David Weber's Honor series (no spoilers)

[Stofsk]

What is your opinion of it? I am nominally spoiled but I'd like to keep this thread free from anything serious since I am beginning to read the series and I'd like to be surprised.

But anyway, what is your opinion? Worth the read?

[Batman]

I love it. There are a few low points and HH herself is something of a Mary Sue but overall definitely woth reading (if you can live with the styrofoam starships).

[frigidmagi]

I enjoy it. There are some who bitch about Honor and all but frankly I think it comes out to whining for alot of it. The combat is kinda interesting and I find Weber to be a good writer who can hold my interest.

[Mayabird]

I liked it. It got a bit long in tooth towards the end (though maybe it was because I read them all in a month's period) but otherwise it was fine. It wasn't great literature as great literature goes, but it's enjoyable. Plus, treecats are fun.

[Stofsk]

I'm starting with Basilisk Station, and I have Honor of the Queen and Short Victorious War and all three are in paperback. I guess if I like it I can get it for free via Baen free library.

[Batman]

Um-last I checked the only ones in the library were 'On Basilisk Station' and 'The Honor of the Queen'. If you want the rest you either need to buy them or find a copy of the Honorverse Disk (and that, too, only goes up to 'War of Honor').

[Stofsk]

That's true; I was under the wrong impression. There are several chapters of the fourth book, Field of Dishonor, online but not all of them.

Which is fair enough. You read the first bit and if it grabs you you go out and buy the book.

[Ra]

I myself was somewhat inspired by this thread to pick up On Basilisk Station, and sofar I love it. Kinda makes me wonder why I didn't pick it up years ago, considering how I'm a big fan of naval stuff.

[Stofsk]

I finished "On Basilisk Station", and I have to say overall it wasn't bad but it wasn't good either. I think it's strength is the plot and the action. Weber makes an interesting story and with a beginning, middle, and end. There are two major criticisms though:

-Characters. Aside from Honor and McKeon, and Guns, I couldn't give a toss about any of the characters; McKeon himself was uninteresting until his turning point, character-defining moment when he stands up for his Captain to some Trade Magnate. At one point a few of the characters buy the farm, and I'm like "eh, next page" - it's because Weber doesn't spend enough time on them for me to fully invest emotional attachment into them. Hell I barely remembered the character's names - there were too many, there is no Dramatis Personae at the start of the novel to help me keep track of everyone (something which is a requirement, I feel, when you have a large cast of supporting characters), and the villains are more or less non-entities. They don't have a presence in the plot. The ship captain Honor wtfpwns at the end is introduced at the end.

-Technobabble/info dumps/lengthy exposition. No, I don't need to read half a dozen pages about the history of hyperspace travel when all I want is for the plot to fucking move. He does this throughout the book, and I hear it only gets worse as the series progresses. Exposition is a tricky beast to handle, but generally speaking if your spending more than a page to describe something that really only needs a paragraph or two, you need to take a step back and consider. lengthy exposition takes me out of the book because there's no focus on character or plot.

Thoughts?

[Ra]

Having finished the book myself as well, I agree with what you said for the most part. While the "geek" inside of me was kinda interested in how Warshawski Sails and Impellers worked, the extreme detail he went into such technical matters would, IMO, be better suited to fluff companion books, than the story itself; it weakened sections that otherwise should have been much stronger scenes.

And yes, besides the Big Two in Honor and McKeon, I also wasn't able to empathize as much with the other characters, because they weren't sufficiently developed. I think characters like Santos, especially, should have been more detailed.

[White Haven]

On the angle of the various characters' developments, that occurs in many cases as the series goes on, as a large number of them show up in later books. Some characters are more developed than others, but Weber's not afraid to kill off long-running ones from time to time, either. Can't say more without giving spoilers. :)