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The Honor Harrington series featuring a fictional space naval officer from the Star Kingdom of Manticore has been going strong for over 30 years. Set in the far future, it has expanded into the Honorverse, nearly forty linked books.
What Price Victory? by David Weber is the latest addition to the series. It is the seventh Worlds of Honor anthology, collecting short stories and novella written by Weber and other contributors in the Honorverse.
This volume has five contributions, spread from 16th Century Post Diaspora (which took place roughly 2100 our time) to 1922 PD – a range of 300 years. They also cover different themes; space opera, mystery, and family conflict among them.
Traitor, by Timothy Zahn and Thomas Pope, takes readers to the early years of the Andermani Empire and a revolt against Gustav Anderman, its founder. It reveals the origin story of Cutler Gensonne, who plays a role in the Maticore Ascendant branch of the Honorverse.
Deception on Gryphon, by Jane Lindskold, takes place on Gryphon, the third settled planet in the Maticore system, and part of the original three-planet Star Kingdom. Set early in its history, it has a teenage Stephanie Harrington and future husband Karl Zivonik investigate a murder at a Gryphon research center.
The Silesian Command, by Jan Kotouč, is set shortly after the resumption of the war between Manticore and Haven following Operation Thunderbolt in 1920PD. A Manticore naval officer attempts to block efforts to complicate Manticore’s assimilation of part of the Silesian Cluster.
If Space Cutters Were Wishes, by Joel Presby, revisits Grayson’s egregious Bedlam clan. The point of view character is teenaged Noah Bedlam. Thrust into the position of head of the family at age 14, in this story he is trying to dig his family out of the mess he created at that age.
First Victory, by David Weber, explores the early years of the marriage between Allison and Alfred Harrington, Honor Harrington’s parents. It shows Allison trying to develop an identity independent from being a member of Beowulf’s Benton-Ramirez y Chou family.
Those acquainted with the Honorverse will find “What Price Victory” provides interesting backstory. For those who have never read an Honorverse story, is a good introduction to the series. It illustrates the breadth of styles, times, and backgrounds in the Honorverse. Readers do not have to be acquainted with the series. Each story is self-contained and entertaining.
“What Price Victory?” by David Weber, Baen, 2023, 320 pages, $27.00 (Hardcover), $18.00 (Trade Paperback), $8.99 (Ebook)
This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Discussion (4)
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I finally finished the mainline story arc novels of the Honorverse going from On Basilisk Station to To End In Fire. Overall it's a good series and worth reading, though later in the series there are some pretty egregious examples of duplicating content between novels. I haven't read the new novels about the founding and might do that after taking a break for a while. The short story collections are also quite good and add some canonical detail to the novels.
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I have read many of the Honor Harrington books, but it's been awhile. I checked my Kindle, and I am up to Book 20, which is where I stopped.
Harrington is the rough sci-fi (female) equivalent of the Horatio Hornblower series - as was the original Star Trek - and it's not the first one to do that in books as well as television.
As it happens, those sci-fi equivalents drew me to read the Horatio Hornblower as well as the Jack Aubrey series.
There's a little bit of 1970's new age sexual revolution in it. Honor Harrington becomes the second wife in a polyamorous or polygomous marriage, for example.
I've gone back to reading the almost real deal. There are now a lot of knock-off series that emulate the Hornblower British Royal Navy during Napoleanoic times, and I've enjoyed reading about Royal Navy officers that start out as midshipman, and end their careers as admirals.
Kind of what Honor Harrington does, though I haven't finished the series if it ever has ended.
I gave up when I had to read three books covering the same period of time and the story did not advance.
And Lensmen effect of even bigger bad guys behind the bad guys bores me. The series should have ended sooner.
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I started reading the Lensman series as an adolescent. They are obviously meant for the young adult category, specifically for boys, and re-reading some of those books recently has made me wince.
It's clear that E. E. Smith wasn't comfortable writing about romance, and it's like watching the old Roy Rogers serials where the kids, again mostly boys, would scream "Ewww!" when Roy and Dale had an occasional kiss.
Robert Heinlein, who did write a tribute to Smith, and who I also read as an adolescent, did a better job with the romances in his books, downplayed as it was when he was still writing for young adults, as opposed to his later work.