Review: The Honor of the Queen, by David Weber

This is the second Honor Harrington book. Like the first, On Basilisk Station, it’s currently available for free as an e-book, which is wallet-pleasing.

I generally liked the first book. In certain aspects it was very good but it did sometimes info-dump a bit.

The second retains all the virtues of the first and diminishes or eliminates the flaws. The author is very good at creating tension and prolonged space battles, the longevity of which serves to heighten the sense of danger.

It’s even oddly topical, with the choice of religious lunacy as an antagonistic force.

Honor Harrington (HH), freshly promoted after the previous book’s doings, is the military lead on a Manticoran military-diplomatic taskforce to Grayson, a potential new ally. The downside is that they’re very conservative religious sorts who don’t think a woman capable of being a soldier and her being the military chief could make signing a treaty difficult. However, they are keen on allegiance with Manticore, due to the threat posed by Masada, a nearby planet crammed full of religious lunatics, who are also potential friends for the People’s Republic of Haven, Manticore’s cold war style enemy.

The plot is simple in broad scope but complex in detail, so I won’t go into it too deeply. It’s very well-conceived, as HH and the diplomats try and forge an alliance with a world that has a drastically different view of society. Meanwhile, Masada and Haven seek to destroy any prospect for such a partnership.

Whilst there’s a good amount of backstory, it feels naturally presented. The author also doesn’t fall into the trap of making the religious conservatives or extremists into two-dimensional caricatures or scarcely credible idiots.

The pace of the plot is well-balanced: slow tension mixed with bouts of frantic action, and leavened with just the right amount of ambiguity and uncertainty.

I don’t think it’s necessary to have read the previous book, but it would help give a little bit more background to the general universe (or Honorverse) as well as specific characters. Mind you, as both this and the first book are free, there’s little reason not to get them.

So, I would recommend this if you’re into sci-fi, and even if you’re not I would suggest giving it a look. Found it very entertaining myself, particularly the latter half, and it’s well worth a look.

Thaddeus

Review: On Basilisk Station, by David Weber

This is the first book in the Honor Harrington series and (like the second) has the delightful quality of being free as an e-book (on Amazon, not sure about elsewhere).

Sci-fi’s not my usual fare, but I thought I’d give it a crack.

It’s a sci-fi story following, unsurprisingly, Honor Harrington, a commander in the Manticoran Navy who has just been given command of the light cruiser Fearless. Due to political tussling between two rival factions she ends up being almost exiled to Basilisk Station, a role so tedious it’s seen as a punishment to be stationed there.

Not being a regular sci-fi reader it’s difficult for me to assess how ‘hard’ it is. My own view is that it’s only slightly in that direction. There’s a reasonably small amount of technical jargon about impeller drives and whatnot, but not so much it swamps the story or you feel you need a degree in physics just to keep up.

One of the book’s strengths is that it isn’t simply about Honor. The secondary cast is numerous and many of them are quite well-established, which helps to make it feel like the universe the author’s describing is populated by actual people rather than two-dimensional creatures that only matter in so far as Honor happens to know them.

The perspective often leaves Honor and moves to one of her subordinate officers or adversaries. This helps to carry the story without having her be directly involved in everything, although occasionally (particularly near the end) there are numerous jumps between her perspective and another’s, and it’s not always obvious when it’s occurred.

Now and then there are slabs of information, often several pages long, explaining something like the political situation or how starship engines work. Some of them could be weaved better into the story (showing rather than telling) but for the political stuff there’s probably no other way to get it across (except perhaps breaking it into smaller more numerous pieces).

I quite like the universe that’s been set up. Although only a couple of powers are described in any detail it sounds interestingly poised. The human race appears to be the only player, which avoids both the difficulty of introducing new species but also the opportunities they would bring.

Overall, I liked On Basilisk Station. It’s not perfect, there are some info-dumps, Honor’s a little too flawless, but it’s well-written, the crescendo at the end was very well done, and the political situation was set up very nicely.

Thaddeus