Honor Harrington

Soo, didn't find a thread already about it, so I made one. I just saw that there will be another subseries into HH, detailing Stephanie Harringtons and Lionhearts adventures on Sphinx. http://www.webscription.net/p-1469-a-beautiful-friendship.aspx What do you think about it?

I find the idea intriguing. Especially from the viewpoint of Worldbuilding and seing Manticore more in its beginnings, though I wonder why Lionheart has a goatee on the cover.

And at least it will sate my addiction a bit until A Rising Thunder

edited 10th Jul '11 10:07:44 AM by 3of4

Honestly, I quit at the end of War of Honor. It didn't faze me when people accused Honor of being a Mary Tzu, because her tactics are genuinely and undeniably brilliant, but there is not a person in all humanity who would act as Emily did at the end of that book, and that made her irrevocably into a Black Hole Sue.

Hmm, I tend to find I'm only interested in the mainline books now, and more for the political storyline than the characters. Weber probably should've killed Honor off like he intended.

The politics were always the series' greatest strength, IMO. Honor's opponents in the Star Kingdom less so than the rest, but still.

Agreed, Weber's pillaging of real-world historical political situations and putting IN SPACE! made that side of the story extremely interesting/strong.

Departing from said pillaging redeemed all the padding in Ashes of Victory. Big time.

Please tell me the plot of War of Honor never actually happened? That would just be way, way too depressing.

edited 10th Jul '11 7:15:33 PM by DomaDoma

Military SF is a guilty (extremely guilty) pleasure for me, so...

Yeah, the secondary characters and the political wrangling are the best parts of this series. I don't actually mind Honor herself all that much, even though she ticks most of the boxes for Mary Sue; it's the treecats I can't stand. Whenever they take center stage I feel like I've accidentally wandered into a Mercedes Lackey novel.

I plan on reading them all eventually but I'm going to finish the main series first, and I'm taking a break from them.

As for the Mary Tzu accusations, I honestly don't mind exceptionally, even unrealistically capable heroes and heroines. Besides, she has nothing on the Graeme family in that regard, and I'm a huge fan of that series.

edited 12th Jul '11 9:44:06 AM by Auxdarastrix

I'm actually in the middle of rereading the entire series(es), plus spinoff books - currently on War of Honor. This will be the 3rd time for most of them, though I've only read the spinoff books once before. I'm of two minds whether to even bother with any of the short stories.

Obviously I like the series! At the same time, I don't know how great a re-read it is, because some things start to come apart a little bit.

My own analysis is that Weber simply isn't truly capable of balancing the requirements of Loads And Loads Of Characters" over years and years. He's hardly unique in this regard, of course: Wo T gets bogged down pretty much for books 4-9 or so and even George R.R. Martin (who's much better at the balancing act than most) has had some major issues even if they're mostly of the "publish the book already!" type. If you compare Weber's fantasy series that starts with The War God's Own the contrast is fairly apparent.

He does a great job drawing characters, but not always a good job with their interactions - especially when the "natural" reaction of one gets in the way of either his plot or his opinions. Some examples: The railroading that is Emily/the marriage; Caparelli and White Haven basically don't argue despite apparent ancient dislike of one another; and the Centrist/Crown Loyalist coalition doesn't appear to have any (practical) differences or political infighting of their own; the Grayson's cultural remaking where Burdette/Mueller are represented as oddities.

Weber painted himself into a corner (and out of a villain) with Ashes of Victory. War of Honor and especially At All Costs (not for the plot, just for mixing up that other kids' book with the plot incongruously) suffer because the conflict feels like a put-up job. While the book itself was a little untidy, I think Mission of Honor, in drawing on the spinoffs and generating new conflict, has the potential to keep future books interesting, so I'm looking forward to the next one.

But let's not stop without mentioning the three biggest mistakes Weber made: 1. Prolong. Sure, it's kept people alive, but since his time-scales correspond very closely to those of 18th/19th century warfare, it was unnecessary - and will make things pretty awkward shortly. (Contrast Elizabeth Moon's Heris Serrano books.) 2. Treecats getting smarter all the time. When it was just Nimitz/Honor, I found it irritating but acceptable. Now we are (or were, at least in Wo H) getting to the point where it's threatening to disrupt things seriously. 3. If missiles can maneuver (and they can, at least a little), why on earth are broadsides necessary? Most of the time this doesn't bother me, but since I needed a 3rd thing.

edited 14th Jul '11 2:51:42 PM by Musoeun

The Centrist/Crown Loyalist thing is because the Queen is a Centrist. If Elizabeth would be a Liberal the Coalition would have blown up long ago probably. About the White/Haven Caparelli thing...in early books it gets through that there is dislike..but up to that point they probably haven't worked together very close since Academy. 20 Years(!) later, after beeing through the whole first war the old dislike seems to have gone and i would simply put it down to character development. Also they ARE professionals so they won't argue JUST because they don't like each other ;), escpeially not if your whole Kingdom fights for your survival. Imo, it was Teeth-Clenched Teamwork which transformed over the gruelling year wars into genuine Respect (Not Friendship, but s close as they can get) for each other.

The Roboteching of the missiles is also a very new development, former old-style pre-Buttercup missiles couldn't do it to the same extent (probably because it would eat up too much flight time) and thus broadsides we're necessary. Also broadsides do not purely contain Missile Launcher but also Laser and Grasers (if I remember correctly then new Roland Class Destroyers are designed that they have their Missile Launchers as Chase Weapons BECAUSE they can Robotech and have a pure and heavyier energy armament in the broadsides. The Invictus Podnaughts also have pure energy broadsides. Just as example)

Keep also in mind that the Broadside of a ship does offer much more space to put the missile launchers in instead of just the chasers (and there they are proteced by Sidewalls, whereas Chasers are not). The Roboteching does not change that fact, it just means that you can now shoot BOTH broadsides at a poor pirate.

edited 14th Jul '11 3:13:30 PM by 3of4

I agree with you about the character mostly, not Weber's strength. The Tenchi Solution was ridiculous, and the treecat thing is very annoying.

....who do you think should play her?

That should be interesting :)

I stand by my initial reaction to when I first saw Angelina Jolie in the Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow trailers. Specifically my reaction was 'Holy Crap its Honor Harrington!'

Not sure about the others

Not bad. Tall Hot Amazon type? I could think of worse than Stana Katic (of Castle).

By the by, I'm reading Out Of The Dark at the moment and I think its the worst Weber book I've ever read...

I'm good with Jolie.

yeah, decided not to buy it, too...from what I've read.

Of course, she's probably the absolute last person on Earth that Weber would agree to have playing Honor, making it kind of moot. Yes, even behind Roseanne Barr.

In this thread, a post by SpaceCowboy explains why:

one Facebook somebody suggested Emily Deschanel....though it might be a bit difficult to forget that's not [1] on the screen then.

I'm pretty sure getting Jolie for HH would be a pipe dream anyway. You'd have to go for someone far more up-and-coming.

And yes, thank frack I borrowed Out Of The Dark from the library. Its like John Ringo pretending to be Weber wrote this...Oh No John Ringo

Nitpick: It's "OH JOHN RINGO NO!"

As for Dark being more like Ringo, not everyone considers that a bad thing.

(I'm kind of behind on my series following, with HH and 1632, so I haven't read Dark yet.)

While I enjoy the series, and will continue reading for the sake of the story, my main problem is that everything is so dense. I don't mean that in the sense of that people in it are stupid, but that the books read really slowly because there's so much detail packed into everything, and it feels like things are unnecessarily lengthened.

War Of Honor, for example...now, normally, when I read a book like that, I spend the whole time hoping against hope that the crisis can be averted and War won't restart. But after about the fifth or sixth exchange between Manticore and Haven (each one consisting of up to 7 parts *

thats the reason its been split into main series and the other two series (lets hope)

I read On Basilisk Station about half a year ago. I thought it was....ok. In a way it was better than I had expected, in that I kind of liked the characters more than I might have thought I would, and some of the military tactics stuff was pretty fun. On the other hand, it was also a little underwhelming. And I really couldn't stand the villain faction of Haven. Now, having a government that says they are working for the benefit of the people, while being corrupt is of course something we've seen often, you have to look no further than most "communist" regimes. But the way he tried to connect it to the welfare state within the story just kind of rubbed me the wrong way and, in addition to the slight glorification of the military (which really wouldn't have bothered me otherwise, a lot of military sci-fi seems to go with the route of smart military commanders and stupid politicians), came of as a political screed.

Now granted, I might be somewhat more sensitive to that whole thing, what with being from a country that's one of the front-runners of the welfare state, but still. Anyways, as I said, I ultimately enjoyed it, but didn't find it great. And then I got hooked on some other novels (namely Stephen Baxter's Xelee sequence), so I didn't get around to read more. Even if I really loved it, the sheer length of the series is quite daunting. Anyways, as for the political thing, I was wondering whether or not the rest of the series becomes worse with the whole "evil welfare state" thing? Because if it does, it's just another reason to add to the "not continuing to read list", which could help me decide on whether or not to pursue the series.

edited 5th Nov '11 1:10:52 AM by Mathias

It's more that the welfare state literally makes up the majority of their citizens. As in more than half are supported entirely on welfare.

And there was one who stated that sometimes (or rather, quite some times) people who have work simply quit it because its easier going on the dole. Its also not the sole reason, there is also the fact that the education system on Haven is a joke. The PRH is definitly NOT a welfare state per se. It started out as one but the modern PRH...not so much anymore. At least de facto.

Haven is more of a example of a welfare state gone horribly, horribly wrong. This is from the first Anthology (scroll down to Haven, Bookmark 1638) and describes how the Republic of Haven ended up where it is as the Peoples Republic of Haven. The Path to hell and such...

Bad things can happen from a lot of good things driven to far.

(Btw, I'm from the guys south of you ;P we're a welfare state too)

edited 5th Nov '11 3:28:11 AM by 3of4