On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington (Paperback))

von David Weber

ISBN: 0743435710

A true Lady
So far there are eight books in this series. Each one is perfect and while they could be read independent of each other I would recommend tackling them in sequence if you want to maximize your enjoyment. The seven titles are, "On Basilisk Station", "The Honor of the Queen", "The Short Victorious War", "Field of Dishonor", "Flag in Exile", "Honor Among Enemies", "In Enemy Hands" and "Ashes of Victory".

The feel of the books is quite similar to David Feintuch's Nicholas Seafort series. It is set in the far distant future amongst a competing variety of human empires. Each empire controls an area of space including its stars and planets. Honor Harrington is a member of the Royal Manticoran Navy, charged with the protection of the realm in service to the queen. In the first book Honor is a commander in charge of a smallish space craft. She has been sent to purgatory, (Basilisk Station), as the direct result of physically rejecting the advances of one of the aristocracy while in the academy, years before.

To make matters worse, her ship is carrying an experimental weapon, to the exclusion of most others, which has just amply shown its shortcomings during Navy maneuvers. Her crew is embarrassed by their recent performance in the exercise and many of them blame Honor for this as well as the posting to Basilisk. Furthermore, when her ship arrives at Basilisk her old enemy is the Captain in charge and promptly leaves the system for questionable repairs, dumping the responsibility of the whole area in Honor's lap with only one small ship to carry it out.

The rest of the story takes us through Honor's efforts to turn things around in the face of an ever worsening situation. We learn to love her as she holds true to the best principles that most people can only talk about. The other characters are well defined and the details of the politics and human dynamics are smooth. A further pleasure is the well thought out military scenarios. The weaponry and craft performance has been designed by Weber to provide a diverse yet plausible array of military confrontations.

Luckily for us, the readers, this future has made available a medical treatment that extends the lifetime of its citizens many fold. For this reason I look forward to many more novels from David Weber, leading me further into the life of Honor Harrington.

Good story, with emphasis on technology...
I've read roughly half the Honor Harrington books so far, and they're all decent reads, and interesting stories, but the emphasis on hardware DOES tend to get tedious after a while. Every book and/or story describes Honor with EXACTLY the same words, too, which doesn't add to the characterization at all (which is a tad disappointing).

I'm in love with the idea of treecats, and I recently checked out "Worlds of Honor", which is a collection of short stories set in Honor's universe, and the first few stories in that collection (not all written by Weber) are EXCELLENT, and they focus on the treecats (one even uses one of them for POV, which was fascinating).

So, I'll finish reading the series, but I'll continue to nod off during the detailed hardware descriptions.

A series that has a very similar "feel", but with more emphasis on characters and stories, rather than spaceships and guns, is Lois McMaster Bujold's Vokosigan series. I can't recommend THOSE books highly enough.

Best series ever
I read sci-fi all the time, and end up discarding most of it into a large pile of "highly forgettable" reads. The plots all tend to echo one another with a few minor changes. While Weber's Honor Harrington series is definetly a formula novel, it is a prime example of how to write a formula novel. The characters are likable and the tree cats are unique. Weber does not make the mistake of making Honor perfect, nor does he hesitate to kill off main characters when the plot requires it. He has created an intersting universe, complete with a woman as head of state. I enjoy the chance to read about a female character who is herioc, brave, and tough as nails. It is all too often male characters who get to be this, with a token woman who rarely proves likeable, much less reads as real. Weber populates his world with well rounded and likeable women and men who do things for duty, honor, and of course, the Queen. I have read the entire series and eagerly await the next installation. These are the only novels that I buy in hard back. They are extremely addictive (though I skip entire pages of technical detail, which some will probably enjoy) and I highly reccommend them.
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> On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington (Paperback))

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