Space Opera Fans discussion

Greetings Space Opera Fans!

Up this month we get to hit that sweet spot where classic Military Sci-Fi meets up with Girls-With-Guns and sentient, six-legged alien CATS! Yessiree ... here's the first book of the Honor Harrington Series, On Basilisk Station by David Weber.




Honor Harrington is thrilled to take the helm of her first serious starship, the HMS Fearless. But her excitement quickly fades--political maneuvering by top brass in the Manticoran navy has left her light cruiser outfitted with a half-baked experimental weapons system. Against all odds, she manages a clever coup in tactical war games, a feat that earns her accolades--and enemies. The politicians she's offended banish her to a galactic backwater, Basilisk Station. But that outpost soon proves to be a powder keg, and it's up to Harrington and the Fearless crew to thwart the aggressive plans of the Haven Republic. A perfect mix of military SF and high adventure..."

ARE YOU READING ON BASILISK STATION? Shout it out in the discussion thread below, find some book buddies, and let us know your thoughts as you follow Honor Harrington through her first big space adventure. Just remember to follow the Will Wheaton Rule ... use the spoiler .html as needed so you don't ruin the fun for somebody who isn't as far along as you are.

Be epic!

Anna Erishkigal
SOF Borg Queen

I'm reading it. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I've read it before. It's still one of my favorites, though I admit to getting Honor Fatigue mid-series. On Basilisk Station is fantastic, though!

I have read this book and really enjoyed it. I have the audio book I have never listened to so maybe I'll do that instead.

i started this and i can tell im really going to love it. how many books in this series. also the naffator of the audios has a robotic tone I dont like it.

I think there are 21 books in the series so far. I am on number 4.

I love Honor Harrington! I'm up to Book 6 - which I'm still looking for. The first 5 I've read - well, listened to. She's a kick-ass babe in a universe where it actually takes a while to get places. (No instant warp.) I agree that the narrator on the audiobooks isn't the best (but, not the worst).

I love how politics takes a place and the author introduces enough science and tech without hitting you over the head with it.

My library system sucks butt sometimes. They don't have random books in the series. Ugh. Like the 3rd book is missing not telling what else is missing.

You can try asking if they offer interlibrary loans. Or look for it used.

I don't have even 4 dollars to pay for shipping and a 1 cent book haha its funny but not funny. The life of a new college grad is sad. But I do have a few books I've been wanting to get rid of so maybe I can trade for it. My local used book store has a huge scifi fantasy section even has the Star Trek Universe books.

Chakara wrote: "I don't have even 4 dollars to pay for shipping and a 1 cent book haha its funny but not funny. The life of a new college grad is sad. But I do have a few books I've been wanting to get rid of so m..."

You should be able to ask your library to find you the book via inter-library loan for FREE (your tax dollars already paid for it). I took the liberty of checking out your profile, and if you still live in the town you have listed, your local public library DOES have an interlibrary loan program. It usually takes a week or two to get there, but still time to read along with the group.

The public library is a frugal readers best friend :-)

Just downloaded this from Audible. Almost 16 hours long. This one is gonna take more than a few days to get through. Good thing I already read the ebook.

This is, hands down, one of my favorite Honor books! I actually read this series out of order, starting with Book 2 before getting my hands on this one. Made much more sense once I got it backstory filled in! I'm always down for a re-read on this, but I'll buddy read any one of the options!

Anna wrote: "Chakara wrote: "I don't have even 4 dollars to pay for shipping and a 1 cent book haha its funny but not funny. The life of a new college grad is sad. But I do have a few books I've been wanting to..."

I'm not sure what my profile says lol. I've never tried Interlibrary loan before maybe I'll give it a try. I have the first two books for free from kindle .

That's right. Amazon is offering the Kindle edition for free and accompanying Audible narration for only $1.99. Free is a great deal.

Yes they have been free for a while as I got the first one months ago and just got the 2nd one just yesterday I believe.

I've just finished this book - I'd read it before, but I think I enjoyed it more this time around. It was nice to be able to revisit the characters in their early representations.

And of course - treecats! Love treecats :)

Oooh ... FREE!!!

I've read this book a couple of times. Weber's "Honor Harrington" series is one of my all-time favorites!

It's available for free in any format you could want from the publishers webpage

I did enjoy to listen to this book (narrator it's ok)
I did finish 7th book in Honorverse series and there is 31 so long way to go
https://www.goodreads.com/series/66507

I do like Kris Longknife series little better than Honor Harrington but there are very similar and both very good

I've read this book probably four or five times before, but it's been awhile, so this gives me a good excuse to re-read it and to get the kindle version.

I've passed this book over a couple of times because the one-star reviews indicated too heavy-handed transplantation of 18 century naval novels, Mary Sue-iness, cardboard characters and poor writing...

But there's also a lot of raving reviews, so I'm going to give it a shot when I'm done with my current book :)

If you don't have a Kindle and want it in another eBook format, On Basilisk Station is in the Baen Free Library. You can download it for free in whatever format you want.

http://www.baenebooks.com/p-304-on-ba...

I got the free Kindle book but bounced off the book hard about 10% of the way in..Currently reading Tonight I Said Goodbye (I like to alternate my two fave genres) but when I finish that later this week I may give Honor Harrington another try. I was gonna read mystery for awhile until The Dark Forest is released next Tuesday.

BTW, anyone read any Jason Hough Zero World? What about Red Rising?

@MadP: You just reinforced that I need to read The Three-Body Problem. But there is never enough time. I read On Basilisk Station not to long ago, and thought it was a decent sci/fi adventure series. I can't help but think that I wish I'd read it when it first came out, because now the story feels banal. At some point a lot of sci/fi reading can lead to burn out with certain story constructions. Sure, most of these other books I've read were possibly influenced by Weber and other sci/fi adventure book authors like him, but it remained an issue for me. This doesn't change that the book is very enjoyable and worth reading, especially if you're new to genre. It just didn't seem to hook me enough to commit to reading more in the now epically long series of books.

@Niels me too but somehow the fact that it has an average rating above 4.0 with 25000+ ratings means that it's probably worth giving it a shot.

Not everything works for everyone. I was looking forward to getting to know the Liaden universe, tried to read the first one and gave up about 10% in. :(

Honor is a great character! Have loved this series since the first one. I've read most of the base series, the anthologies and the Torch books. Still have to read the third YA one and the Manticore early days one. I also enjoyed his Bahzell series :)

A Call To Duty is quite good. The team-up between Zahn and Weber works on so many levels.

@MadProfessah, I have a couple of things that can really annoy me about a book, so the one-star reviews are usually a very good indicator:
So if the book has an interesting concept and the stuff complained about in one-star reviews are things I can live with, it's usually a win.

Started the book yesterday, first impression is that it's way more complicated than necessary making it really difficult to listen to on audio while doing something else :/

Can anyone explain the different armament types?
There's these unpopular grav-lances, but also missiles, torpedos and perhaps something else, but I really didn't understand the differences from the convoluted description :(

My understanding is that the missiles are just as you would imagine them to be. Torpedoes are similar but bigger, slower and with a larger warhead. The grav lances are like high intensity tractor beams that will rip anything apart. Problem is they are short ranged so you have to get up close to use them.Lasers are primarily used as point defense weapons to destroy incoming missiles.

Honestly, the Grav Lance is hardly ever used in the series. I believe this is the only book that really makes a big deal out of it. Mostly all you have to worry about are the lasers and the missiles. Think old-school naval combat. There are powerful lasers on either side of the ships (broadsides), less powerful lasers at the front of the ships (chase), and of course the missiles. Lasers are used for short to medium range engagements, missiles are used for long-range engagements to soften up enemies defenses.

Thanks, I was absolutely sure that there was some fourth type of weapon, but missiles, lasers and torpedos works fine for me :)

Granted I have not read a lot of the books as I am just getting started, but so far the only place the grav-lance is mentioned is in book one and it only being tested on Honor's ship. It is a close range weapon that no one wants because it puts the ship using it in undue danger.

Niels wrote: "Thanks, I was absolutely sure that there was some fourth type of weapon, but missiles, lasers and torpedos works fine for me :)"

Ehh Torpedos rarely come into play either, mostly they seem to just be the designation for specialty missiles normally used to destroy a hapless target, I can't really remember them.

The weapon people seem to be forgetting is the LACs. Well and Grasers but those are just Lasers on a different spectrum and normally used for broadsides while Lasers are normally used for point defense.

Then you have all the EW stuff as well but that's kept pretty simple for the most part.

The first two books in the series are free on Kindle plus the bean library has all sorts of freebies.

When I find I am getting burnout on a series I like, IE Wheel of Time or Harrington I usually switch over to a lighter read until I recharge.

The anthology stories are really fun too.

Sigh. LAC's and grazers. Pretty much forgot about those. So much for trying to simplify the weapon systems. Guess we shouldn't even get into the different types of missiles and how they progress through the series...

I love the Honor Harrington series and this is arguably the best of them. I think I am caught up (might be missing one of the short story anthologies) but one of the problems with the series is after the 9th book the series branches out into three different tranches with inter locking plots and cross over characters. But until then it really is a great series, I love napoleanic navel fiction (all hail Patrick O'Brian and of course we can't forget Forester, then there's Novick if you like dragons in your navy).

Strong female lead, heroic but still enough human frailty to be relatable. She is one of the most kick ass leading charecters in science fiction.

The treecats skirt the edges of cutesy but they really are a fascinating alien species, especially if you read some of the prequel short stories.

The space combat is some of the best I have encountered. The only series I can think of that comes close is Legends of the Galactic Heroes and that isn't a fair comparison since it is anime and not written.

One of Webers trademarks is his datadumps, Long passages where he explains some aspect of his story is extensive detail. It turns some people off but I like them and for the most part you can skim them and not have the story suffer.

The politics of this manage to walk a careful tightrope. There are moments when it starts to feel like a right wing anti-socialist wankfest rant, but Weber never actually falls into that. He always eventually makes it clear it is the specific characters/polities and not the ideology in general. Weber himself actually considers himself a monarchist I think, and one of his co authors of one of the later branches is actually a socialist labor organizer in his day job (or was before he went full time writing). Still a lot of Weber's fans make me uncomfortable, he is one of the darlings of the sad puppy crowd and a lot of right militarists read him with one hand. Still when the main char is strong, effective woman, the interstellar empress is a black woman, and there are dozens of similarly effective women who have to (in later novels) face some vile sexism you can't argue that webers works are the sexist libertarian screeds some of his fans favor.

So I was thinking of picking this up for kindle and on Amazon UK the first 2 books are free just thought I'll let you know

R. Michael wrote: "The politics of this manage to walk a careful tightrope. There are moments when it starts to feel like a right wing anti-socialist wankfest rant, but Weber never actually falls into that. "
I hope I'll come to agree with this, but I found the attempt at explaining the political background of the whole Basilisk situation pretty ridiculous when I came across it yesterday*, and I can see that Weber has co-written something with John Ringo...

* The internal opposition are cardboard liberals and unambitious isolationalists that don't understand that might is right and you should grab and hold on to anything you can steal - unless you're a welfare state, because those are EVIL!

Niels wrote: "R. Michael wrote: "The politics of this manage to walk a careful tightrope. There are moments when it starts to feel like a right wing anti-socialist wankfest rant, but Weber never actually falls i..."

LOL. I tell ya, the politics can get a little...wordy. That's the one thing about Weber that I have a hard time with. He doesn't just tell you something...he goes into excruciating detail about it, and then adds a bit more for flavor. Still, he's a great sci-fi author, and I am always down for a new Honor adventure.

Niels wrote: "* The internal opposition are cardboard liberals and unambitious isolationalists that don't understand that might is right and you should grab and hold on to anything you can steal - unless you're a welfare state, because those are EVIL!

Later in the series he does introduce more nuanced and even heroic liberals/progressives and makes it clear that he isn't saying that all of them are bad, just these particular ones. It can be challenging for a committed liberal like me to read him beat up on folks of ostensibly my ideology but there HAVE been plenty of real world examples of dumbass liberals in our history. I think in the long run conservative come up for more smack down in the series then anyone else but it takes a while to work it up.

Late in the series he does describe very positively a decidedly liberal polity, Beowulf, that is in some ways like Bujold's Beta Colony in the vorkoverse.

I love this series. Here, I can really visualize things. It's a very cinematic series. Great characters. Great action. I love that the weapons and the engineering doesn't seem to incredible.

What do you think about how the author handles history of the different planets? I didn't think it was too clumsily handled.

R. Michael wrote: "I love the Honor Harrington series and this is arguably the best of them. I think I am caught up (might be missing one of the short story anthologies) but one of the problems with the series is aft..."

David Weber worked with Jane Lindskold to create a 3-book young adult prequel series about the origins of the treecats expanded out from those short stories you mention. They are written for teenagers, but the treecats were fascinating. Lane Lindskold answered our Awesome Author Interview so maybe you can learn more about them directly from the co-author?

R. Michael wrote: "I love the Honor Harrington series and this is arguably the best of them. I think I am caught up (might be missing one of the short story anthologies) but one of the problems with the series is aft..."

Have you read the Manticore Ascendant series? It's about Manticore at an earlier time, before the Junction is such a huge deal, before the Navy becomes so powerful. The second book, A Call to Arms, is due out in October, but the eArc is available from Baen now.

What's the difference between an eARC and the final version other than the price?

Not much. The eARC might have some errors that the final version doesn't, but I've never found them to be egregious.

The politics in the series get better later on really, I think working with Eric Flint on 1632 did a lot to help him write more convincing leftists. That and ManPower is one of the better written antagonists in space opera, it's like they are evil but you can very much understand why people would think they are correct and in the right.

R. Michael wrote: "The space combat is some of the best I have encountered. The only series I can think of that comes close is Legends of the Galactic Heroes and that isn't a fair comparison since it is anime and not written. "

It was a book series first and still the best selling Space Opera books selling in Japan...and yes I emailed Baen years ago begging them to translate it over. I have begged Yen Press as well. Honestly we got a decent shot of getting them when the new anime season drops in a year or so.

As for the books:

First 3 scheduled to hit in 2016.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/...

http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Galactic...

I read this book about a year ago, I think, and I really enjoyed it. There were so many competent characters doing awesome things. I had a great time with it. I don't remember a lot of the details now, but I will say that I know I didn't understand the early explanations of some of the technical details, like the space weapons systems, but they were addressed in enough depth later on, when it became important, that I didn't really need to.

I really need to get back to this series!