Honor



I've been reading the Honor Harrington series of books by David Weber, and I've really been loving them. Weber has crafted a galaxy full of heroes and villains (and it's often surprising which is which). I'm a longtime science fiction fan, and very much a fan of the subgenre known as "space opera." Weber has laid claim to this subgenre and made it uniquely his own private turf. Not only are the characters at once believable yet larger than life, but Weber's grasp of politics, military history, military strategy and tactics (and extrapolation of same into space naval battles) is nothing short of brilliant. His writing is entertaining and also thought provoking. And the stories he tells are gripping indeed. In fact, I stayed up till about 2:30 one morning trying to finish one of the novels because I couldn't bear to put it down (and couldn't sleep anyway when I tried).

The eponymous heroine of the series is Honor Stephanie Harrington, a citizen of the Star Kingdom of Manticore and a space naval officer in Her Majesty's Navy. Manticore is a "Kingdom" ruled by a Queen and consisting of three habitable planets orbiting a binary star. The kingdom is rich out of proportion to its size owing to its free-trade capitalism, constitutional monarchy, and control of an important "wormhole" junction that forms the major trade route between Manticore and other star nations.

One incredibly refreshing circumstance of the series is that Honor is a woman, and that many of the naval officers are women. There is no "glass ceiling" in Manticore, and virtually no racial prejudice of any kind (except in some circles: there is an aristocracy in Manticore who have a tendency to feel superior to others). In fact, the Queen (named Elizabeth) is black. Early settlers of Manticore were drawn from a broad genetic mix of humanity, and the CEO (Roger Winton) of the colonial corporation was black. Events conspired to move the early colony toward a constitutional monarchy, and Roger Winton became the King, and his descendents ruled in an unbroken line for several generations up to the time of these stories. An interesting twist to the constitutional monarchy business is the constitutional requirement that the ruler marry a "commoner," which is clearly a way to insure that the ruler will always have sympathy with her non-aristocratic subjects, and also (not so incidentally) to avoid the inbreeding of the ruling families of European history.

Honor Harrington has just been promoted to Captain in the opening book of the series (On Basilisk Station), and ordered to Basilisk, and outpost solar system that Manticore laid claim to during the reign of Elizabeth's father (another Roger Winton). The rank is provisional; there is an evaluation that will result in her either becoming a "captain of the list," which sets her up for promotion to higher ranks, or else forever to be a captain of smaller vessels incapable of travel outside a star system. Of course, I won't give away how she does with this assignment, except to mention that, as there are at least 10 books following this first one, you can be sure she has an interesting career. Not always fun, safe, or comfortable, but certainly interesting.

Honor is the daughter of two doctors (her father was a naval physician, since retired to private practice), but set her heart early on a naval career. She is described as tall, severely beautiful (though she doesn't think so), with an oval face. She is brainy but has trouble with math, a brilliant tactician, and a black belt in a martial art call coup de vitesse. Also she is an expert marksman with both pulser guns and the antique chemical weapons, an expert swordswoman and therefore someone you don't want to get on the wrong side of.

One other circumstance of Honor Harrington's life: she has been "adopted" by a treecat, a six-limbed creature native to Sphinx (Honor's birth planet). As the name suggests, a treecat is somewhat feline, though evidently somewhat larger than our domestic cats on Earth. Adoptions between 'cats and humans are rare, but widespread enough that the adoption bond is sanctioned by law on Manticore and tolerated even in the Navy. The adoption bond is little understood by most citizens of Manticore, but confers on the adoptee some ability to read emotions of people around him or her. This is because treecats appear to be able to read emotions and transmit them to their adopted persons. The nature of the adoption bond is such that the treecat leaves his tribe and stays with his person, and a treecat whose person dies usually end up suiciding, even though the treecat's normal lifespan is two or three times longer than a human's (at least before the advent of "prolong," a medical technique of slowing the aging process, thus giving humans a three century lifespan). A human whose treecat dies usually doesn't suicide, but certainly has difficulty adjusting to the loss.

A couple of interesting points about language in the books. Whenever a female naval officer is speaking of another officer of unknown gender (as in the captain of an adversarial vessel), the gender pronouns used are "she" and "her," while when a male is speaking, he will use "he" and "him." As far as I can tell, Weber uses this device throughout the series. It's an interesting subtlety of language, and I can only presume that Weber's intention is to indicate a change in language usage to the choice of pronouns for an unknown person to be based on the gender of the speaker.

Another point that grates on me is Weber's almost universal insistence that he use the word "less" when he means "fewer." I counted only one time in all the books of his I read where he used "fewer" when it was called for. But he's otherwise such a good writer and yarn-spinner that I can forgive him this minor lapse.

The books are (I'm told; I don't know this firsthand) modeled after the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forrester. The war between Manticore and Haven is loosely modeled on the Napoleonic wars, with Manticore obviously a stand-in for England and Haven for France. An interesting bit of self-referential whimsy occurs at one point in one of the novels when Honor discovers the Hornblower books and finds she enjoys them immensely.

Weber is an exceedingly prolific writer. There are 11 books (so far) in the main series, and another four books of short stories by Weber and other military SF writers in the "Honorverse." Also there are two other "Honorverse" novels that take place in the same era and space as the Honor stories, but involve characters peripheral to the main series.

I hope there are more to come. They are simply delightful, and Honor is an amazingly compelling character.

More on Weber and Honor Harrington can be found in the Wikipedia article on David Weber.

Posted: Sat - November 25, 2006 at 09:56 PM        

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