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Beginnings: Worlds of Honor 6 (Honor Harrington - Worlds of Honor) Kindle Edition
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- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateDecember 4, 2013
- File size2508 KB
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About the Author
Best known for his spirited, modern-minded space operas, Weber is also the creator of the Oath of Swords fantasy series and the Dahak saga, a science fiction and fantasy hybrid. Weber has also engaged in a steady stream of best-selling collaborations: the Starfire Series with Steve White; The Empire of Man Series with John Ringo; the Multiverse Series with Linda Evans and Joelle Presby; and the Ring of Fire Series with Eric Flint.
David Weber makes his home in South Carolina with his wife and children. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B00DFLFXTY
- Publisher : Baen Books (December 4, 2013)
- Publication date : December 4, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 2508 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 484 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #32,857 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #447 in Science Fiction Adventure
- #730 in Science Fiction Adventures
- #13,485 in Literature & Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
David Mark Weber is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952. Weber and his wife Sharon live in Greenville, South Carolina with their three children and "a passel of dogs".
With a blue-collar, science-fiction loving father, a college English teacher mother (who also owned her own ad agency in the 70s), and a life-long love for history, he was clearly predestined to perpetrate a whole host of military science-fiction (and fantasy) novels and anthologies.
Previously the owner of the small advertising and public relations agency he took over from his mother, has written science fiction full time for thirty years. He is probably best known for his Honor Harrington series, from Baen Books, and his Safehold series, from Tor.
Go to his website at: www.charlesegannon.com
Dr. Charles E. Gannon is a Distinguished Professor of English (St. Bonaventure University) and was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in American Literature & Culture from 2004-2009.
Dr. Gannon's series include hard-sf interstellar epic (the Caine Riordan series, set in his Terran Republic universe, nominated for three Nebulas, two Dragons, and winner of the Compton Crook Award) and epic slipstream fantasy (the forthcoming Broken World series). He also collaborates with Eric Flint in that author's New York Times Best Selling series "Ring of Fire series" as well as with Steve White in the NYT Bestselling "Starfire" series. He has also worked in universes/shared worlds such as War World, Man-Kzin Wars, the Honorverse, etc.) and in various anthologies and Analog SF Magazine. You can visit and learn more about his various SF universes and projects--past, present, and future-- at: www.charlesegannon.com.
Along with about 50 other SF writers (such as Larry Niven, Ben Bova, John Hemry/Jack Armstrong, and Greg Bear), he is a member of SIGMA, the "SF think-tank" which advises intelligence and defense agencies (cf. www.sigmaforum.org). In his role as a subject matter expert on advanced military/defense/intel concepts, he has been featured on the Discovery Channel, NPR, Fox, and a wide variety of other national media outlets.
His earlier work includes various products and flash fiction for the gaming industry. He worked as both author and editor for Games Design Workship on their award-winning games "Traveller," "2300 AD," "Dark Conspiracy," and "Twilight: 2000."
Dr. Gannon has many credits in non-fiction; his most noteworthy is his book "Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Technomilitary Agenda Setting in American and British Speculative Fiction." Now in second edition, it won the 2006 American Library Association Award for Outstanding Book, and was the topic of discussion when he was interviewed by NPR (Morning Edition).
Dr. Gannon has been a Fulbright Fellow at Liverpool University, Palacky University (Czech Republic), and the University of Dundee. He also received Fulbright and Embassy Travel grants to these countries, as well as The Netherlands, Slovakia, England, and Italy. Holding degrees from Brown (BA), Syracuse (MS), and Fordham (MA,PhD), he has published extensively on the interaction of fiction, technology (particularly military and space), and political influence.
Prior to his academic career, Dr. Gannon worked as a scriptwriter and producer in New York City, where his clients included the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and The President's Council on Physical Fitness.
Joelle Presby was born in France, raised in Cameroon, and now lives in the United States. She writes science fiction and fantasy. Website: joellepresby.com.
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Unfortunately, Weber is the real problem in this book. His work is the worst part of Beginnings and that's what makes me sad. Let's go through each of the stories and review them.
By The Book by Charles E. Gannon-
This short story tries to be a classic sci-fi mystery story. It harkens back to many of the short stories I enjoyed as a child with a classic tale where the protagonist is offered a mystery and has to solve it. Unfortunately, the ratio of actual action to exposition in this story is grossly weighted towards the exposition side. The mystery isn't solved by investigation. The reader will discover that all the clues needed to solve the interesting mystery are carefully hidden by never being revealed to the reader until the protagonist solves the crime and explains all of his off-camera discoveries to the culprit. The whole thing has three scenes that I can recall total where the characters aren't just vomiting exposition at each other.
What I'm saying is that it's not a fun story to read. You get through it is the best I can say.
A Call to Arms by Timothy Zahn-
I haven't read anything by Timothy Zahn in years, but my lack of notice hasn't affected his writng skills at all. He's still top-notch. This story is actually pretty good. If you enjoyed the space battles of early Honor Harrington stories, this story is even earlier (MUCH earlier), and it's interesting to see how well this story integrates with the progression of technology and tactics from the Harrington stories. It's a classic space battle story written from the perspective of a young officer still learning the ropes.
Zahn does a good job of keeping things interesting and moving. While this isn't one of the greatest stories ever written (or even the best in this book), it is engaging and entertaining. It's solid work and that's good enough for second place in this collection.
Beauty and the Beast by David Weber-
This story is about Honor Harrington's parents and how they met. In it you will discover two things (very light spoiler alert!)
1) Honor Harrington's parents are tree cats (metaphorically) and have unbeknownst special mental powers that they've never previously mentioned once in the series. This is particularly strange as they are both doctors who will go on to do a lot of research, and yet, they have never once apparently questioned these special mental powers, much less gone on to do a shred of research into clearly unique human abilities for the rest of their lives (judging by the rest of the Harrington stories.)
Sorry, this doesn't necessarily affect the quality of the story, but it really bugs me as it's not as if this weird discontinuity was created by some other writer. Weber himself comes up with this badly fitted retcon.
2) You also discover that Honor's father has a deep, dark secret about a very horrible combat event that happened in his life. It is referred to constantly in this story, and yet, it's never actually explicated what it is! You can put together a lot of the hints to vaguely see what it must have been, but astonishingly for Weber, it's never fully laid out for you to understand at all. I'm guessing this either will be or has been a separate short story, but that's never stopped Weber before from recapping the plot of another of his Harrington book, at length! That's been one of the serious flaws of the recent novels. You get the feeling Weber isn't so much writing them as copying and pasting.
I've gotten off track here. The above items are not necessarily problems with the story itself. The story has enough of its' own problems. I will say it does move along and has a lot of action in its' resolution. However, the repetition of item #1 above gets to be mind-numbing and downright annoying to the reader after a time. It's not just used as a plot device, it is most of the text of the story! There's a reiteration of the emotional connection between Honor's parents that borders on ridiculous. It's the "love at first sight" trope taken to a ridiculous new level and then repeated and repeated again. This is closely followed by references to item #2 and the "darkness" inside Alfred Harrington.
I really believe a good editor could have fixed this story and made it readable, but as it stands, it's repetitive and annoying. It's only slightly better than the first story.
The Best Laid Plans by David Weber-
This isn't a bad story, it's just not that great. More importantly, it was already written once by Weber in the short story A Beautiful Friendship. That was a more interesting story too. This is the story of how Honor Harrington and her tree cat, Nimitz, met. The story is substantially similar in form to how Honor's ancestor, Stephanie Harrington, was paired with her tree cat. Honor's version is just less epic and compelling.
I feel like A Beautiful Friendship may have originally meant to be the story of how Honor and Nimitz met, and Weber decided it was to over the top. He couldn't have EVERY event in Honor's life be that massive and ground-breaking. So, he changed that story to her ancestor, but when it came time to write the story of Honor and Nimitz, he didn't have any other ideas and so did a much watered down version of the earlier story.
Maybe I'm being too harsh (very likely). Maybe Weber wanted Honor's story to echo Stephanie's in a homage. That's fine, but my problem is that there's nothing new here. Nothing really interesting. I didn't find this story to be even slightly compelling. I am sure I will have no reason to ever want to reread it. It wasn't painful (like Beauty and the Beast, above was), it's just that this story has no reason for me to ever want to spend time on it again. I would rate it as, "Eh."
Obligated Service by Joelle Presby
My understanding is that Presby is a yeoman writer and this is one of her first stories published. She deserves it as she pulls off the most interesting and compelling story of this entire collection (which is impressive when you are sharing pages with Zahn and Weber!)
Obligated Service is a bit rough in places and I think an editor could have helped polish the language a bit. There are a few passages where the meaning is unclear, but you figure it out. However, the story as a whole is excellent. There are real characters, with real problems, and you actually care about them! Things happen and the exposition is kept to a minimum.
This is a really excellent story and the one redeeming gem in this collection. The story does a good job of showing the hardships that characters can plow through and the main character is a wonderful counterpoint to the perfection of Honor Harrington.
This story doesn't have any big action sequences, but the story is kept moving and proves you don't have to have people shooting at each other to have a compelling navy story. I also appreciate having a protagonist in this universe who focuses on maintenance and damage control. While I'm not sure you could make a novel out of it, it works quite well with everything else for this short story.
I can't wait to see what Joelle Presby writes next!
In summary, I can't possibly suggest buying this book. There's one great story, one good story, one very average story, and two stories that I wouldn't waste my time on. It's just not good odds.
By the Book by Charles E. Gannon
A Call to Arms by Timothy Zahn
Beauty and the Beast by David Weber
Best Laid Plans by David Weber and
Obligated Service by Joelle Presby
Some of these I wasn't as fond of, and others I loved.
Gannon's By the Book I would have enjoyed in a collection of SF mysteries. It didn't really have the feel of the Honor Harrington universe. I felt as though it had a Honorverse envelope wrapped around a mystery set in Earth's not-distant future.
Zahn's A Call to Arms was much better. Set in Manticore's more distant past when Manticore didn't have the end-all and be-all of technology, this military science fiction story had me on my toes throughout.
Weber's Beauty and the Beast was perhaps my favorite. In the story of how Honor's parents came to know each other, I could see the hints of the people they would become. And yes, there are truly villainous bad guys.
Weber's second story Best Laid Plans made me smile. A young Honor Harrington has an adventure.
Presby's Obligated Service, for me, was an absorbing story. It wasn't always comfortable to read, but it made me think. In so many of the books, we see the more upper-crust Grayson citizens. This is more of a look at the underside of that life as a young woman tries to make her way in the Grayson navy.
This is absolutely written for fans of the series. If it weren't for the story By the Book, the collection would be a solid 4.5 stars, rounded up to five. That first story drags it down to a four-star book for me.
Age most about diaspora biology and the kids coming hom
From my oxygen intake levels I could not have my sling on at least empire but at the reminded levels of oxygen intake I can still read it is by h
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Most of the comments in this review apply equally to the Kindle and paper editions of the anthology, but the star rating is specific to the Kindle edition. An irritating flaw in the presentation took my view of the book below the threshold between five and four stars - I would probably have given a hardcopy edition of the book a five star rating.
As the title implies, all the stories in this volume represent the start of something important to the world of Admiral Honor Harrington some 2,000 years in the future.
1) "By the Book" by Charles Gannon is a space detective story set only 338 years in the future, in the early stages of the "Diaspora" of humans from Earth, and the most readily identifiable common element between Honor's universe and this story is the dating system. However, it is also a story about how the emigration of humans to many other planets became possible.
2) "A Call to Arms" by Timothy Zahn introduces the character of Travis Long, who in this novella is a lieutenant. Travis is about to get his own series, currently slated to be a trilogy: he is the central character in the "Manticore Ascendant" series in which the first book, " A Call to Duty (Manticore Ascendant) " by David Weber and Timothy Zahn is due for publication on 7th October 2014.
In this case the beginning is that of the military tradition of the Royal Manticoran Navy: "A Call to Arms" tells of Travis Long's part in the RMN's first major battle, defending against a force of mercenaries hired by the Axelrod corporation in 1543 PD (e.g 3646 AD).
3) "Beauty and the Beast" by David Weber tells the story of how Honor Harrington's parents met at medical school on Beowulf. It also introduces Honor's Uncle Jacques as a young man, and a certain brilliant student obstetrician who in future years will be head of the best natal clinic in the Manticore system, explaining why he will be a bit sensitive about anything relating to Honor Harrington's family.
As the cover illustration for the book suggests, this is not a typical "boy meets girl" romance and it's just as well for the "good guy" protagonists that Honor's dad was not always a harmless doctor.
The man and woman in the centre of the cover illustration are Honor's future father and mother. It might be a spoiler to list which aspects of the picture accurately reflect a scene from "Beauty and the Beast" and which are artistic licence, but it's hardly a spoiler, and certainly won't be a surprise to anyone who has read any of the other "Honorverse" anthologies, to say that this is an action story.
4) "The Best Laid Plans" by David Weber tells of the beginning of the relationship between the 13-year-old Honor Harrington and the treecat "Laughs Brightly" who she calls Nimitz and how a lot of best laid plans were disturbed when they met.
5) "Obligated Service" by Joelle Presby tells the story of the begining of the naval career of Claire Lecriox, one of the first Grayson women to serve as an officer in her planet's navy.
A rather irritating flaw in the way the kindle version of this book was constructed is that it does not have a table of contents with the links which would have enabled the reader to jump straight to a particular story. I did an awful lot of scrolling back and forward using the buttons on the side of the kindle when reading this. That was the main reason I did not give this kindle product five stars.
One or two of the stories in this book require some fairly large-scale suspension of disbelief, particlarly on the power of a psychic link between two of the characters. And to fully appreciate certain ironies and implications of some the stories you have to have read and retained in your memory some of the other books in the Honorverse. For example, in one of the stories in this book, a character gives a well argued assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Mesan bad guys in the story, which appears totally reasonable based on the information he has, but is actually completely off-beam.
This provided the explanation for a remark in a conversation important enough to be repeated in two books set several decades later, when the truth about Mesa finally starts to come out: one of the crumbs of confort with which the head of the Mesan Alignment consoles himself about the security breach is how much he would have liked to see the expression on that character's face when he learned the truth.
Overall I enjoyed reading these stories greatly and can recommend them. One of the better "Honorverse" anthologies.


Another great buck by David Weber and a must for anyone who has followed the series. . Any one chances on this book will find a wonderful
whole world in a star far from earth.. .

