Beginnings: Worlds of Honor 6 (utgåvan 2013)

Very enjoyables stories of relatively long lenght, so you do have time to discover the charaters appropriately. ( )

Good stories, good background. It does us good to remember that Honor does not populate this unit only with her and hers...... ( )

Five stories, and I really liked all of them. None are perfect, but none are bad, either. By The Book by Charles Gannon - very interesting view of early Solarian politics (very early, at the beginning of the Diaspora). Rather annoying hero, though - too much plotting and twisty thinking (required by the situation, which is equally annoyingly convoluted). A Call to Arms by Timothy Zahn - a not-bad space battle story, again very early - this time, early in Manticore's history. I rather like Travis, though he needs to lose the prickles. And it was interesting seeing a battle in which Manticore actually was the tech underdog, or at least no better than the enemy. Honor has had that comforting thought pretty much her entire career - even outnumbered, she generally had the better tech (ok, aside from Fearless in Basilisk). Beauty and the Beast by David Weber. Hmm. Very good story, fascinating characters and events...but it feels very much like rewriting history. I haven't seen any indications, anywhere in the previous Honor stories, that her parents had any empathy (in this sense). I would have liked this a lot better if the magic empathy thing had belonged to different people. The Best Laid Plans, also by Weber - good story, and arrgh. Again, sounds like rewriting history. I've never seen a hint previously that Honor and Nimitz met by battle and injury. And...Sharp Nose gets his mid-pelvis crushed, but suffers no damage to his mind-voice...OK, that could be, Nimitz's injury wasn't exactly the same. But it feels odd. Obligated Service by Joelle Presby. Oh, I like this one! The writing is quite awkward at points - there's a lot of story that's skimmed over, told rather than shown. Dialog is stilted at several points, and descriptions don't work very well. And a lot of people never get a name ("the medic" remains the medic throughout, even when he joins them for search and rescue...). And with all that, it's a great story. I love Claire - love her history, love the glimpse of the lower classes of Grayson, love her determination to keep going and to handle all she's given. The things she encounters that she sees as threats, that she sees as just the way things are, and that she sees as helpful - and the way the same things are seen by others. Fascinating story, I'd like to see more like this - more of Claire, and more of that class (and the equivalent on Manticore - we've seen a little of them on Terra and in the new sector, not so much at "home"). It looks like Presby is a new author - I'll be looking out for more by her. ( )

By the Book **
A Call to Arms ***
Beauty and the Beast ****
Best Laid Plans ****
Obligated Service ***1/2
Overall ( )

New stories in the Honor Harrington universe, some of them quite some distance in the past. My rating is a composite: the first story is so-so at best, the rest are all good to excellent. ( )