David Weber
Baen Books
Copyright: 1993
9780451216953
From the cover of the book:
Having made him look a fool, she's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her.On Basilisk Station is the first book in David Weber's popular Honor Harrington series which now comprises over eleven books, four anthologies of short stories which I reviewed on this blog earlier this week, and two different sets of spin-off novels (the Torch series cowritten with Eric Flint) and the Saganami books.
Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station.
The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens.
Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling; the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is Up To Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system.
But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They've made her mad.
This is a series that's not just about the military side of things with Honor and her crew, but also the politics overall. On Basilisk Station starts with the Peoples Republic of Haven attempting to figure out how to keep their economy going (through expansion mostly) and then goes from there.
The worlds are detailed and realistic, the "science" seems to work within the limits of the story and our own real life, making it somewhat easier to suspend disbelief but it's the characters that really make the story. There's Honor Harrington herself, put into an impossible situation, Alistair McKeon, her Exec and also a good number of the crew of the Fearless. All of them are three dimensional, 'real' people, for all that they exist only on paper. And, we can't forget Nimitz, the treecat. I think he really makes the story.
All of the threads of the story come together in such a way that I had to know what happened next and keep turning the pages, even though I've read the whole series several times. I know I've reviewed this book here before. That review can be found here.
Read as an e-book on my Kobo e-reader.
2 comments:
I've heard this series is a must-read for fans of Bujold so it's already on my reading list. May have to bump it up a little, based on your review! (I'm also looking into Tanya Huff's sci-fi right now. Thoughts?)
Have you read any of the Vorkosigan novels? If you haven't, you should.
I've not read any of Tanya Huff's sci-fi, but I've been told they're good. I probably should give the Valor series a try though.
As to the Bujold books, I think I did give one of them a try a few years ago, but the series is so massive that trying to chase them down in any sort of order at the library has been a challenge. I would like to read them though.
Thanks for stopping in with a comment.
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