Honor Harrington

Honor of the Queen is also a good starting point, if Basilisk Station is not available.

And if it's not available at the library, Baen Books has the first two novels available for free in various electronic formats without DRM at their Free Library.

On Basilisk Station

The Honor of the Queen

[edit] Just remember what they say about crack dealers. The first hit is always free.

edited 20th Apr '18 5:30:40 AM by Nohbody

If you really want to go the whole hog, there are places that mirror the contents of the various C Ds that were released with certain books over a five to ten year period (Cryoburn is the last one I remember getting one... and that's because it was the only Vorkosigan Saga book to get one).

And it's not piracy since at the time Baen actively encouraged people to share the files on them.

edited 20th Apr '18 4:41:26 PM by KnightofLsama

If I remember correctly, everything up to At All Costs can be found on those C Ds.

The last CD was Mission of Honor.

As for Cryoburn, that was later removed [edit: from the sorta-official CD archive] at LMB's request. You can still probably find a copy somewhere (I got mine from Joe Buckley's Fifth Imperium CD archive before it was pulled), but I wouldn't know where to look without more effort than I really want to put in. I mean, I already have the silly thing.

edited 22nd Apr '18 7:05:58 AM by Nohbody

I did not know that. My local library left their copy in... so I opened it and copied what I wanted off it. I was seriously tempted to keep it since the library normally has a policy of removing them before the books were put on shelves.

I wound up giving it back.

I have the Cyroburn one. AFAIC when I bought the book it included the CD as part of the package. And since I bought the E-Arc copy I felt that even more strongly as those things are expensive.

Apropos of not much, Baen has released the Honorverse novella "Dark Fall", (about the world that ultimately becomes Bolthole,) here.

(Haven't read yet, but will Soon^TM.)

Ok, read. Not a novella as the Failbook announcement said, just a short story.

Brief summary: A wormhole junction in Havenite space discovered just prior to Parnell becoming PRH's CNO leads to a planet that was originally intended to be colonized via slowship centuries prior, but while they were en route the target planet gets hit by two "dinosaur killer" asteroids, rendering it incapable of supporting life with their available tech and supplies. After double-checking via planetary surveys what telescope observations told them while they were on the way to the original target, the colonists start making plans to find another planet.

The second half of the story briefly goes into explaining why the colonists, after finding another world in a relatively close (by astronomical standards) triple-star system with one habitable world backslid to 19th century Earth tech levels, then has post-CPS Pritchart meeting with the head of the largest single government on the world settled by the colonists, to discuss the planet's status in post-Peep Haven.

So, after years of having this in my Kindle library I started "On Basilisk Station". So far I do not like Hemphill at all.

"Harrington you fucked up my extremely predictable 'It only works once' approach to warfare after I fucked up your ship, go to this nowhere posting so that I don't have to be reminded of my failure!"

Also so far Haven doesn't seem...that bad? Aside from being rabidly expansionistic out of economic necessity.

The People's Republic of Haven gets much more attention in later books. OBS only shows a brief glimpse of one aspect of the PRH, though I'd think that provoking a native uprising as an excuse to send in a Peep fleet to take control of the Basilisk system, resulting in untold thousands of deaths of humans located on the planet, would suggest it's more than just "expansionist power".

Later books aren't exactly subtle about State Sec (and the organizations that immediately preceded it) living up to the historical analog to its initials, not to mention a propaganda and censorship engine that would make Lavrentiy Beria green with envy.

Edited by Nohbody on Sep 22nd 2018 at 10:41:53 AM

Hemphill is a lot smarter than Honor gives her credit for and what got her dumped on Basilisk Station is sort of a side-effect. Horrible Hemphill is the head of the Star Kingdom's version of DARPA and for radically different technology use while Honor is a hugely conservative old school tactician.

Our heroine is not as smart about as she thinks.

I don't know if this was something that was intended from the start or if it was something of a minor retcon, but it was later established that it wasn't Hemphill herself who hung Honor out to dry over the grav lance debacle but over-zealous subordinates working on her behalf and she only found out later.

Of course by the time we find this out as readers, some of her less pie in the sky research was starting to produce very tangible results.

Though that did just prompt the thought. I wonder exactly how closely related the tech and theory for the grav lance are related to the spider drive

If David Weber shows up to stab you, you deserve it.

(He gets a bit grumpy about people on his Forums trying the craziest idea's to make the Grav Lance into a Silver Bullet weapon, despite it being one of Project Gram's failure techs)

Edited by 3of4 on Sep 23rd 2018 at 10:35:16 AM

Actually I wasn't considering it as a silver bullet, more wondering if going back to the tech might result in insights that allow some way of detecting spider drive equipped units

Well, the issue is that atm the Grand Alliance has no idea how the Spider works and have zero data on it's emissions signatures. And the Detweilers were very concerned about giving them more opportunities to get more data sets, for them to identify what to look for.

Though, he may well just shoot instead of stab. He does own several pistols, IIRC, and chasing people down to stab them is too much work.

Or he can just beat you up with his brass, like he did to me at the shooting range before this year's Libertycon.

(He was in the lane to my left, and occasionally cases from the rounds he fired would bounce off my head.)

Edited by Nohbody on Oct 3rd 2018 at 8:30:49 AM

Man, it seems like it's been several forevers ago since the last main Honor Harrington novel came out. Everything else since then has been the Shadow stuff or various short stories.

Only in Internet Time.

Anyway, just finished Uncompromising Honor, closing out the Solarian League storyline.

Damn you for that gut punch towards the end, Weber.

On a non-spoilerish issue, in the afterword for UH he goes into more detail about What Could Have Been until Eric Flint and Victor Cachat derailed Honor's Trafalgar moment. Among other things, the snotties from the Shadow subplot would've been ship captains in their own right when the boom finally came down on Mesa.

Edited by Nohbody on Oct 7th 2018 at 2:39:18 PM

Always interesting to see What Could Have Been. Though in this case it would have been awkward if Honor died. Would have had to change the name of the series. And name a ship class after her.

Edited by danime91 on Oct 8th 2018 at 1:18:00 AM

Didn't stop the Graysons.

I feel both HH and Safehold are up for a timeskip now anyway.

To be fair, they only named one ship after her, not an entire class of them (well, after she convinced them to change the name anyway). And Safehold did end on a weird note. Hoping to hear more news from David Weber about when the next books are planned for.

I think it's a decent ending to Honor's adventures.

I have to say the Solarian League never felt like a decent antagonist, though, and they never did resolve the problem of the fact that any battle between them and the Grand Alliance was a Curb-Stomp Battle.

The Grayson variant of the Medusa SD(P) kept the Harrington Class designation.

Safehold didn't exactly end. Just the war. The next book, Through Fiery Trials, is scheduled for release in January with multiple excerpts posted on D Ws forums.