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War of Honor
War of Honor is the tenth full novel in David Weber's Honor Harrington series, and thirteenth book (there being three collections of stories set in the so-called "Honorverse"). For those of you that have read the earlier novels, this is more of the same, though Honor herself figures perhaps somewhat less prominently in it than in previous novels. It's got Weber's usual rich and detailed plot, along with Weber's occassionally turgid and expository writing.
One thing that makes this novel different from the others is that Weber has fully incorporated characters and plot lines from the short stories set in the "Honorverse" but penned by other authors. Earlier novels had made allusions to some of Weber's own short stories, but none had integrated another author's work to the extent that War of Honor does. Of course, this does nothing to simplify the plot or reduce the expository interludes (Weber includes enough explanation so that you can follow the plot without having read the prior short story). It does add to the flavor though, and helps keep Weber from simply retreading old ground.
Discussion of the plot, even aside from spoiler concerns, is well-nigh impossible. There's simply too much that happens. This isn't a book that could be a film - it's a mini-series, even without the prior nine novels. War of Honor is not a light and fluffy read. It's a good two hundred pages longer than the previous novel (Ashes of Victory) and doesn't have some of the breezy, happy passages of its predecessor. In fact, you might want to take a break halfway through - I did, with a complete novel in a much lighter vein (bad pun - it was an Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel). Suffice it to say that Weber knows how to write the next installment in a series: this one resolves enough threads to make it satisfying and opens enough new ones that readers will continue to scream for the next novel.
What Slashdotters are most familiar with, though, is the CD-ROM that's been discussed here before. And it's a nice one, to be sure. While the books on the CD themselves are available at Baen's Free Library, the CD contains more.
One of the most wonderful resources is the art gallery: the covers of the most recent editions of the Honor Harrington books as jpg images, all at 800x1200 pixel resolution or greater. Not scans of the covers but images of the original art, without the title graphics or anything else. I predict some very nice wallpapers coming soon to a site near you.
The CD-ROM also has other lovely tidbits, such as audio selections from several novels and MP3s of songs from the group Echo's Children. So even if you haven't caught this filk group at a sci-fi con, you still get their songs and lyrics based on events in the Harrington novels.
And all of this is on top of all the books on the CD-ROM. All ten Harrington novels, and yes, that includes War of Honor itself. All three collections of Harrington stories. And twenty five (not the previously-reported twenty two) other books, from the likes of David Drake, Eric Flint, Dave Freer, Mercedes Lackey, Keith Laumer, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, John Ringo, and James H. Schmitz. No encryption. No copy protection. In several formats each, including HTML, Microsoft Reader, Mobipocket, Rocket, and RTF files.
Put it all together in one no-download place and the CD-ROM is arguably worth the price of the hardcover book all by itself. Certainly, no new release CD-ROM sold by itself is going to sell for much less than US$26 (the cost of the book).
I'm of course reminded of Tim O'Reilly's (and many others) numerous comments to the effect that obscurity is a bigger problem for publishers than piracy. Jim Baen evidently agrees. He's just put the full text of a brand new flagship property (another bad pun, I'm sorry) in the clear. The disk even says you can copy it. Stamped right on the disk: "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold." Even the copyright notice says "All commercial rights reserved." Not "All rights reserved."
Given the popularity of the Honor Harrington series over all, it's just possible that this novel will make the NY Times (free reg, blah blah :-) best sellers list. And if it did, with its entire text freely and legally available on the net, wouldn't that be an interesting place for publishing to be?
You can purchase War of Honor from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Buy.com has it for $16.38 (shipping included). Wal-mart.com has it for $17.98. All are cheaper than bn.com $20.80. Spend the four dollar differential on something nice!
Ahh, the joys of capitalism.
Unfortunately the characters suffer in WoH. The bad guy Manties (and peep) are just too easy to hate. It's almost as it they wore big black moustaches, black cloaks,top hats and were tying young heiresses onto railway tracks.
Not one of the better ones.
It's a decent Sci-Fi series, with a such a good
following that other authors have done anthology
pieces.
What I find most interesting is that the main
character is the one who gets hurt most often.
Every other main character has gotten through the
series without permanent injury, whereas Honor is
currently down one eye and one arm.
The rest of the characters, even the minor ones,
are generally well developed, with distinct
personalities. Tho, I may be biased there, as I
am one of the minor characters. (The look on
Mom's face when she read my name was priceless.)
All in all, a decent series, well worth the read.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
**Spoiler**
:) I highly recommend going to read it. :)
Basically, the main idea in this book is that the government is in the hands of inept politicians who go too far to try and take advantage of their recently won peace.
The two main manticore fleets survive because Honor was in charge of one, and had extra ships from Grayson (sent as a training exercise), and the other was reinforced by the Grayson home fleet right as the attack begins.
With that said, there's so much going on in the book, I've hardly spoiled anything.
I was trying so hard not to buy that book... Not that I don't like Weber's work... I like it a lot... but hard cover books here in canada cost an arm and a leg... /me goes looking for the saw, and someone willing to "donate" an arm and leg
Our company provides science-fiction books in our employee library which we all can check out and read. Many of us, in fact, donate any sci fi we get at Goodwill or other cheap sources to this library. Anyway, we just got this book and one of the guys took it home without knowing about the CDROM and was just blown away by the amount of material!!! If Baen hadn't already made us rabid fans, this would have done it!!! Well done and thanks. :)
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I can't really picture reading a book off of a laptop or desktop and being comfortable. This is one case where a tablet pc might be nice to have. Although I see reading as a form of entertainment, and after I get home from staring at computers all day, I don't really want to look at any computer screens at unfortunately. I guess since I don't have the money (or the desire) to waste on a tablet, I'll just buy good old books for now
Personally, I'm baffled as to why anyone waits for a book they may want to come out in paperback. For something along the lines of a $25 hard cover book, the paperback version may be, at best, $15. You save a couple bucks but have to wait a long time until the initial hype and/or sales are done with before they start getting paperback versions out. I actually just go straight for the hard cover whenever I buy any book that is more than a hundred or so pages because it feels better when I'm reading it. There is some structure to the book, the pages don't get all messed up as easily, a good hard cover feels great to read by a fire or on some cold rainy day.
Wow, I read the whole review and still don't have a clue what the book is about :)
[quote]Discussion of the plot, even aside from spoiler concerns, is well-nigh impossible. There's simply too much that happens.[/quote]
While I'm all against spoilers, you got to tell something. Anything!
I have not read any of the Honor Harrington books. I have read and enjoyed the Miles Vorkossigan books (See the Great Buys pair in there? Its paired with War of Honor). Can someone compare these for style and such to give an idea how the series is?
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Finally a publisher who gets that electronic content doesn't need to be locked up in some godawful "security" scheme! I didn't like the first book in this series. It's a very forced attempt to do a Hornblower-type naval tale in space. The space technology comes across as carefully tailored to provide similar tactics to the age of sail. The impact of many technological changes (e.g. improved computers) isn't really explored. The main character is unconvincingly good, noble and chaste. Still, it's a popular series. I hope the book is successful and inspires similar initiatives by other companies.
I've been using an ipaq to read ebooks lately. As the review said, the books are available in MS Reader, HTML and Palm formats. A backlit PDA is almost the perfect device to read ebooks. I've gotten so used to reading them on my ipaq that I prefer them to dead tree books.
Tho, I may be biased there, as I am one of the minor characters. (The look on Mom's face when she read my name was priceless.)
:-) So, I'm curious... which character? Are you friends with David Weber or is it just a cool coincidence?
I don't remember reading about Necro Puppy, the evil hexapuma.
Some of the material on the CD-ROM is available online at the Baen Free Library.
Price discrimination. Lets say you have 10,000 people who are hardcore fans of the series or author, or just prefer hardcover books, and are willing to pay $25 for a copy. You also have 90,000 casual readers who don't think that the book would be worth $25, but would pay $15 for a hardcover book. So what do you do?
1. Print the book in hardcover only. You will have 10,000 readers * $25/book = $250,000.
2. Print the book as a paperback. You will have 100,000 readers * $15/book = $1,500,000.
3. Print the book in both hardcover and paperback. You will have $250,000 from the hardcover sales, and 90,000 readers * 15/book = $1,350,000. Your total revenue is $1,600,000. You just made an extra hundred grand.
With price discrimination, each group of consumers is able to pay what they want, so the publisher can earn extra revenue by allowing consumers that are willing to pay a higher price to do so. Similar principles are at work in airfare pricing (first class and coach), coupon clipping, and discount cinemas/matinees.
i can only recommend to read the introduction to the Baen Free Library. It's good to see, that not every one who depends on selling content wants to fleece the customers like sheep.
Living from content and a fair use policy are no contradictions. They explain why and how. And it works. I keep buying WebScriptions and the books ;-). That I love to read John Ringo (Gust Front), David Weber (Honor series) and Lois McMaster Bujold (The Vor game) may explain it.
Yours, Martin
P.S. Has anyone already written a simulator (Perl prefered) for the starships in the Honor-Universe? I would like to check some battles :-).
For those so inclined, here's a general synopsis of the plot (the series not just this book, but the CD includes the whole series, anyway).
Honor Harrington is a (space) naval officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy. She starts as a captain, later she's an admiral. The situation is a space-age re-writing of European history during the age of classic (water) naval battles. For the guy who mentioned Horatio Hornblower, you hit the nail on the head. Honor proves her own strategic brilliance, courage, honor(pun definitely intended by the original author), loyalty and sense of duty, mostly against overwhleming odds and underskilled opponents. A few skillful opponents are thrown in for proof that she's not just lucky.
Mixed into this action premise is a truly glorious back story of political intrigue and class conflict. The entire series can be taken as a diatribe against the policies of a welfare state if you want, but it's well concealed, and, in general, well thought out. Throw in a healthy spatter of the harsh realities of war and treachery, and mix well.
I had actually thought of doing a review of this novel myself, but I'm glad I was beaten to it. As the author says, the book is worth it, even if only for the CD. I'll add that as a political statement, buying this book/CD combination to try to encourage it in future publications is also worht it, even if you never read a word. But you'll be missing out if you don't.
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
Because I am a fan of the series, and because I think what author Weber and publisher Baen have done with the CD-ROM thingie is both courageous and spiffy, lemme try and save y'all some Googlin'...
As has been noted, The Honor Harrington Series is Space Opera, Military Science Fiction. What David Drake did for future tank crewman with his Hammer's Slammers books, Weber does for their space-navy counterparts. There is no "Earth" and no "Aliens," just some far-flung planetary empires, each with different politics (monarchy, socialism, feudalism, whatever) all on planetary scales.
Honor Harrington is an Ayn Rand Romantic Heroine from the Old School. She fights classism, fleet politics, bigotry, duels, and Big Honkin' Enemy Fleets with equal tirelessness and aplomb. She loses friends, limbs, eyes, commands, and keeps coming back for more, plasma cannons a-blazing.
The series has traced her career, from just-out-of-academy first command to whatever she is now, Lord Admiral of the Friggin' Universal Royal Fleet, or somesuch. (Personally, I liked her better when she was "coming up through the ranks," but hey...)
From a geek perspective, the series is notable for its rather detailed thinking-out of space navy mechanics. As someone here has said, Weber is Master of the Space Battle, not necessarily because they are any more exciting than your average Tie-fighter sequence, but because the detail in the physics and the navy crewmen operations seem exceptionally plausible.
If your idea of a good read is the latest Chicano-Lesbian-Prison-Drama from some Lower East Side playwright, move along, there's nothing to see here. If your idea of SF is a barrier-breaking, genre-bending, quantum-cyber-dystopic Enduring-Parable-For-Our-Time, ditto.
If, on the other hand, you enjoy a good read, with interesting, likable characters for whom you can really cheer, and an approach to space-battles that will have you running for your calculator and some graph paper, the Honor Harrington books are da bomb.
I don't read the Left Behind novels but what caught my attention was the fact that there was a sticker advertising that all 11 Left Behind novels were on the CD in Palm and Microsoft Reader formats.
I know this is vastly different from what the person in this story is doing (since these are no doubt encrypted versions) but I find it interesting that the CD-ROM only retailed for $30 (and had even been marked down to $25). These books retail for $25 hardcover each and $15 on paperback (they do those "big" paperbacks, not trade paperbacks). To buy all 11 on paperback at a discount (let's say $10.49) would cost over $115 before tax, but they're giving them all away on this CD-ROM.
Clearly they don't think that there's much of a market to the PDA book market.
Anywho, I figured I'd point this out (since the Left Behind series is immensely more popular).
Please do us all a favor though and if you respond to this thread, don't turn this into a religious flame war (since the Left Behind series is a speculative fiction series about the rapture).
Schnapple
Tom Clancy had the same problem. In each Jack Ryan novel, Ryan got promoted. Once Ryan had been re-elected President, there was nowhere to go. So he set Red Rabbit back in Ryan's early career. That helped; Clancy is good at action, but mediocre at political novels. Weber has the same problem.
I got the book the day it hit the shelves... then didn't start reading it because it was just too darned big & heavy to hold! (Arthritis is a bitch...)
I've been reading my way through the enclosed CD, but it wasn't until reviewer pointed it out that I realized the book, itself, is also on the CD!
Boy, is my face red!
-Eldurbarn
You can download most of the Vorkosigan series (I'm not sure how many, or which ones) from www.fictionwise.com. She also puts sample chapters on the Baen site, and in one of those places is the first 11 chapters of The Curse of Chalion (if you haven't read it yet, you really need to!).
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
If I'd read your review first I'd have been turned off. I don't see Honor Harrington as being Randian in any way except that she's very talented. She isn't one of the socialists in the series, but neither does she come across as a libertarian (the professional tax-dodging whiners, as Berke Breathed called them.)
While the enemy (in the early books) is a dolist state, where everyone is on welfare, it strikes me as a comment about people who sell out for temporary gain more than people who take government handouts. It does bite them, this large burden they have to carry, but then all the political and social systems in the book get examined and we see the flaws in all of them.
Weber makes a few comments that indicate he's on the libertarian side of politics, but mainly in that some characters (not Honor) complain about a progressive tax, and that the "better" societies (that people enjoy living in) have less government control of sexuality and such, but that just seems to make sense.
It's also interesting in that Honor isn't religious, in fact she's an athiest though she rarely says anything that would indicate it, yet the book has what I (an athiest) feel is a fair and positive view of religion.
In fact, I feel less political and social commentary in these books than in most others.
.
I bought "War of Honor" from Amazon pre-publication & read it in one sleepless overnight sitting. Yes, I am a fan...
Honor Harrington appeals for several reasons. I like David Weber's plausible, well thought out, pleasantly unpredictable, carefully crafted plots & background. While it may seem he injects too much detail into the series, underneath it all is even more cultural history & a detailed scientific environment (available for those that want to read it) that is the basis for everything he writes.
What's even better is that the important nuances of each character's actions & reactions, their motivations & personas, are laid out for the reader to follow (but not always predict).
But the most important factor in the series is Honor Harrington's honor. Weber presents a future where a strong female lead strives to always do the right thing. If there is one theme throughout the series, it's that gentle pun of Honor doing the honorable thing.
Baen Publishing has done some amazingly right things with publishing on the Internet -- read the details at Baen (http://www.baen.com/library/) -- but the most daring of all is including the complete Honor Harrington series on CD with the hardback.
I give Honor 10 stars.
.
.
Then you'd get the same story 4-5 times with all the names changed. At least Eddings is shrinking his story into a smaller number of books.
when will there be ISO's of the cd avalible, hehe. I would enjoy reading 20+ books for free, since I only read each book once every 2 or 3 years...
My potato gun was confiscated by the United Nations. They said I wasn't allowed to have weapons of mash destruction.
Horatio Hornblower, even as an Admiral, is constantly faced with his deficiencies (he has little physical courage, he is unsociable and he can't hear music). Consider this excerpt from "Lord Hornblower", where he has to kill or capture a brig's crew, who have mutinied because their (literally) sadistic captain had them whipped daily:
Our other H. H., in contrast, is a likeable enough character. But she is perfect, she's a mix of Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth (of Armada fame) and the girl that the guy who did the Nike of Samothrake probably had wet dreams about. Let's see her in action:
And that's her as a midshipwoman, age 18. But hey, buy the books anyway, they're damn good military SF, and I really, really apreciate the good physics.
Unfortunately, they started off 'okay' with On Basilisk Station and got steadily worse. In contrast to some who have posted here, I found the characters wooden, the science iffy, the plots childish, and the premise (Hornblower in space) stretched beyond credibility.
Weber's characterizations are quite shallow; HH herself is the only one with any depth to her at all and a walk through the ocean of her soul would scarcely get your feet wet. Aside from some adolescent angst wondering if she's doing the right thing by risking the lives of her crew (they did sign the waiver, didn't they?) in saving the galaxy, there's little here to suggest a real person instead of a plot automaton, bravely forging ahead because she's convinced she's doing the "right" thing. When the inevitable occurs and lives are lost in the cause, it's stiff upper lip and heroes all.
The science in the story is pretty much cut to fit the framework of naval broadsides. The warship's drive field projects zones of near-invulnerability on the top and bottom aspects, with soft areas in the "wedge" on the port and starboard. It's a nice way to be able to ignore that pesky third dimension that infest space battles over surface naval ones. I have to wonder if Weber doesn't think his readers are able to grasp the extra dimension, since they don't figure in his pyrotechnics (or for that matter in his characters). Many of the battles are based on actual historical ones at sea, and some mild interest can be generated by puzzling out which ones are represented in the novels.
Plot seems to come to most of these novels almost as a way to frame the space battles, and frankly, the battles are much better. As Weber moves further from the grisly fireworks and closer to political infighting, the series loses steam. Honor variously works her way through the naval ranks with her "brilliant" strategy and tactics, always seemingly in the right place at the right time, and ends up with an entire navy at her disposal before all is said and done. Even then, you can guess where she'll be found during any major hostilities: on the bridge of a warship, risking her supposedly-irreplaceable aft-quarters with the rest of the swabs. Fiesty, yes. Honorable, perhaps. Believable, no. In one novel, beset at all sides in a political ploy and outgunned and outmanouvered by her opponent, she settles his hash by challenging him to personal combat in a duel of swords! Riiiiight...
Still, I suppose I'll read this latest installment, since I'll have to buy it for the wife anyway. It's remotely possible that Weber will begin to tinge HH with some degree of humanity. It'd be nice to see her -fail- once in a while, especially considering how much of war comes down to pure dumb luck.
But then again, this isn't war. It's pulp fiction..
.. Conquering Earth for our robot masters.
What I've found is that the white background of the color PDA makes for very nice reading. And the Mobipocket reader even does a touch of smoothing. In all, it's pretty much like reading a story in a magazine, with text running about the width of a standard magazine column
Another thing is that I've found it comes in quite handy of late when the kids wanted me to stay in their rooms a bit as they go to sleep. Just bring it on in and read while their lights are off and the drop into slumberland.
Oh, and since buying the hardcover book, I'm now up to the 5th Harrington book on it.
I can't speak for the latest book (It's on the shelf here, on deck to be read) but the Honor books have always impressed me by their stand-alone-ness. The author has done a pretty good job in the past of bringing new readers up to speed. (If some SF TV Writers were as adept at that, perhaps shows like Farscape might have actually grown their audiences and lasted longer...)
I'm guessing the latest book maintains the series' stand-alone style. Can anyone here who has read it confirm?
you've got an impenetrable force field that only covers the top and bottom? Why not include another one that covers the freakin' sides.
Errr... Sidewalls? His sidewalls allow for an impeller field around the exposed area, but suffer from two problems:
1. If the two impeller wedges (top and bottom vs. sidea) intersected, they'd vaporize the ship.
2. An impeller wedge is completely solid. No weapons of any sort could be mounted since they couldn't escape the wedge. This would create an invulnerable ship that wouldn't be worth anything in combat. (A shield maybe?)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
While I do agree that the tech was designed to make space ships into analogues to old wet-navy ships, I don't mind as much, because it gets rid of the "if you can see it, you can kill it" aspect of modern warfare and makes it survivable enough that humans can play a part. Couple that with the lack of FTL communications (over a wide area) and the convenient spacing of star empires, and you've got just enough communications lag to drive the story by allowing the characters enough leeway.
And I like how the technology is always well defined before use. Not the technobabble, he doesn't often explain how something works, unless the specifics matter as to how it will be used, but he always nails the uses down exactly so Honor's clever tactics are something that anyone could have done (and indeed, in one book she uses stolen enemy ships instead of her own navy's ships). This precisely defined technology means it comes across as clever, not some cheesy device to save a character once the emergency has gone on long enough, as Star Trek seems to do.
Shelf space is another real advantage of paperback books for fiction - they take about half as much space as hardbacks or big paperback computer books. If you read a lot, this can be an important constraint, unless you also dispose of books after reading them.
Besides, how much of a hurry are you in? There are *lots* of books out there to read. For most science fiction, my usual tradeoff is used vs. new, though I have the advantage of living near bookstores with large collections of used science fiction. There are a few authors I'll buy new the minute they hit the store (Steven Brust, Neil Stephenson, and this gradually became the case for the Honor Harrington series, though not for Weber's other books), but I'm very seldom in enough of a hurry to read a specific book that I'll buy non-remaindered hardbacks - the three I see on my shelves are Steven Brust's "Dragon", Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky", and of course Cryptonomicon (but as a Cypherpunk, that was an obvious must-buy.) The 25th century and the quasi-Middle-Ages can wait an extra six months.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I would be remiss if I did give unto all Slashdot Harrington geeks THE official Harrington swag website, Pegasus Publishing. This guy hits A-kon and several other cons, but has the lock on the Honor Harrington fanstuff contract, such as it is.
You can get a stylin' RMN jacket or cap, sport your love of all things treecat, or even have Harrington Steading towel sets.
Be sure to check out the other geekstuff there, especially all the bumper stickers you have ever wanted. The geekery goes on for days....
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out, but when you read the HTML version of the books, a cookie is placed with the last page you were on. So you can easily pick up where you left off.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
There's been a few attempts to put the CD online. The main problem with it hasn't been Legal,
instead it's been this
The files have also bounced around a few Usenet groups, but the preferedd method of storage is still CD-ROM because it's easier to upload them via Palm Format, or quickly browse something via HTML without having to dig through a whole bunch of different directories.
Note - the book club edition has the same cover art (the one that touts the CD inside), but I don't believe that it has the CD inside it. Can anyone confirm this one way or another?
I just went to thefifthimperium.com, and there I see an excerpt from Sluggy Freelance. After reading When the Devil Dances, I had to find out who "Bun-Bun" was, and I spent a couple of weeks catching up on the online comic (folks, stick with it for the first 2 years, it's worth it for the backstory when you get to the good stuff.) So I see Bun-Bun on the Baen site, the comic gets a lot of press in John Ringo's book, and now I see some of it at David Weber's website. Is there some hidden cosmic connection that links them all?