The Great Honor Harrington Read-Along: “Honor Among Enemies” by David Weber

The Great Honor Harrington Read Along is a read along led by me with critical analysis and SPOILER FILLED looks at the Honor Harrington series and related works by David Weber and collaborators. I’ve read the whole main series and the overwhelming majority of the offshoots, but some of these will still be first time reads. However, spoilers will be abundant throughout these posts, including for much later books in the series.

Honor Among Enemies by David Weber

Here it is, Honor back in action after being “exiled” due to her legal killing of Young. The Manticoran Navy needs her too badly to allow her to languish in another fleet. She’s recalled and set about piloting a Q-ship, a modified merchant designed to ambush pirates. Honor Among Enemies places her outside the reach of Manticore or Grayson, off in the fairly lax Silesian Confederacy, surrounded by–you guessed it–enemies.

Of course, those enemies aren’t all just enemies in the sense of military enemies. Hauptman shows up as well, though he only really makes an appearance to Honor late in the book. Early on, however, he supports using her as a captain in the region, as do others, hoping that maybe her “recklessness” will finally do her in, much to their supposed benefit.

The book has quite a bit going on, from introducing an entire new region of space to the readers to major pirate raiding to shipboard violence to Havenite expansion to new potential allies to politicking. Watching all these balls in the air, its somewhat surprising to see them all come to fairly satisfying conclusions by the end of the novel. Not only is Silesia introduced here, but we also get a small sense of the Andermani Empire as well.

Does anyone know the story of the flipbook in the corner of the pages? The edition I has shows a ship slowly exploding as you flip through the pages. I’m wondering how it ended up as an idea for the book.

Anyway, the high points here are fairly similar to other books in the series so far, just rearranged. You’ve got some solid space combat (it’s immensely satisfying when the Q-ship manages to ambush some pirates), some “ice” running through Honor as she deals with infighting with the crew, ramping up of hostilities, etc. One of the more satisfying moments in the series is when Aubrey Wanderman puts the smack down on his bully and then the tap on the wrist Honor gives him after the fact. This is another great book, though I think it’s fair to say it doesn’t quite reach the greatness of some of the previous entries. A lot of this novel is setup for broader conflict. Indeed, many, many side characters take the spotlight from Honor throughout this book.

Treecats are still being built up as an idea–Samantha is introduced as a mate for Nimitz. Indeed, Treecats seem to be an idea that Weber percolated for a while early in the series before really making them as fascinating as they become later. Sure, there are isolated scenes of Nimitz kicking butt and Honor reflecting on how smart they really are, but so far they’re kind of just quirky side characters more than anything else. Get ready, because that’s going to change in the next couple books.

Honor Among Enemies is another great entry in this series. It gives more growth to secondary characters, shows Honor challenged in some new ways, and sets up future conflicts.

Links

The Great Honor Harrington Read Along– Follow along as I read through and review all the books and offshoots in this series!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

“Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Volume 5- Mobilization” by Yoshiki Tanaka

The Legend of Galactic Heroes is a… well, legendary anime series. What far fewer people have experienced is the novels upon which it is based. I’m probably something of an outlier here–having only read some of the books while not having seen the anime. I wanted to write about the series of novels to encourage others to read them.

Volume 5: Mobilization

Phezzan has fallen, but what next? Many, many battles is the answer, but here we have a shift in tone for the series. Tanaka introduces a core concept of the series that changes the tenor of it somewhat. The “Tyranny of Distance” is referenced in chapter 6, noting that it “was a phrase used to indicate just how difficult unified rule of a human society that had grown by a third would be through military force alone” (125). And while Tanaka doesn’t directly confront the use of that concept within discussions of colonialism on Earth, the implications are all there. The Galactic Empire has gotten almost too large for itself. Control must turn to a personality cult, as it reads in some places, or straight fascism in others.

There is no small amount of analysis that could be done here. Tanaka continues to tell the story in an impersonal style, even citing invented historical accounts to say what historians “would say” in the future of this future about the present of the future he’s telling (hopefully that made sense). In doing so, as narrator, he distances himself from the events depicted, in which literal millions are wiped out over the course of a drawn out battle that is named a war within a war. Individuals rise and fall, but the steady march towards fascism isn’t found only within the Empire but also within the Free Planets Alliance, making one wonder even more what Tanaka is doing behind the scenes here.

Battles are the name of the game through most of the latter half of the book, and they’re huge. It’s one aspect of the series that Tanaka’s style both lends itself to such huge scales and also makes the huge scale battles go so quickly. While he describes literally thousands of ships moving in a double-headed snake formation and the combat that happens, as the descriptions whip past of hundreds of ships getting blown away, it can become whiplash. I would like a bit more description of the battles themselves, though I get why he does it the way he does, as it lets the story continue more readily, and avoids potential pitfalls of revealing poor tactics when describing tactics more fully. The series does not try to make it realistic military action, but rather goes for grandness of action to make up for it. It usually works, and it does work quite well in the second half of this novel. Tanaka also cleverly takes the occasional aside to zoom in on action, whether at the level of an individual fighter pilot being blown away by a cruiser or the impact of an explosion on a single ship.

We still get very little by way of women having any impact on the series. While a few get elevated to higher positions of leadership here, their voices are almost never heard.

Mobilization reads like a turning point in the series. The stakes are higher than ever, but the characterization is getting stronger even as the battles get larger. I can’t wait to dive into the next book.

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The Great Honor Harrington Read-Along: “Flag in Exile” by David Weber

The Great Honor Harrington Read Along is a read along led by me with critical analysis and SPOILER FILLED looks at the Honor Harrington series and related works by David Weber and collaborators. I’ve read the whole main series and the overwhelming majority of the offshoots, but some of these will still be first time reads. However, spoilers will be abundant throughout these posts, including for much later books in the series.

Flag in Exile by David Weber

Honor Harrington is “exiled” politically and from the military after killing Pavel Young. She makes the most of what she can with it, returning to Grayson and dedicating herself to building up its infrastructure and military as she uses her clout as Steadholder to bring about societal change. She is, however, still emotionally bereft and so at least some of the planning and plotting about Grayson is being done by those close to her. There’s a lot to love in this book, which starts to truly blow open the world of the series in a bigger way than before.

Mayhew gets some character development early on, including the fact that he’s a horticulturalist and loves arranging flowers–something that he intentionally does to jab societal gender norms. We also briefly see Miranda LaFollet, the sister of Andrew LaFollet, one of Honor’s Steadholder’s Guardsmen, show up as Honor’s maid.

A major theme through this book is challenging cultural norms about men and women, largely through religious lenses. We see this, for example, in chapter 5, where Honor is confronted by a clergyman, Marchant, who tries to condemn her from the Grayson books of scripture. Honor herself has been studying up, though, and quotes back to him other portions of the same scripture which seem to suggest that learning of new ways and new ideas is a good thing, and should not be resisted at all costs. This interchange is of great interest to me, because Weber is using an interesting tactic to engage in debate with very real world notions within Christianity of women and men’s places in the church and home. By placing the conversation one step removed from the Bible–with a different set of Scriptures–he makes it safer to discuss for whatever readers might be deeply involved in one side or the other. The fact remains there are people who believe women shouldn’t teach men, that women shouldn’t be pastors, or that women shouldn’t hold other positions of authority over men due to various readings of Scripture. This back and forth with Honor and Marchant illustrates how that can go, but inevitably puts the reader on the side of Honor, and for me personally, as someone who stood on Marchant’s side many years ago, it was a stunning reversal that made me think more about the issue. It’s so well done.

In this book we do run into one of the biggest issues I have with Honor Harrington as a character, though. Namely, she’s apparently good at everything. While there are occasional asides about her not being great at math, for example, the bottom line is that she’s nearly omni-competent and has so many interests and things she does that it becomes difficult to believe she could do them all. For example, in chapter 6 we discover she’s been learning how to duel with swords, but we also know she’s an expert marksman, loves hang gliding, swims a lot, loves going on boats that she knows how to sail, obviously is a great tactician, and the list continues to grow as we go through the books. How does she really have time for it all? I don’t know. I can suspend my disbelief, but it’s good that Weber starts to introduce more side characters to fill in the (very few) gaps in Honor’s ability later, as she’d otherwise grow to be too good at everything. It is a testament to Weber’s ability to write a strong character, though, that we care about her and love her as a person even though it’s sometimes hard to believe she could be what she is.

We get more politicking on the Republic of Haven side, too, as there’s discussion about the dole system and some tilting against universal basic income. Weber’s politics show through at times, and this is definitely one aspect. While it seems to make sense in-universe that a universal basic income could bankrupt a country repeatedly and/or cause them to turn into a kind of pirate state, robbing other nations to pay the dole, the implication is this would be a necessary following from the concept, and I’m highly skeptical of that. Along with this, we also get some insight into Grayson’s own constitutional crises that might be looming as Mayhew and the Steadholders vie for power.

Baseball makes a funny appearance here as Honor believes a bunch of baseball players are trying to start a riot because they’re wielding “clubs.” I love when sci-fi and baseball get combined, as these are two things I absolutely love. We get additional characters showing up throughout this novel who are of high importance later: Captain Yu and Mercedes Bingham reappear, Theisman, Shannon Foraker (who will be a massive thorn in the side later), and more make cameos and more. It’s an exciting read for longtime fans of the series doing a re-read.

Then the big events start to happen in a kaleidoscope of intrigue, action, and reprisal. One of the Sky Domes Honor Harrington helped fund collapses, but then it turns out to be a terrorist act to discredit her as a person, and it killed children. Haven launches a number of attacks, ultimately maneuvering to try to take out Grayson system, which is now a keystone of Manticore’s Alliance. Meanwhile, Honor et al. are dealing with the crisis of the Sky Dome fallout, only to uncover that it was another Steadholder who did it. Honor survives an assassination attempt, ultimately showing up at the Steadholder’s meeting in a super epic scene to then strike down another Steadholder in a duel. But the real brains behind the operation, Mueller, survives.

Here we have another several scenes in which actions are ascribed either to Satan or God depending upon whether one agrees with them. It’s a telling scene that shows how easily religious violence can erupt, and also how easily we can justify our own actions with a religious veneer.

The battle in space, led by an exhausted Honor, is deeply satisfying. Weber always delivers the goods on action scenes like this, and while it’s not super long, the battle here is decisive. I especially loved how Honor (maybe) thinks he fooled Theisman, but we know Theisman was instead fooling the Citizen Commissioner on board his ship, in part, because he wanted to live to fight another day.

Ultimately, Flag in Exile is a thrilling read that opens the world up into many broader possibilities than we’ve seen before. Whether it’s societal upheaval on Grayson, looming problems in Haven, or the broader war opening up, Weber introduces a number of threads here that are of great importance later. This is one of my favorite reads in the series, and every time I read it I discover more to like.

Links

The Great Honor Harrington Read Along– Follow along as I read through and review all the books and offshoots in this series!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

“Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Volume 3- Endurance” by Yoshiki Tanaka

The Legend of Galactic Heroes is a… well, legendary anime series. What far fewer people have experienced is the novels upon which it is based. I’m probably something of an outlier here–having only read some of the books while not having seen the anime. I wanted to write about the series of novels to encourage others to read them.

Volume 3: Endurance

Endurance marks a shift in the overarching story of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Yes, the focus remains on the conflict between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance, but the Phezzan Dominion grows in import and the major main characters of the first two books have lesser roles here.

Yang Wen-Li spends much of the book being summoned to face an inquest and fighting politics, which leads to a number of satisfying scenes when the politicos realize they’ve done messed up. Meanwhile, Reinhard is largely aloof throughout the novel, making major decisions on what gets done while staying out of most of the action himself. Side characters get more time to shine, like Yang’s protégé Julian Mintz’s exploits in fighter combat.

The big set piece here, though, is a massive scale battle between Iserlohn fortress and a fortress brought into place to try to destroy it. The battle takes up a large portion of the book, in between other scenes, as it starts with a standoff, ramps up into mutually assured destruction, and evolves from there. Tanaka takes the massive scale of the combat and makes it believable for this anime-like scenario he’s developed. The obscene size of the forces involved are so over-the-top that it could become simply comical, but Tanaka navigates that deftly by taking it all seriously enough that readers are forced to decide to either take it seriously themselves or move on.

The series continues to feature women very little. When they do appear, they’re as aides or other minor roles. It’s perhaps the largest strike against the series. The translation in this volume also seems a bit smoother than Volume 1 especially.

Endurance is another great entry in Legend of the Galactic Heroes. It gives us more time to focus on some other characters, introduces more facets of the conflict, and delivers epic space battles.

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The Great Honor Harrington Read-Along: “Field of Dishonor” by David Weber

The Great Honor Harrington Read Along is a read along led by me with critical analysis and SPOILER FILLED looks at the Honor Harrington series and related works by David Weber and collaborators. I’ve read the whole main series and the overwhelming majority of the offshoots, but some of these will still be first time reads. However, spoilers will be abundant throughout these posts, including for much later books in the series.

Field of Dishonor by David Weber

Field of Dishonor is probably the weirdest of the early Honor Harrington books in that it doesn’t have a big space battle and the action is all on the surface. The whole thing is a kind of character-building segment for Honor and a select few others. And yet, it works, somehow, so long as you don’t have to have that obligatory space battle in order to be satisfied.

Weber also peels back the curtain here to give us more knowledge of the inner workings of Manticore’s governmental system. It seems to be based on the United Kingdom’s system with a monarch, a House of Lords, and the Commons, a multi-party system in which coalitions must form to make governments, and more. Throughout the book, we get more and more looks at how those different factors intersect to make things as simple as declaring war on an aggressor nation that already attempted to destroy your nation more complex than it should be.

We also get a bit more background about Treecats, how they were discovered, and some of the history of that discovery–including the first mention I am aware of regarding Stephanie Harrington, a distant relative of Honor’s. Many, many characters who loom large later or before this are given cameos or more major appearances, such as Tomas Santiago Ramirez.

Now, to the meat. Pavel Young has friends in high places, and his family backing made it such that they would oppose the declaration of war if he’s court martialed. The admiralty board has quite a bit of politicking happening as they discuss Young’s fate, and it gives us more insight into how divisions within Manticore’s government run. Hemphill shows up here, too, as one of the members of the court martial, and her willingness to bend on some aspects gives us some hints at her character beyond the “Horrible Hemphill” we were introduced to in the first book.

Young gets a dishonorable discharge, which gives his father a fatal heart attack, ironically gifting Young with an Earldom the same time he got the discharge. It’s a kind of deus ex machina that nevertheless works to get Young elevated to a position of power. From the moment he rises to that position, it seems inevitable awful things will happen. And happen, they do. Denver Summervale’s back, and he’s hired by Young to kill Tankersley, shortly after we as readers start to really get settled in for the long haul with he and Honor together. It’s an almost unfair twist of fate, and the emotional turmoil it causes works because Weber invested no small amount of time telling us about Honor’s own self doubts in the books before this. I seem to remember the scenes of Honor’s mourning lasting much longer when I read the book the first time, but I think that’s just a matter of how invested I was in her mourning, too. That mourning is offset a bit by knowing what comes later, but it’s still a powerful character moment, and one during which you certainly sympathize with Honor.

The dueling system within Manticore is nonsensical to an extent. Why would they even continue to allow it? How is it possible, and how would there not be even more contracted killers like Summervale lurking out there? I think it starts to fall apart at the seams if you push it too hard, but that doesn’t take away from the whole thing working for the sake of plot throughout the book. If you can suspend disbelief about how and why they allow it and the inevitably ridiculous consequences that might come of it, it is a powerful way to have the whole Young plotline come to a head.

We also get our first real look at Honor interacting with her Grayson-ian power base, along with seeing she’s set up to make quite a good chunk of cash from investments there. I don’t think at this point I’d yet realized how absolutely major Grayson would be in the rest of the series, but due to my own investment in that plotline I was pleased to see it continuing. We also get LaFollet and the other Grayson armsmen and they become characters close to the reader’s heart almost immediately with how they defend Honor and LaFollet’s discussion of why they want to odo so.

Honor’s return to Manticore and forcing Summervale into challenging her is masterful, and I have to say the firing from the hip surprised me this round again. It’s been a while since I re-read this book and I forgot how she bested Summervale. It’s a cool scene that also makes it easier to believe that Honor could defeat a practiced duelist. The standoffs with Young culminating in her trapping him into a Duel are immensely satisfying scenes. Meanwhile, her interactions with Hamish Alexander are, we know, buildup for later. For now, though, they show how much he’s come to take her as a student under his wing.

We get to the end of the book at a surprising point. Honor is effectively disgraced not because she is disgraceful but because she’s so damned honorable and the politics of the world she serves didn’t let her get justice the way she should have. Dark is the wrong word to use here, but it’s a kind of look into the abyss of injustice of everything as she takes the punch on the mouth for her own actions seeking justice. And that’s where it leaves off: with Honor getting a talk about how it’s not over yet. And we very well know it’s not. Onward!

How about you? What did you think of the book? What were your highlights? Leave a comment and let’s discuss it more!

Links

The Great Honor Harrington Read Along– Follow along as I read through and review all the books and offshoots in this series!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

“Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Volume 2- Ambition” by Yoshiki Tanaka

The Legend of Galactic Heroes is a… well, legendary anime series. What far fewer people have experienced is the novels upon which it is based. I’m probably something of an outlier here–having only read some of the books while not having seen the anime. I wanted to write about the series of novels to encourage others to read them.

Volume 2: Ambition

The first novel of the series sets the stage for the epic back-and-forth battle between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance. The main protagonists are Reinhard von Lohengramm and Yang Wen-Li, respectively. In that first novel, we find out about the war, its origins, and more. Tanaka writes from the perspective of an historian, reporting the events in a rather matter-of-fact way, while foreshadowing upcoming events.

Volume 2, Ambition, expands on the universe with more information about the Phezzan Dominion, an independent planet state that thrives on trade with both major powers in the galaxy. Because they thrive on that trade, it is in their interest to see the war happen while not interfering, selling freely to both sides. This seems like a recipe for disaster in later books, however. For now, they profit. Meanwhile, a coup attempt in the Free Planets Alliance and a power vacuum after the death of the Emperor in the Galactic Empire means that the main fighting stops while each side has to tend to interior struggles.

In this second volume, Tanaka also turns up the character building quite a bit. One, Senior Admiral Ofresser, turns into a monumental challenge in chapter 4. Here, Tanaka manages a devilish task: taking his massive, comically huge space battles and making a single fight in a single corridor somehow matter to the plot. It’s not uncommon for tens of thousands (or more) casualties in this series from a single battle. That means that the scale is so huge that single losses might lose meaning. But Tanaka, in the course of a single chapter, manages to use the narrative “historian” voice to make Ofresser into an almost unbeatable opponent who becomes both repulsive and intriguing to the reader. It’s a phenomenal set of scenes in one of the best chapters in the series so far.

Later, the huge scale of loss is used by Tanaka to cause moral turmoil for Reinhard. Having found out about a potential nuclear attack, does he rush to prevent it, or allow it to happen to muster even greater public outcry on his side? The few pages that cover this event have great weight. Because Tanaka has made huge numbers of losses seem so casually normal in the first book, the plight of the civilian was seemingly a non-issue. But here, he twists the reasoning, allowing major players around Reinhard to effectively argue that a few million dead in light of uniting 25 billion people seems like not such a great loss. And the hardest part is that it makes a twisted kind of sense! But only a devil would pay that butcher’s bill, and the toll it takes later on Reinhard will be interesting to see.

Other epic moments include the use of ice for a massive, debilitating attack in chapter 7. Chapter 9 is another great work of character building amongst otherwise matter-of-fact reporting from the narrative voice. Here, Reinhard tries to cool his relationship with Kircheis because he took advice about not sharing power. But when push comes to shove and Kircheis literally puts his life on the line for Reinhard, the latter realizes what a terrible mistake he’d made. It’s a powerful scene.

One thing that makes these books such a treat for me as a reader is how unexpected some of these character moments are. The way the books are reported, almost as if from a newspaper, makes it easy to think that you may not connect with the characters. But Tanaka uses that same narrative style to cleverly make these vignettes that make these newspaper figures so relatable and interesting in ways that as a reader, I didn’t expect. The series also, as I mentioned in the first post, reads like an anime. It was developed into an anime, and I wonder if Tanaka was thinking this as he wrote it. The epic scale lends itself to that format, as does the narrative style.

Ambition takes the massive battles and scope of the first book and turns the plot up a few notches. I am excited to see where it goes next. I forget exactly which volume I read through before, but I believe I got to 3 or 4, so there’s plenty more to go for new reads in this 10 volume saga.

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Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

The Great Honor Harrington Read-Along: “The Honor of the Queen” by David Weber

The Great Honor Harrington Read Along is a read along led by me with critical analysis and SPOILER FILLED looks at the Honor Harrington series and related works by David Weber and collaborators. I’ve read the whole main series and the overwhelming majority of the offshoots, but some of these will still be first time reads. However, spoilers will be abundant throughout these posts, including for much later books in the series.

The Honor of the Queen by David Weber

I need to get this out of the way at the start. This may be my all-time favorite novel. I’m not saying it’s the best literarily or anything. It’s just probably my favorite. Part of that is because it’s just a fun read with any number of highly satisfying moments. But a bigger part of it is that I read this novel in the midst of a faith crisis in which I was, in a way, like the Graysons. I was struggling with my conservative upbringing teaching that women couldn’t be pastors, and that it was largely preferable to have women at home. There were just some things women couldn’t do as women. I was in the midst of throwing off that belief when I read this book, with Honor Harrington serving as the shining example of why women could be exactly what Graysons believed they couldn’t be. Yet the Grayson people had their faith taken seriously, even if it was seen as an aberration. It was hugely important and healing in a number of ways, and so this novel occupies that space in my heart (I wrote more about that here). Later, I’d get the book signed by Weber and tell him about its import on my own life and how I was now married to a pastor. He wrote, “Keep up the Good Work” with his dedication.

Okay, let’s dive in!

We get a little glimpse at Honor’s mother, which turns out to be a hugely important character detail later. Pretty sure this is all we see of her the whole novel, though. I wonder if this was an intentional character detail to be built on or just an incidental piece that Weber decided to use later. The chapter also gives us an introduction to Yeltsin’s Star, the strategic situation there, the Church of Humanity Unchained, and Honor’s alleged ineptness with diplomacy. We find out that even on Grayson, the lest strict sect of the Church of Humanity Unchained, women aren’t allowed to serve in basically any position of power. The Masadans also lopped off the New Testament from their Bibles after a conflict with Grayson, because they felt Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah due to technology still existing on Old Earth and women not being in their proper place.

There is a potential difficulty here–the implication seeming to be that if you just had the Old Testament, that is, the Hebrew Scriptures, you’d have oppression of women and anti-technology sentiment. No mention is made here of Jews, but it could be perceived as a kind of writing off of their faith. In-universe, however, it becomes clear the Masadans are not supposed to be an analogue for the Jews (who still exist in the Honor Harrington universe in various branches). Instead, they are an extremist cultic group that was an offshoot of Christianity. Weber gives a solid insight into the headspace of fundamentalism later, in chapter 4: “There could be no compromise with those who rejected one’s own beliefs, for compromise and coexistence only opened the door to schism. A people or a faith divided against itself became the sum of its weaknesses, not its strengths, and anyone who didn’t know that was doomed” (49). When I read these lines so many years ago within a faith tradition that largely thought that way, it was a bit shocking. It was one of the first times I actually realized how insular and borderline insane that sounded.

The first chapter also has a pretty insightful comment from Weber in the mouth of Courvosier: “Extremists tend to grow more extreme… as problems get closer to solutions” (15). Chapter 2 features James MacGuiness. [I edited here due to the comments from an insightful reader pointing out I missed MacGuiness in the previous book.] Having read the whole series, it’s kind of shocking to see him essentially sidelined here to such a minor role, as he was in the first book. His role, like Honor’s mother, is quite minimal. They’ll feature much larger later in the series.

Meeting and learning more about Yanakov is important, as he as a character shows the possibility of developing within the Grayson religious system into the realization that what they believed and did regarding their women actually limited women rather than cared for them (see his comments on chapter 5 vs. chapter 8). Weber does a simply fantastic job of showing how religious extremists work and think while also showing that those on the borders of extremism are capable of being challenged and going either more towards extremism or reasoning their way out of it.

Chapter 11 shows Houseman continuing to try to push for a non-military solution, and his efforts in that regard and utter disdain for Honor and others is finally, in chapter 18, literally smacked down. He’s a classic example of a person who thinks that wealth makes one smarter or better than everyone else. It turns out people who have tons of wealth can be just as foolish and reckless as anyone else. Having lots of money doesn’t mean you’re right about anything.

The sacrifice of the Manticorans, including Courvosier, is a hugely emotional moment in chapter 14 as they put their lives up to save Matthews. That, plus the assassination attempt in chapter 20 and Nimitz’s swift reaction time along with Honor’s fighting to her potential death turns the Grayson public opinion in favor of Manticore. Weber deftly shows that often, when strongly held beliefs are confronted by facts and reality that contradict them, people are capable of change. More recent years seem to prove this wrong, but there still are stories of people changing their minds. I love the scene of Honor discovering that her resistance against the assassins has been playing on the news in Grayson continuously for hours and hours. Mayhew says, after Harrington sees the news story, “And after seeing it, no one on this planet–including Admiral Garret–will ever dare to question your fitness as an officer again, now will they?” (252). Of course, this isn’t entirely true, but the for the sake of plot, it is nice to have this as a possibility for Weber to change Grayson public opinion so massively in favor of Harrington and Manticore.

Chapter 26 reveals the horrible depravity of war and the misogyny inherent not just in the Masadans, but also as is often found in warfare generally. We also get a glimpse of the fiery steel that Honor demonstrates throughout the series as she comes within inches of killing a Masadan directly after seeing what they’ve done to her people. These horrific scenes are followed by some of the more lighthearted scenes in the book as Truman jokes with her engineer and, later, Hamish Alexander about taking the safeties off the engines on her ship so they can cut hours off when reinforcements will arrive at Yeltsin. Even these funny lines, though, are found in the midst of the most desperate scenes.

The final battle between Fearless and Thunder is yet another example of Weber writing fantastic military action. It’s even better when Alexander shows up with reinforcements only to find that they thought they were in time–but weren’t. It’s a deus ex machina that gets turned on its head, only to essentially turn around and save the day after all. Frankly, it’s just a well executed sequence of events that makes it all more believable and satisfying. We also get a quick notion that “Horrible Hemphill” can think of smart ideas after all–a story that lurks in the background of both of these books and will be hugely important later in the series.

The final scenes of the novel are wonderful, as Harrington receives the highest possible honors from both Grayson and Manticore (and a reprimand for smacking Houseman). Mayhew says it well, “You see, we need you” (419). Grayson needs an example like Honor to show them what women can and should do, along with introducing them to a broader world of possibilities. The book ends on a hopeful note for future collaboration, even with the clear notion that a bigger war is coming.

How about you? What did you think of the book? What were your highlights? Leave a comment and let’s discuss it more!

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The Great Honor Harrington Read Along– Follow along as I read through and review all the books and offshoots in this series!

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SDG.

“Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Volume 1- Dawn” by Yoshiki Tanaka

The Legend of Galactic Heroes is a… well, legendary anime series. What far fewer people have experienced is the novels upon which it is based. I’m probably something of an outlier here–having only read some of the books while not having seen the anime. I wanted to write about the series of novels to encourage others to read them.

Dawn is the first novel in the 10-book series by Yoshiki Tanaka. The story starts off with a lengthy description of the state of the world that is reminiscent of Olaf Stapledon in scale. Grand history is recounted with only the smallest amount of details, skipping along in time as readers are introduced to the primary antagonists in the story to come.

The story itself, once it starts, primarily follows the military exploits of Reinhard von Lohengramm and Yang Wen-Li, commanders on opposite sides of the conflict who are brilliant tacticians. Readers are thrown into the story with massive combat that occurs on comically massive scale. Thousands upon thousands of ships are thrown into battle against each other, sometimes with millions of combatants resulting in hundreds of thousands of losses on one side or the other (or both). People who insist on realism in science fiction should probably steer clear. This isn’t aiming for realism. It’s aiming for drama and big ships blowing up other big ships on a grand scale.

It’s easy to see while reading the novel how it was moved almost seamlessly into an anime. I already talked about the ridiculously massive battles that make for great anime-like scenes. The characters are another aspect of this–brooding in their own thoughts at times while being overly brusque or emotional at others. It’s all high drama all the time. If you’re into that sort of thing–and I very much am–this is right up your alley. Do you like anime? Ever wish you could experience a big military anime in book form? This is absolutely the series for you.

On the negative side (for those who don’t see absurd scales and some behavior as a negative), the treatment of women throughout the first couple novels (still working my way though the series) is… not great. They’re largely either relegated to the sidelines or only exist as foils for the men in the story. While it could be dismissed as reflective of a somewhat conservative approach to society from Tanaka, I found it inexcusable to have so little attention given to women characters.

The grand scale of strategy is evident throughout the series. Huge battles are fought for various military objectives, and Tanaka does a great job showing why, for example, a single space station could become hugely important. Again, this requires some suspension of disbelief for the sake of plot, but I found it satisfying time and again to see the military action play out in traceable, objective-based fashion even in space.

Dawn is a superb read for those who want the grand scale that so rarely is visited in military sci-fi. The battles and world are almost comedically big, and that makes it a unique read in the subgenre. I recommend it to fans looking for something different.

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SDG.

The Great Honor Harrington Read-Along: “On Basilisk Station” by David Weber

The Great Honor Harrington Read Along is a read along led by me with critical analysis and SPOILER FILLED looks at the Honor Harrington series and related works by David Weber and collaborators. I’ve read the whole main series and the overwhelming majority of the offshoots, but some of these will still be first time reads. However, spoilers will be abundant throughout these posts, including for much later books in the series.

On Basilisk Station by David Weber

We’re back to where it all began. On Basilisk Station is our introduction to Honor Harrington, as well as a number of other major players in the series and our first glimpses at what will turn out to be a much wider conflict. I’ve read this book four or five times now, and I keep finding things I enjoy in it. This time, I was intentionally paying much more attention to the side names that pop up, and was surprised by how many Weber packs into this first book in the series. It’s clear he was at least thinking of the long game from the outset.

What makes this book most impressive to me, though, is how well it balances a razor-sharp focus on an escalating conflict centered around Basilisk with hints of broader conflict and political action happening around it. That’s one of the biggest draws to the series, of course. At times, the back and forth between action “on the ground” (read: largely in space) and people sitting around board rooms talking about making action happen can get uneven. Here, though, we see Weber at a focused, exciting pace that still throws enough reveals out there to whet appetites for broader discussion.

Horrible Hemphill shows up right away- she’s of course the subject of an extremely pivotal character scene for Honor much later in the series when Honor and Hamish Alexander fight over how seriously to take Hemphill’s new takes on weapons’ systems and more. Here, she acts a bit as a stooge, including for the delightful final scene in which Harrington is asked enthusiastically to provide (presumably positive) feedback on the weapon systems from the Fearless. Whether Weber intended to make Hemphill a point of recurring interest or not, it was a smart move to include someone here to shake things up. The added wrinkle of Fearless having armament that doesn’t make sense increases the tension and also makes the final battle more satisfying.

Our first look at Honor feels very fresh still. It’s just a well written, classic sci-fi scene. We quickly get a look into McKeon’s head as well, as we discover he knows he’s bitter but can’t quite break out of it. This little insight into his thought process makes it all the more satisfying to watch him finally break out, largely urged on by Honor’s gentle handling of the situation throughout the book. We also run int Pavel Young for the first time, and here he’s eager to immediately abandon the station. He has little agency in the noel; mostly acting as villain from afar.

Another major plot point is having Honor show up for the first time on Hamish Alexander’s radar. Obviously this will become a much more important relationship later in the series, but it’s fun to see him running around using back alley means to protect Honor’s work actually making Basilisk station into a competent command. Yet another major player introduced here is Denver Summervale, and I can’t believe I missed this the last few times I read it. Here, he’s a throwaway character, making it all the more surprising how important he becomes later. I wonder if Weber was thinking along those lines already or whether it just came to him to reuse this character. Klaus Hauptman rounds out the series of major players introduced. Having McKeon be the one to stare him down is a great twist from Weber, which both makes McKeon more relatable and Honor more interesting for restraining herself–barely.

It seems notable how Nimitz is largely a non-entity throughout this book. He does very little other than act as a kind of smart shoulder ornamentation for Honor. In fact, I was pretty shocked by how very little he does given how totally we fall in love with him later in the series. We have a cat named after Nimitz, ourselves.

Some early history of Manticore is provided, largely as background for why Hauptman is such a tool. However, even this comes into play in some of the offshoot series. I haven’t read the ones about the rise of Manticore, so I’m excited on this read-through to take that aside, finally.

Let’s be real: I don’t know of anyone who writes ship-to-ship sci-fi battles better than Weber. They’re always exciting, always full of tension, and always fun to read even on subsequent reads. I never find myself skimming these, and the battle between Fearless and Sirius is a thrilling read. Each hit is visceral, and I don’t really care about what physics may or may not have been violated here. There’s a feel of impact of the events, tension ratcheting up as each side exchanges salvos. It’s so well done. Jumping back and forth between captains and crew increases the excitement and engagement as we see casualties pouring in while others frantically try to keep the ship running while others are making life or death decisions about the whole ship. It’s pretty amazing to me how well this battle scene holds up after the later ones when we have huge fleets blowing each other up. This, probably the tiniest scale action in the whole series between ships, is still a great read.

The slaughter of the Medusans hit me a bit odd this go-round. I’m not entirely sure how big the colonies and human settlement on Medusa is supposed to be. It seems, though, that a total and complete, wholesale devastation of literally thousands of Medusans may not have been the best solution. These are sentient beings, and they’re drugged into a murderous rage to serve the whims of various colonizing powers. It just hit me wrong, I guess. I wonder what other means could have been tried.

Near the end, we hear a bit about the “Big Lie” theory, which feels incredibly relevant today. Essentially, it’s the idea that a government or officials therein can say something so absurd people will believe it because they’ll just assume people will think they have proof, lest they get caught in an absurd lie. Unfortunately, many today are caught up in a number of big lies, whether it is conspiracy theories about election fraud or something else, this part of the book feels more not less relevant than it did when I read it the first time.

What are your thoughts on the book? What scenes struck you? Leave comments below!

Links

The Great Honor Harrington Read Along– Follow along as I read through and review all the books and offshoots in this series!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.

SPSFC Book Review: “Dog Country” by Malcolm F. Cross

Dog Country by Malcolm F. Cross

Dog Country follows the story of Edane, a geneforged dog-person who was created to be a soldier. The powers that be, however, had to acquiesce to citizens’ demands to end the program, and Edane and others were “emancipated”–set free to live by others’ definitions of a “normal” life. Readers follow Edane (and a few other intermittent viewpoints) as he tries to navigate this new world.

Janine is Edane’s girlfriend, and some of the best scenes in the story take place between these two as Edane attempts to figure out how to even express himself. He struggles to live by the standards of what is “normal” and joins up with a MilSim team trying to work its way up the ranks in a simulated combat game. There’s no small amount of discussion of what runaway capitalism could do. This especially looms large in the way the main plot takes off as the geneforged dogs start a crowdfunding campaign to depose a dictator. The campaign is a runaway success and Edane ultimately joins on for real battle, trying to find his own place in the world and meaning for himself. As readers follow the intense action scenes, flashbacks abound to Edane’s first combat action two years earlier.

The action is great, with strategic and tactical decisions abounding. It doesn’t take up much space in the story, but when it’s there, it absolutely delivers. I’m not an expert on military action, merely a fan of military sci-fi and history, and I found it satisfying each time the military action showed up. The political and civil issues raised loom large, but aren’t explored in great depth. Nonetheless, they do create breaks in the intense story of Edane’s life and background that are welcome.

I do have one minor complaint about the novel, which is that I wish the larger stakes had been made more clear. Specifically, while there’s plenty to wonder about here, the premise takes a little bit away from the stakes. We don’t have genetically engineered super-soldiers made from animals (or other geneforged people, for that matter) around. That means many of the questions raised are hypothetical. You have to be invested in the characters–which I quickly was–in order for much of the conflict to feel pressing. Of course, all of this also seems to be an extended metaphor for PTSD, with the geneforged problems standing in as problems with PTSD, and that immediately ups the stakes and brings it all together.

As a side note, I especially appreciated how many women (or at least female geneforged people) were major characters given voices in the book. Edane’s mothers have numerous great moments including some brief discussions of motherhood that are touching. Janine equally is a fully-fleshed out character dealing with her own difficulties as a geneforge. It’s great to see. Also, that cover is to die for. I definitely think it’s among the best covers in the contest.

Dog Country is yet another proof that self- and indie-published books can be and often are superb. It’s an excellent book from beginning to end, with strong characterization, a solid plot, and difficult questions. Fans of thoughtful speculative fiction should dive in immediately, and the military sci-fi aspect of it is strong enough to appeal to fans of the same. Highly recommended.

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Links

Science Fiction Hub– I have scores of reviews of Hugo nominees, Vintage Sci-Fi, modern sci-fi, TV series, and more! Check out my science fiction related writings here.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!

SDG.