear, Grayson needs Manticore to help protect it from the
planet Masada settled by Grayson dissidents who are allying themselves
with Haven to take over Grayson. After enduring a good deal of
harassment and disrespect, Honor takes the easy way out and leaves
her mentor to work out the alliance details while she escorts
a freighter convoy to another system. The development of the
working relationship betwen the Grayson High Admiral Yanakov
and Admiral Courvosier personalizes the clash of cultures and
their deaths in battle in Honor's absence just when they were
finding a common ground are more painful for that loss. On the
global scale, Grayson and Manticore lost well-respected leaders
who see the big picture and Honor returns to Grayson to find
that not only has her mentor died, but that her small squadron
is Grayson's last best hope to fight off the combined Masadan/Havenite
attack. She manages to get the planetary ruler to agree to let
her take tactical control of the situation and saves him from
an assassination attempt by Masadan sympathizers on Grayson while
losing her eye in the fight. Honor's befuddlement at Grayson
mores is a classic example of how an expert in a certain field
can have significant problems when she has to stretch herself
outside her zone of comfort and start considering the wider ramifications
of her actions. Honor is successful in overcoming this knowledge
barrier where Reginald Houseman, who took over the diplomatic
job after the Admiral's death, cannot break the bonds of ideology
and react to the oncoming crisis. We also learn that the one
thing guaranteed to send her ballistic is abuse of those who
cannot defend themselves. Honor's actions during the raid of
the Masadan Blackbird outpost and loss of control with Houseman
in front of the Graysons show that her temper is often just barely
held in check and is one of her greatest liabilities. After successfully
fighting off the Masadan threat, Honor gets rewarded with a Manticoran
knighthood and the title of Steadholder Harrington on Grayson,
which makes her one of the eighty-odd great nobles who hold great
power over the Grayson people. She also becomes a Manticoran
countess as a result of her steadholder's rank as a sign of respect
for Manticore's newest ally.
back
to list of books
The Short Victorious War
After recuperating from her injuries on Grayson, Honor gets command
of the newest battlecruiser in the Manticoran fleet, HMS Nike,
and after the shakedown is completed, is assigned flagship duty
of a new battle cruiser squadron, commanded by a young up-and-coming
rear admiral, Mark Sarnow. Honor gets her Academy roommate and
close friend Michelle "Mike" Henke as her executive
officer as well as a new mentor in Admiral Earl White Haven.
She has to deal with engineering difficulties on the way to her
new duty station, and the station commander, Admiral Sir Yancey
Parks, doesn't trust either Sarnow or his flag captain. Honor
manages to get her command up and running, with the help of the
executive officer of the repair yard, Paul Tankersley, who made
a cameo appearance in the first book as Pavel Young's executive
officer. Their relationship takes a romantic turn, and Honor
finds herself in love for the first time in her life. Honor's
past luck in the romantic department was abysmal at best, and
she tended to rely on her empathic relationship with her treecat
Nimitz and a couple of close friendships for emotional support.
This installment in
the series is perhaps the least satisfying to date. Despite setting
up the crucial conflict between the People's Republic of Haven
and the Manticoran Alliance, Weber loses touch somewhat with the
people inside the fleet and the decision makers planetside. By
so obviously taking Admiral Sarnow's side in the clash of strategies
for Hancock Station, Weber demeans the authority of Admiral Parks
who made a reasonable decision with the information he had available
at the time. One of the key differences between Haven's and Manticore's
navies is the ability of field commanders to take needed actions
without waiting for confirmation from central command. Weber's
partisanship undermines the effective demonstration of how autonomy
is one of the RMN's not so secret weapons.
The impact of Rob Pierre's coup (and the historical pun is painful...)
is lessened because Weber does not take the time to illustrate
how bad the economic and political situations really are on Haven
and why the Legislaturalists take the historically risky decision
to start a war and hopefully pull the People's Republic out of
its terminal illness. Pierre's actions take a cartoony air of
vengefulness for the death of his son during his speech to the
key coup plotters. We also miss the true scope of the Havenite
revolution by not seeing much of the waste and excess of the old
regime and the desire of some Dolists to overcome institutionalized
lethargy and actually take back some control over their lives.
Weber also drops the ball with Honor's personal relationships
in this book. Mike Henke gets reduced to a personal makeover consultant
(even though I would have loved to see the transformation in progress,
it would have been a fun interlude), instead of a competent executive
who would have her abilities recognized even without her advantages
in birth and connections. We also miss many of the nuances of
this supposedly strong friendship between Mike and Honor. Weber's
worst offense is allowing the cursory development of Honor's romance
with Paul Tankersley to take away the significance of watching
Honor begin to trust her own emotional resources and take risks
in a romantic relationship. The romantic tension gets reduced
to a description of couple of sparring matches in the gym and
some quick statements about how Paul really despises Pavel Young
and has a supposedly close friendship with his cousin Mike Henke.
After thirty-odd celibate years, Honor doesn't seem like the kind
of woman who would hop in bed with the first man who had the persistence
to make his interest known in a very long time. I never got the
sense that Paul, even though he's a nice guy, really is a worthy
match for Honor.
On the other hand, the Battle of Hancock is an exciting read and
Pavel Young's treachery makes a good transition to the main conflict
of the fourth volume. Honor's assumption of command authority
after Sarnow's disablement demonstrates that she will break rules
to win the fight and that the Admiralty does tolerate violations
of the chain of command if the battle is won.
back
to list of books
Field of Dishonor
Once I got past the dreadful Michael/LaToya Jackson cover art,
I was engrossed in the neverending conflicts in this installment.
We actually get to see a lot of the political machinations which
drive the military decisions on Manticore and how they interfere
with the necessity to adequately punish Pavel Young for his treachery.
The court-martial scenes are well drawn, and featured a lot of
political intrigue between Honor's mentor, White Haven, and the
government's political opponents on the court-martial board. I
gained some respect for Sonja "Horrible" Hemphill, who
was the sponsor of the ill-fated gravitic lance Honor was stuck
with in the first novel, during the deliberations. We also get
to see how the North Hollow machine has been an effective tool
for the Conservatives as a political party and for the Young family's
advancement, even though all the family members we see are despicable
slime. Young's use of the prime minister's disgraced cousin to
kill Paul not only is a nice allusion to the past conflicts in
Basilisk, it shatters Honor's mental stability. Weber moves quickly
from the heights of Honor's formal investiture as Steadholder
on Grayson to the depths of despair on the trip back to Manticore
on Mike's new ship. Honor's new wealth and good advice from Neufsteiler
shows that she doesn't have to rely just on her combat skills
to fight her battles. Of course, some cooperation by her former
subordinates McKeon and Venizelos and some judicious application
of Marine force by Major Ramirez and Gunny Babcock to track down
Summervale's patron doesn't hurt at all. She's got a lot of friends
from previous volumes to help her in her fight, but to see Honor
go off into exile on Grayson disgraced and alone at the end of
the book is very tragic and a colossal waste of her ability.
back
to list of books
Flag in Exile
I enjoyed this book because it took the time to show how Honor's
steadholdership drastically changes Grayson and the resistance
to inevitable change by religious and political reactionaries.
Grayson also takes advantage of Manticore's willingness to cast
off Honor for political reasons to gain badly needed experience
for their fledgling navy. The assignment of Alfredo Yu as Honor's
flag captain and Mercedes Brigham as her chief of staff are nice
connections with her past. All three of them are outsiders trying
to make a new start on Grayson. Honor's new subjects in Harrington
Steading are benefiting from her investments in new dome technology
that would make Grayson a much more livable place to be. Of course,
Honor has powerful enemies among some of the other steadholders,
who would like nothing more than to destroy her and remove this
new threat to their power and the old order. Even while some of
her new peers are conspiring to bring her down, the war with Haven
moves to threaten Grayson once again. The pace of the conflict
in this book is relentless and moves from the conspiracy to destroy
Sky Dome's new facility and make Honor a villainess instead of
a heroine, through the assassination attempt at the space facility
and Reverend Hanks' murder as well as the duel with Burdette,
into the final conflict with Havenite forces. Honor's exhaustion
during the Fourth Battle of Yeltsin matches the readers', but
she survives to fight another day.
On a personal note,
this book has my so-far-favorite line in it. Before the duel,
the Protector is trying to find a way to get Honor out of fighting
Steadholder Burdette, even though his power will be severely compromised
by doing this. Honor interrupts him (which is Just Not Done) and
asks him, "I have just one question. Do you wish this man
crippled or dead?", then proceeds to lop off Burdette's head
in one swift stroke. She wins her place in the Shrine to the Warrior
Goddess for this scene alone!
back
to list of books
Honor Among Enemies
This is the most subtle installment of the story to date and the
first to actually take a significant amount of time telling secondary
characters' tales instead of just showing how they interact with
Honor. Honor gets called back to active duty in the RMN through
some machinations by some of her old enemies, and gets assigned
to command a squadron of armed merchant cruisers tasked to help
stop the loss of Manticoran merchant ships in the Silesian Confederacy.
They consider it a win-win situation for themselves. If she manages
to stop some of the piracy, they win, and if the pirates kill
her, they win. The Manticoran Admiralty wants her back bad, and
they're willing to send her to Silesia in order to eventually
get her back in the thick of the war with Haven. We learn how
far Manticore's resources are stretched in order to fight the
war. Also, not everything is sweetness and light in the enlisted
ranks on HMS Wayfarer. Honor's new ship has some of the dregs
of the RMN on board, and Steilman and his cronies are villains
in Pavel Young's tradition. We watch a young crewman, Aubrey Wanderman,
learn to fight his own battles and learn more about Marine life
on ship. We also get to see some new cultures which are key players
with and sometimes adversaries of Manticore. The history of the
Andermani Empire is an excellent example of how a pirate can create
a nation and the Silesians are cautionary examples of how piracy,
corruption, and incompetence can prevent any effective nation
from forming. In addition, Klaus Hauptman makes an encore appearance
to influence Honor's recall to active duty and set up the final
conflict. The most rewarding part of the story is watching the
crew of the Peep light cruiser Vaubon show that some Havenites
have their own honor and are worthy
of respect.
back to list of books
In Enemy Hands
This book was not an easy read, and is the darkest in tone in
the series to date. After a prelude catching us up on current
events in the People's Republic of Haven, events start well enough
with Honor's return to Grayson as an RMN commodore soon to assume
squadron command in the Alliance Eighth Fleet and serve under
her mentor, Admiral White Haven. Nimitz, Samantha, and their four
kittens are with her, as well as several other members of Nimitz's
clan which form the core of a new treecat colony on Grayson. This
emigration becomes a source of great controversy back on Sphinx
and Manticore. Upon their arrival, one of the other adult treecats
adopts Honor's maid Miranda LaFollet, the first non-Manticoran
adoptee. I'm sure more adoptions will follow.
Honor decides to establish
a clinic in her steading specializing in genetic therapies which
will benefit all Graysons and put her mother Allison, a noted
specialist, in charge. Allison's arrival on Grayson is a whirlwind
effort to set the prudes of Grayson back big time. The Ladies
Clinkscales get brownie points for unshockability and Katherine
Mayhew aids and abets her offensive in the Grayson fashion wars.
My friend Soren describes her impact on Grayson as "sort
of Susan B. Anthony, Marie Curie, Gloria Steinem, and Jeanne d'Arc
all rolled into one, with a little dash of Lauren Bacall."
We'll need to see Honor's dad on Grayson as a necessary counterbalance
soon.
Honor also brings
Admiral White Haven up to date on technological developments in
a nice confrontation which heralds a significant change in their
relationship. Both Honor and Hamish realize that they are attracted
to each other, which answers the ongoing controversy in cyberspace
about who her new man will be. Honor thinks that this could very
well transcend her relationship with Paul, and Hamish hasn't been
this attracted to a woman since he fell in love with his wife
Emily. He's confined himself to several brief affairs with women
friends after his wife's accident; but Honor is the first significant
threat to his marriage. Fireworks will follow in a future book,
I'm sure. We also find out that Honor is descended from settlers
that were genetically adapted to life on high-gravity planets,
and that her inherited modifications include an enhanced metabolism,
as well as other adaptations, at the price of an inability to
tolerate regeneration therapies. Besides her exercises, this explains
why she can eat like a longshoreman and still stay thin (I'm jealous).
Honor is left quite unsettled by the
developments with Hamish, and takes the opportunity to take command
of her squadron early. She wangles an assignment as a convoy escort
for her squadron and she is joined by Alistair McKeon, her exec
in the first book, who is in command of HMS Prince Adrian and
is up for promotion to commodore as well. Hamish is left equally
unsettled by her departure, and both of them seem prone to uncharacteristic
lapses of judgement. Love can do that to you, I guess. After Honor's
departure, the Peeps manage to win a battle in a decisive manner
using a lot of technology they've gotten from the Solarian League
despite an embargo, and capture the Adler system. Honor's convoy
is scheduled to stop at Adler, not knowing about the Peep victory
there, and Alistair commands the lead ship. Honor and several
of her officers travel to Prince Adrian to celebrate Alistair's
birthday and promotion, and end up being with Alistair when they
find the People's Navy in control. They manage to draw off the
Peeps and manage to tell the rest of the convoy to hightail it
out of the system, but the death ride of Prince Adrian is averted
by Honor's orders to Alistair to surrender his ship, which is
a mark of shame, considering that less than forty RMN ships have
surrendered to the enemy in the Navy's long history. Many of the
most sympathetic Peep characters in past books show up again,
and their ranks are increased by several interesting new characters.
The Peep captors treat the Manty prisoners well, just like Honor
has treated her Peep prisoners in the past, but all hell breaks
loose when Cordelia Ransom, one of the Peep ruling triumvirate
that is out in the field trying to drum up support, finds out
that Honor is a prisoner.
Ransom has the use of the Peep battlecruiser
Tepes, which is staffed with State Security, not Navy crew. The
Tepes' crew are the scum of the People's Republic and their sadism
is a combination of the worst Nazi atrocities coupled with torture
tactics right out of the worst Central or South American military
dictatorship. Ransom takes custody of Honor, who she names a civil
prisoner convicted in absentia of mass murder from the defeat
of the Sirius way back in the first book. This means that Honor
cannot rely on the Deneb Accords for proper treatment as a military
prisoner, and she is sent to the prison planet Hades for her execution.
Word gets back to the Alliance of her death sentence, and her
mother on Grayson has a breakdown. When Honor is condemned, both
she and Nimitz are severely injured in an attack on their captors.
Nimitz narrowly escapes death through the intervention of Shannon
Foraker, the Peep tactical genius we've met in past books, and
Fritz Montoya, who always seems to be around to patch Honor up
when she needs it. The Peep captors disable her cybernetic eye,
and try to break her both mentally and physically in some very
harrowing passages. Weber gives us some of his best efforts in
the series to date in depicting Honor wasting away due to poor
nutrition and her overdrive metabolism, and her emotional struggles
in the brig to find the core of her strength within. They also
have custody of several of Honor's armsmen and staff officers,
as well as Alistair McKeon and several of Prince Adrian's crew,
who will also be sent to Hades to witness Honor's execution. Senior
Chief Harkness manages to convince the Peeps that he wants to
defect, and commits many forms of treason, while using heretofore
unshown computer hacker skills in actually setting up a breakout
of all the Manticoran prisoners, including Honor. During the breakout,
the Peep captain Warner Caslet who is under suspicion by Ransom,
gets caught up in the escape attempt. Both Honor's armsman Jamie
Candless, and her former exec on HMS Fearless and current chief
of staff Andy Venizelos end up getting killed with some of the
other prisoners in the breakout. Andy's death in particular was
too cursorily handled to really do justice to his gallantry; Jamie
knew that dying for his Steadholder was part of his job description.
Harkness manages to get the survivors off in a couple of small
craft just before the Tepes is blown up by his sabotage of a pinnace
in a boat bay and they head for a landing on the planet Hades,
a particularly inhospitable place. Honor's former captors (the
sympathetic Peeps) witness the destruction of the Tepes and manage
to erase the sensor log that shows the two shuttles escaping.
Unfortunately, we don't know for sure if the evil Cordelia Ransom
is really dead, and Honor loses her left arm due to injuries sustained
at the end of the escape and insufficient resources for Montoya
to do his magic. We're left at the end of the book with Honor
and her comrades marooned on Hades but with enough weapons so
that they can attempt to free themselves. This is the closest
to a cliffhanger ending we've gotten so far.
back to list of books
Echoes
of Honor
One of my comrades in Weberphilia
recently said the ending of In Enemy Hands was "in serious
violation of interstellar conventions". Jenny, I couldn't
have said it better myself. Ever since the hardback edition of
IEH hit the stands, the collective fan community has been clamoring
to find out Honor's fate on Hell, and the frenzy and anticipation
surrounding the hardback release of Echoes of Honor was astounding.
Even with a whopping twenty-four chapters available on the Baen
website, I hadn't seen this kind of frenzy played out for any
of the previous books, although we also didn't have as many resources
in cyberspace back then.
This is a huge book that will undoubtedly
get gobbled down in a couple of evenings, but needs to be revisited
at a slower pace so that you can catch up on all the details,
and there are *tons* of details. Another one of my friends says
that this book had the best balance for her between the battles,
the character development, and the techie goodies. I think this
is in the top ranks, but there are some things that are holding
me back from perhaps naming it the champion, of which, more later.
Weber does something rather different
with the structure of Echoes. He broke the book up into six sub-books,
with the odd numbered books showing life and death in the Alliance
without Honor, and the even numbered books showing the story of
the great escape. This has been a cause of frustration for many
fans because they really wanted to know what was happening on
Hades and to go for seven full chapters before seeing Our Heroine
in book 2 made them chew their nails.
After a prologue showing the Peep
propaganda of Honor's condemnation and execution, Book One opens
with a heartwrenching depiction of Honor's Manticoran state funeral;
David was merciful in not adding the pain of the Grayson funeral
to the story. It then continues onward with the introduction of
a new class of Manty ship, the LAC carrier Minotaur, commanded
by our old friend Alice Truman, and joined by Jackie Harmon, from
Honor Among Enemies, commanding the LAC wings. Jackie is the first
top gun I've seen in the Manty navy, and her style contrasts greatly
with the rest of the commanders we've met to date. She makes a
good partner with Alice Truman though. We go back to Grayson to
see Honor's parents cope with their daughter's loss and the planet
with the loss of Steadholder Harrington. On the way, Allison makes
a medical breakthrough which identifies why the Grayson gender
imbalance is so extreme, and another one of the expatriate treecats
adopts another Grayson.
Book Two returns us to Honor and her
fellow escapees on Hades. She slowly recovers her strength and
both she and Nimitz begin to adapt to their injuries suffered
on Tepes. We learn a lot about how State Security has been running
the planet and its unique ecosystem, as well as meeting new comrades
in Camp Inferno, which was used for the incorrigible troublemakers,
just the kind of people Honor and her crew need for the breakout.
Book Three returns us to the Honorless
Alliance, and the fighting skills of the People's Navy have gotten
a major upgrade with illicit technology transfers from the Solarian
League and the fact that they have competent military leaders
making effective decisions consistently. Things do *not* go well
for the Alliance. We also get to see Hamish Alexander do some
major league obsessing about Honor, which is amusing to contrast
with Honor's lack of obsession. See, getting captured, condemned
to death, maimed, and miraculously escaping a death sentence with
a lot of help from her friends to land on perhaps the most inhospitable
part of the local space-time continuum will tend to drive Honor's
thoughts about a certain Admiral of the Green to a back burner,
and I thank Goddess for that.
Back on Hades, Book Four shows us
Honor, her crew, and the inmates of Camp Inferno taking control
of the Peep bases on Styx. Honor reverts to her Grayson rank in
order to make perfectly clear to a particularly incompetent arrogant
POW Manty admiral that she is in charge and deserves to be there.
Admiral Styles is such a lost cause that the Peeps did the Alliance
a great favor by removing him from the war effort even before
the Battle of Hancock in Short Victorious War.
Things go ever more worse for the
Alliance in Book Five because Esther McQueen, with help from Theisman,
Giscard, and Tourville and other good Peep tacticians, has cooked
up a offensive plan that hits the Alliance at its heart. Hancock,
Alizon, Zanzibar, and even Basilisk get attacked, and even some
great heroics by Alice Truman and Jackie Harmon at Hancock and
White Haven miraculously pulling off a two wormhole transit relief
of the beleaguered forces at Basilisk doesn't stop a whole lot
of pain and defeats from hitting the Alliance. Harmon becomes
the latest Good Guy who we've gotten to know and love who dies
on us. Ave atque vale, Jackie!
The climax of the book is in Book
Six with Honor's great escape from Hades, filled with lots more
new comrades and the formation of the Elysian Space Navy. This
is actually the first time I recall a battle with Honor involved
where *none* of the good guys get converted to plasma. And with
the bulk of the over three hundred thousand POWs placed on slower
transports for Trevor's Star, Honor and the fledgling combat units
of the Elysian Space Navy manage to make their way there, for
the obvious but still enjoyable "I'm back!" ending.
Some fans wish that we had gotten to see the reactions back on
Grayson with Honor's family and back on Manticore, but that is
being saved for the ninth book.
Going back to my earlier comment about
not necessarily ranking this installment number one to date, I
guess what held me back a bit was the frenzied pace we get characters
and events introduced and the timelines started getting harder
to keep track of. This really is the first book where we get a
depiction of the large scope of the war, and we get a feeling
that things are going to get even larger in future books.
On a personal note, I hit a major
fannish high point in book six. David, without telling me, named
one of Honor's new ex-POW officers after me, and I'm still doing
a happy bounce, even if my counterpart got sent to Hell in her
lifetime. In fact, the other me gets to command the slow civilian
transports back to Trevor's Star, but Honor beats me there by
the time the book ends. David may still end up deciding I look
good in red. Alto Verde Libre!
David also drew from the ranks of
the Weberphiles for some other characters (you get to hunt the
others out!), including the fabulous Man Who Dropped the Spanner,
PO Richard Maxwell, who was named after Navbuoy (his RL name),
one of the true stalwarts of alt.books.david-weber. We lost Richard
to death right after Echoes was released in hardback, but we all
knew that Navbuoy loved having the Silver Spanner named after
him and treasured his official red shirt, since he had been joking
with us for months after he saw the manuscript.
As always, we toast absent friends,
real and fictional, and may the fictional continue to outnumber
the real.
back
to list of books
Ashes
of Victory
It took me quite a long time to get
around to writing my comments on Ashes of Victory, waiting until
well after the paperback release, instead of after the hardback
release. I suppose I have to say that my delay is caused by my
feeling that this is the weakest novel in the saga to date. If
you look at the overall structure of the saga, the last three
novels tell a continuous narrative, and this closing installment
serves as a major transition point for the series. Lots of storylines
get closed out, and hints are left for us to speculate where we're
going next. The beginning of the book gives us the long-awaited
return of Our Heroine to her two planets, but even though I enjoyed
the reunions, I had a feeling that we probably could have gotten
that part of the story told in fewer and more tightly written
chapters. Honor gets to meet her twin siblings, her heiress presumptive
and spare heir for her Steading and Duchy. Yes, she's now a duchess;
her cousin ended up with her earldom after her presumed death,
but the Queen managed to bump her up in the ranks even if the
House of Lords still wants to ignore her continued existence.
Honor is going through the time in
the body and fender shop she so desperately needed after her trials
on Tepes and Cerberus, and gets assigned to command the Advanced
Tactical Course at Saganami Island, where she gets some needed
practice in the art of mentoring, rehabilitating the career of
a worthy officer brought down through incompetence in Echoes,
as well as serving as inspiration for the student body. This section
was my particular favorite in this book, because I think Honor
is a much more effective teacher than she is a politician. In
addition, Nimitz, reunited with Samantha, also gets some major
rehab work while giving us a glimpse into heretofore hidden skills
of treecats.
Events in the People's Republic of
Haven take two major turns, first with a failed coup by Esther
McQueen, and then with a successful coup right at the end of the
novel. Between these two events, Peep intrigues with Steadholder
Mueller (you knew he'd be back causing trouble, didn't you?) result
in a major political upheaval for both the Star Kingdom and the
Protectorate of Grayson. Things are going to be quite different
in future installments of the saga.
I think the amount of tech advances
in this book is lower than the frenzied developments of Echoes,
but the political machinations exceed those of Fields of Dishonor,
because we're seeing upheavals in three star nations, not just
one.
Weberphile Tuckerizations in Ashes
include my valued assistant in newsgroup archiving, Joe Buckley
(he's in charge of keeping the dates straight), and another abdw
stalwart, Frank Ney. Both gentlemen's namesakes failed to make
it to the end of the book still in intact form, but my namesake
and that of my Elysian Navy comrade Sue Phillips ended up making
cameo appearances near the end with promotions as part of the
command cadre of the Grayson Navy's Protector's Own Squadron.
I've got a feeling that my time to be converted to plasma is getting
closer when the GSN is next under fire. For Grayson and the Sword!
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More
Than Honor (the first Honor Harrington short story anthology)
I've been telling people who ask that
it is a very good idea to hold off reading this collection until
after they've read In Enemy Hands because the Stirling story in
particular is a spoiler for events mentioned at the beginning
of that book. However, if you want, you can read the Weber story
after Field of Dishonor, because the events were first mentioned
there. You might find it hard not to peek at the other stories
after the Weber one, though...
The first story is David Weber's tale
of how Honor's ancestress, Stephanie, became the first treecat
adoptee (the adventurous treecat Climbs Quickly is the first to
bond with a human) and is chock full of glimpses into treecat
culture and the impact that human settlement of Sphinx had on
the treecats. It was absolutely fabulous and David will have to
give us more glimpses of how the treecats on Sphinx and Grayson
deal with events among themselves. We're getting more and more
glimpses of treecat culture in later short stories.
The third story by S. M. Stirling
is a retelling of the Leveler rebellion on Haven from the point
of view of Esther McQueen, the Peeps' finest admiral and one who
gives Admiral Lord White Haven and Admiral Kuzak a major run for
their money. Stirling does a great job of keeping within Weber's
style, you almost could swear that David himself wrote this story.
Unfortunately, I can't say the same
for David Drake's contribution which is the tale of a Manticoran
nobleman off exploring for artifacts on the rundown fringes of
the Solarian League. I really couldn't get into this story at
all.
And, David Weber finishes off the
book with a long appendix full of historical and technical tidbits
about Honor's universe. Backstory addicts like me will have a
field day with this portion of the book.
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Worlds of Honor (the second Honor Harrington
short story anthology)
Well, we didn't luck out with good
cover art on this book, and there was an egregious typo of Jane
Lindskold's name on the dust jacket. Also, I have reservations
about a hardback release for short stories. I think many fans
who would ordinarily splurge on a hardback novel would hesitate
at paying hardback prices for short stories. However, this was
a more satisfying collection than the first one. Perhaps the overall
theme of this book is the interaction between treecats and humans,
because treecats are pivotal in the events of all the stories
except Roland Green's.
Linda Evans goes back to Stephanie
Harrington's time and another one of the first adoptees, who incidentally
has heightened empathic abilities from his Scottish ancestry.
Scott MacDallan and his partner manage to foil an offplanet attempt
to exploit Sphinxian natural resources.
Weber's first contribution describes
the adoption of Crown Princess Adrienne of Manticore, which is
pivotal in ensuring the protection of treecats from offplanet
exploitation brought on by interest in their empathic skills.
We get an interesting glimpse into the early life of the House
of Winton, and a scary look at how unscrupulous people and governments
can use mental manipulation to work their will. This theme seems
to be absent from the novels to date, but I wonder if we might
see something like this in future installations of the saga by
members of the Solarian League.
Jane Lindskold takes us up to the
accession of Manticore's current Queen, Elizabeth III and answers
some questions about the offplanet and domestic intrigues surrounding
her father's death. This story would have been in the first anthology,
but was bumped for space. Of particular interest to the current
events in the novels is the adoption of the Queen's fiancé
by King Roger's treecat. This establishes a precedent where a
widowed treecat may end up choosing another human, so I wouldn't
be surprised at all if Samantha chooses another partner. We also
see Mike Henke as a young lieutenant providing support to her
cousins during their bereavement. I like Mike a lot, and hope
to see more of her in future.
Weber's second story features Honor
herself during the time when she was a lieutenant commander and
exec of HMS Broadsword and rescued civilians on Gryphon from an
avalanche. This event was mentioned in passing in On Basilisk
Station by Pavel Young, and Honor herself runs afoul of one of
Pavel Young's noble relatives who shares his dislike for her.
Incidentally, one of the civilians Honor ends up rescuing with
assistance from Nimitz is Susan Hibson, who we see later on as
one of the Marines in the Battle of Blackbird and also on HMS
Nike during the time frame of Field of Dishonor. Susan seems to
be a very precocious woman, or perhaps you can advance more quickly
in rank in the Marine Corps, because she goes from being a adolescent
in this story to a fairly high ranking officer in the novels.
Honor herself has only advanced from lieutenant commander to captain
of the list in this same time frame. Come to think of it, Tomas
Ramirez also seems to have moved quickly through the ranks, so
something must be said for upward mobility as a Marine. Susan
Hibson is another one of those interesting women I'd like to see
more of.
Roland Green closes out the book with
the only non-treecat story which is set well away from the main
story arc of the war. The war manifests itself as a struggle between
technical advisors from the Alliance and from Haven on a backwater
planet, and we get the largest look at ground combat to date.
The story itself was more readable than Drake's effort in the
first anthology, but it also is the one story I don't find myself
re-reading in this book.
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Changer of Worlds (the third anthology, read
after Ashes of Victory!)
The title story first appeared in
the Balticon 33 souvenir program and has been available on line
since last year on Mike Weber's website (with David's permission)
for those who weren't lucky enough to attend Balticon 33 in person
or order a copy of its program. The URL is: http://weberworld.virtualave.net/david/storyframe.htm.
Well, those of us who wanted to see
treecat life in action got a treat in this story. Nimitz and Samantha
go back to Sphinx after the events of Honor Among Enemies to meet
his clan (Bright Water Clan, the same clan that Climbs Quickly
came from). We learn what their names among the People are (Laughs
Brightly (Nimitz) and Golden Voice (Samantha)) and why Samantha
is such an unusual treecat, as well as their name for Honor herself
(Dances on Clouds). This story supplied the necessary backstory
to explain why members of Bright Water Clan helped form the Grayson
treecat colony and is definitely an important addition to the
canon.
David also contributed two other stories
to this anthology, "Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington" and
"Nightfall". Nightfall gives us the narrative for the
aborted coup of Esther McQueen that we didn't get to see in Ashes
of Victory and fellow backstory junkies like me will be glad to
have it, even if we already knew the outcome. "Ms. Midshipwoman
Harrington" also gives us a glimpse of the very young Honor
fresh out of the Academy with some rough edges. We also find out
why Elvis Santino was always such a waste of oxygen and why Honor
took so much pleasure in rehabilitating the career of an officer
who ran afoul of Santino in Echoes of Honor.
Eric Flint contributed the final novella,
"From the Highlands" and it gives us the first real
look at the Solarian League and the first sympathetic major character
who is unreservedly left of center, an expatriate Manticoran countess
who shares the dubious distinction of being kicked out of the
House of Lords with Our Heroine. We also get to see the family
of Helen Zilwicki, one of the real heroines of the Havenite War,
in action in Old Chicago.
This was the first anthology that
I can say had all its stories worth the time to read and re-read.
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My quibbles with the series
as a whole
Weber can describe a good battle, but his dialogue can be incredibly
stilted and his historical and literary allusions lack subtlety
at times. He's obviously done his research on how battles were
fought in the age of sail and translated it 2000 years into our
future, but his love for describing the fight sometimes overshadows
the need to show that human beings are in those ships fighting
and often dying. We also never really get a sense of what the
war effort is doing to the civilians on both Manticore and Haven.
Honor's injuries for the most part occur outside the scope of
ship to ship battle, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to
me considering how many members of her bridge crews have been
killed or grievously injured. Her worst injuries to date occurred
during the attempted Maccabean assassination, the Burdette armsman's
ambush, and the great escape from Havenite State Security. Weber
also tests my tolerance by managing to kill off characters we've
come to know and love in each story. One of my friends pointed
out to me that it would be too predictable to only kill off the
characters you don't know well (think the anonymous red-shirted
low-ranking officer that is always the inspiration for the Classic
Trek line "He's dead, Jim.") and keep the main characters
alive. Sometimes Weber does a better job of giving the sacrificial
lamb a good farewell than others. At least he gave Jamie Candless
a good farewell line in In Enemy Hands, but he didn't also give
Andreas Venizelos a similar gallant sendoff to Valhalla.
Let me now take the
opportunity to out myself on this website as a member of the "Honor
Harrington Deserves Better than Hamish Alexander" faction
of Honorphiles. I've taken part in numerous debates on this topic
in email and at the Austin Steadholder's Guard Gathering in 2000,
and one of my friends and I whiled away the long drive back from
seeing David at CopperCon in Phoenix back in 1999 riffing on why
we think Earl White Haven makes a great action hero but sucks
as a romantic lead. I can think of several worthy gentlemen who
would make better romantic partners for Our Heroine than the Earl
of White Haven, most notably Alistair McKeon, Werner Caslet, and
my personal front-runner in this derby race, Tomas Ramirez. A
certain commodore in the Grayson Navy would be happy to make the
effort to bring polyandry to Harrington Steading with any or all
of these worthy gentlemen if Duchess and Steadholder Harrington
isn't interested :) (hinthinthint, David...at least let her have
some fun before you turn her to plasma!). You know those
infidel women from off Grayson, they're always up to no good.
Yes, I know things are pretty much set in ceramacrete and Hamish
is indeed The Man, but I don't have to like it unless and until
David makes it work through good storytelling. My major objections
are as follows: Uno: Besides being very married, Hamish also thinks
like someone from pre-prolong days at times. Dos: He really can
be a manipulative SOB, even with his brother and closest friends
like James Webster. It's a great survival skill in the military
and in politics, but it doesn't make him a comfortable person
to be intimate with and frankly he'd be hard to be friends with.
One of the nice parts of Honor's relationship with Paul Tankersley
was that they seemed to be good friends first before they became
lovers and they didn't have the age differential munging things
up. Since we haven't met Emily at all except in brief descriptions,
we only have minimal information about how Hamish is in his most
important personal relationship. Tres: I get very uncomfortable
when the mentor/protegee relationship gets charged with sexual
attraction, it's something that sends "Danger, Danger!"
signals to me.
Many fans have also
noted the tendency to resort to mass information dumps in the
middle of action; in this case, showing things in action rather
than telling would improve the story. I also think that perhaps
the most appropriate place to give the detailed technical information
or backstory would be in a separate concordance. Jim Baen, are
you listening? You could make a small fortune on this and I'm
sure many fans have compiled a lot of this supplemental information
to back up Weber's own technical notes. And of course, this concordance
would get expanded as the saga continues (more sales, Jim...think
about it!).
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What
keeps me reading
In short, what is going to happen to Honor next? She is one of
the first sf heroines that is not a cartoon of a strong Amazon
but is all too human even despite her physical strengths and undoubted
tactical prowess. She is the best up-and-coming future flag officer
we've seen in the RMN and will either end up First Space Lord
or become the latest naval martyr in Edward Saganami's tradition.
She is emotionally vulnerable and hot-tempered, but she directs
a lot of her wrath at those who take advantage of people and worlds
that aren't able to defend themselves. In a pinch, I want her
fighting on my side. Even with her vulnerability, she isn't completely
detached from other people and has a intriguing bond with Nimitz
that still has not been fully elaborated.
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What I want to see in the future
Weber could really flesh out the cultures in this series by going
backwards in time. We got just a little glimpse on what besides
Alfred Harrington lured Allison Chou to Sphinx in Echoes of Honor;
Beowulf and the rest of the Solarian League have gotten cursory
treatment so far. Also, what other influences did frontier life
on Sphinx have on Honor besides get her used to firearms and adopted
by a treecat? Manticoran society would be more interesting if
we knew more about Sphinx than just that her natives are known
for strength and stubbornness and Gryphon residents live to put
sissies from the other worlds in their place. We also don't know
very much about how the Manticoran settlers managed to create
a new society and form of monarchy by combining North American
and European traditions. Also, the religious civil wars on Grayson
would be an exciting tale. Backstory, backstory!
In the present and near future of the series, what happens to
the Havenite Revolution at home as well as what comes next in
the war with the Manticoran Alliance? How long is Honor going
to need to recover from her latest injuries? I'm sure that we'll
be seeing more from the Solarian League and how their technological
developments help the Peeps fight the war. Also, the Andermani
are always there in the background and will probably be a key
factor in future developments. The Silesian Confederacy doesn't
seem to go anywhere else but down into utter disorder and a few
more psychopathic pirates like Warnecke could ruin your whole
century, not just your whole day. Also on a more personal note,
what's going to happen between Honor and White Haven on the romantic
front? Some in the fandom are avidly waiting for this, and others
like me are dreading it. He is a married man after all,
and we need to see more of Emily Alexander to get the whole story
straight. We also need to learn more of the future for treecats
off Sphinx.
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last modified 7
May 2001
copyright 1996-2001
by Cynthia
Gonsalves
