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On Basilisk Station | Rating | |
| A | |||
| David Weber | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Honor Harrington | Jayne's Intelligence Review: The Royal Manticoran Navy, Jayne's Intelligence Review: The Havenite Republican Navy, On Basilisk Station, The Honor of the Queen, The Short Victorious War, Field of Dishonor, Flag in Exile, Honor Among Enemies, In Enemy Hands, Echoes of Honor, Ashes of Victory, War of Honor, At All Costs, More Than Honor, Worlds of Honor, Changer of Worlds, The Service of the Sword, Crown of Slaves, The Shadow of Saganami | ||
Honor Harrington is a Commander in the Royal Space Navy of Manticore. This is her first cruiser command, a big step up from intrasystem patrol craft or destroyers. But her ship has been overhauled, given an ineffectual armament mix, and for her failure to succeed with it she is banished to the backwaters of Basilisk Station. Her CO has a longstanding grudge against her, smuggling is rampant, the bronze-age natives are hooked on homicide-inducing hallucinogens, the People's Republic of Haven is doing something sneaky, and she has only the one small ship to keep the entire system in check. What's a Commander to do?
Kick ass and take names, of course.
This being the first book of what has turned into a major space-opera series, there's quite a bit of exposition. The first forty pages or so are filled about two-thirds with it, disguised as thoughtful contemplation. But it's very good exposition! It's interesting, it moves the story along a bit, it flows well, and it takes up dead time that would otherwise have needed pasting over. A good deal of it is also necessary for understanding the world we are reading enough to realize and truly know why this or that is important.
The first hundred pages or so consist of Honor getting problem after problem handed to her, nearly all of them because of someone else screwed up royally. In a way, it's depressing, but it does an excellent job of showing just what she has to overcome. By no means is her success assured; she has a lot to do, and the Havenites aren't helping any.
Finally, the thing that really, truly sets this book, and this series, apart from nearly all others is that the ships here use actual tactics. None of this swooping in for a laser blast on the enemy hull and then turning for another pass here! Weber set up the drive physics well enough, and completely enough, that he is able to calculate approach vectors and approach times and actually use this information for his battles! It brings a whole new tension to a book to not only be told that some maneuvers can't be done for dramatic reasons, but that the setup actually can't allow it! Readers who have an eye for detail would conceivably, and justifiably, write angry letters to Weber if he breached his own physics - unlike settings like Star Trek in which anything s possible if they turn on the disnuclear tideflow generator, or whatever. It's great!
In addition, the books take place two thousand years into the future, and it feels it. Oh, the society is not unrecognizable, with it may be. But then again, it may not be. But my point is that there are a lot of advances in technology, across a broad spectrum of fields. It doesn't feel like this should take place a hundred orr two years from now and he made it two thousand just to make an impression. I got the feeling that the made all those technological advances for the story and then tried to guess how long it would take to get that far, and that's how it should be done.
This is a very, very good book for science-fiction fans. It's not hard SF, but it's damn good SF. I heartily recommend it.
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