Subject: Review of Four "Honor Harrington" Novels by David Weber

From: [email-masked] (David Cortesi)
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 1994 07:07:51 GMT

A review of four novels by David Weber

     Review copyright 1994 by David E. Cortesi

ON BASILISK STATION
THE HONOR OF THE QUEEN
THE SHORT VICTORIOUS WAR
FIELD OF DISHONOR

The four David Weber novels reviewed here are well-plotted, readable SF
adventure tales. Their protagonist, Honor Harrington, is an attractive
character with a complex personality, living in an interesting milieu. Both
could sustain more stories. Weber can, if he wants, make a career
of cranking out Honor Harrington adventures -- or he could do something
better by his own brain-child. After giving short, spoiler-free
descriptions of the four books of the series, I will list some points at
which I think he has done well or not so well by her thus far.

%A   Weber, David 
%T   On Basilisk Station
%I   Baen Publishing Enterprises
%C   Riverdale, NY
%D   1993
%G   ISBN 0-671-72163-1
%P   422
%O   $4.95

We meet Commander Honor Harrington, with her constant companion, the
six-limbed treecat Nimitz, as she takes command of the cruiser _Fearless_. 
(Weber expects you to know the difference between a commander and a
captain, between a cruiser and a destroyer, and similar naval arcana.)

This is not the first time Harrington has worn the white beret of a
starship captain; she is an experienced and successful officer in the Royal
Manticoran Navy.  Manticore, we learn gradually, is a multi-star realm
settled from Earth some centuries earlier. It is a hereditary monarchy with
a two-house parliamentary government and power distributed through a landed
aristocracy and a vigorous merchant class.  Sound familiar?  Not only does its
economy and political system echo 18th-century Europe, its space technology
does as well.  Interstellar journey times approximate those of sailing ships.
More important, the combination of gravity manipulation for shielding and
computerized missile and laser fire for offence, have led to naval tactics
that could be understood by, well, a Captain Hornblower. Once, wooden-hulled
ships exchanged cannon fire until one burned, sank, or ran. Now,
gravity-enwrapped ships exchange smart missiles until one loses power,
explodes, or runs.

Harrington's small new command is armed with an eccentric experimental
weapon, but in a fleet exercise she exploits it to surprise and embarrass
an admiral. As a result, _Fearless_ is assigned to the Manticoran
equivalent of Tierra del Fuego, to keep the peace in the Basilisk system. 
Underequipped, with a suspicious, demoralized crew, Honor finds a neglected
outpost where smuggling is taken for granted and the indigenes are being
stirred up by agents of Manticore's nemesis, the People's Republic of Haven.

Here we learn that Honor Harrington is dedicated, modest, and
constitutionally incapable of doing anything less than her best at any job.
Through intelligence, with clever ship-handling, and by inspiring her
crew to superhuman efforts, Harrington begins to achieve things the Navy
didn't expect would be achieved. The more she achieves, the more enemies
she makes.  The book ends with a slam-bang naval battle, which Weber stages
and depicts in gripping style.

%A   Weber, David 
%T   The Honor of the Queen
%I   Baen Publishing Enterprises
%C   Riverdale, NY
%D   1993
%G   ISBN 0-671-72172-0
%P   422pp
%O   $5.95

The People's Republic of Haven is fomenting a war between two impoverished
star systems, Yeltsin and Endicott. Those two would probably go to war
someday in any case, since they are the schismatic halves of a fanatic
religious colony founded 600 years earlier.  But the Elders of Grayson, the
capital planet of Yeltsin's star, have asked for Manticore's help.  Since
the Peeps support the Endicott system, Manticore is almost obliged to help
the opposition.  When Admiral Courvoisier is appointed to command the
diplomatic and military mission, he chooses his one-time student Honor
Harrington as his flag captain.

Manticoran society has no gender discrimination. Naval crews, and even
their associated Royal Marine detachments, are evenly mixed as to sex.  The
Grayson culture, however, is strongly paternalistic.  At least the Grayson
men _like_ their coddled wives and daughters. Their opponents are grim
zealots who doubt females have souls.

Circumstances conspire to make Honor the ranking Manticoran officer in the
Grayson system just as the Peep-equipped Endicott fleet begins to make its
move.  Until help can arrive from Manticore, only Honor's tiny detachment
can defend Grayson.  And the Grayson military commanders resist the idea of
"that bitch" commanding their forces.

This book also ends in a hair-raising naval battle sequence.  Weber
understands physics and orbital mechanics, and uses the knowledge to add
credibility and suspense to space warfare.  His space ships do not merely
drive toward each other like tanks; they follow orbits, accelerated by
engines of limited power.  To be nearer the star is the equivalent of a
sailing ship's being to windward: you can choose when to close with your
opponent.  But Honor's ship is outgunned and heavily damaged.  Will the
Manticoran relief force pop out of hyperspace before she has once more to
close into missile range?

%A   Weber, David 
%T   The Short VIctorious War
%I   Baen Publishing Enterprises
%C   Riverdale, NY
%D   1994
%G   ISBN 0-671-87596-5
%P   376pp
%O   $5.95

%A   Weber, David 
%T   Field of Dishonor
%I   Baen Publishing Enterprises
%C   Riverdale, NY
%D   1994
%G   iSBN 0-671-87624-4
%P   367pp
%O   $5.95

I will describe these two volumes as a single work -- which is how you
should read them. I strongly suspect that Weber started out to write only
a third book, but when the set-up for the climactic confrontation stretched
near book length, he (or the publisher) cut it off and called it a book.
The story resumes immediately in FIELD OF DISHONOR and builds toward
the resolution of a conflict that started in ON BASILISK STATION.

After lengthy recuperation from the wounds she suffered on Grayson, Honor
is assigned a new command, a plum, _Nike_, the newest battlecruiser in the
Manticoran fleet. _Nike_ is designated the flagship of a squadron that is
assigned to defend a remote naval base.  Once again Honor is flag captain
to an admiral.

There is a great deal of detail of fleet and Manticoran politics. These
scenes are intercut with scenes of the incursions, provocations, and
machinations of the aggressive People's Republic.  It is clear to the Navy
that the Peeps are building toward war, but the Manticoran Parliament
dithers, equivocates, vacillates.  And, we are privileged to know, the
Navy's own intelligence is flawed.  Where will the first attack fall?  Will
the Navy be ready, or will its units be in all the wrong systems?

The military and political manouvering is enlivened by a plot thread of
Honor's finding the first, or at least the first satisfactory, sexual
relationship of her career.  A person becomes nearly as important to her as
her command, for a time.

Meanwhile, one of the other captains in the squadron is an old enemy of
Honor's; a man who has hated her since they were cadets together.  Lord
Pavel Young is the officer who left her to sink or swim on Basilisk
station.  Now he has to accept the admiral's orders as relayed by Honor. 
The Peeps attack; the squadron is outgunned and must defend a base containing
thousands of lives, among them Honor's lover.

In the second volume, the battle is over but the echoes linger.  One echo
is the court martial of Pavel Young.  Did he, in the heat of battle, turn
and flee, disregarding an order given by Honor Harrington?  Did Harrington
have the right to give the order in any case?  Young's father's support in
parliament is essential to continuing to pursue the war against the Peeps. 
Should the Navy even try Young, when pursuing the trial could precipitate a
political crisis?  Honor's testimony is crucial. The story is a twisting
braid of vengeance and retaliatory vengeance. It ends in a duel --
Manticoran society sanctions formal duelling -- that settles the issues in
a way that I, at least, did not expect.

A comment on the cover art: the covers on the first three books, by
Laurence, or Larry, Schwinger, depict a person not impossibly far from
Weber's descriptions of Honor. They seem to be three different women of
quite different ages; and the depictions of space craft are trivial and
unconvincing; but they don't quarrel with the plot.  The cover of FIELD OF
DISHONOR, by Gary Ruddell, appears to be a grotesque homage to Michael Jackson;
and the figure is holding a gun in an amateurish position quite unlikely for
an officer who (the text makes clear) is well-practiced in the use of small
arms.

In brief, these are good, fast reads for an adult. You could also consider
using them as Christmas literacy-bait for a technically-minded youth of
either sex.  They are full of admirable role-models engaging in intense action,
and what little sex there is, is playful and affectionate.

Here ends the spoiler-free descriptions. In the following some spoilers do
appear, so if you have not read these books and think you might, you should
stop reading now.



>From the dedication to C.S. Forester and the opening events, it is clear
that, when he set out to write ON BASILISK STATION, Weber intended, almost
as an exercise, to translate the spirit of the Forester's classic
Hornblower stories to a future milieu.  Weber has worked diligently and
cleverly to devise a credible military technology that would still permit
something like Hornblower's navy to exist in space. He worked as hard again
-- although not, to my taste, as convincingly -- to fashion an interstellar
society that would credibly have a hereditary monarch and a landed
aristocracy while still exploiting the technologies of genetics, gravity
manipulation, and computers.

He succeeded reasonably well at these goals; but I have to ask, why bother?
If he liked the 18th century so well, why not just write a historical
novel? An astute friend recently challenged me with the claim that all
science fiction stories are really historical romances with new labels on
the props. I am reluctant to tell him about the Honor Harrington novels for
fear he would consider he'd won that debate.  And in truth, if you reduce
the plot events to abstract schematics, there is little that could not have
been set in 18th century oceans as well as in 28th century Manticore.

The most striking thing that Weber could not have done, in an 18th-century
setting, is to play with gender.  Half the Manticoran naval crews are
female.  True, they don't do anything that an all-male crew, equally well
trained and led, would not do.  But neither do they do less. Thir presence
allows Weber to assert, in dramatic terms, that a gender-blind military
might work. He could not have made that assertion in historical fiction
without being ridiculous, but in SF it is simply one in a long tradition of
using fiction, almost incidentally, to run a credibility test on a social
or political idea.

Weber might intend an homage to Forester, but had he made his central
character anything close to Horatio Hornblower, his book would have been a
pastiche, not an homage.  He needed a dedicated, capable naval officer who
was yet unquestionably different from Forester's hero.  He chose to use a
female, and Honor Harrington was born.

And now I must tiptoe cautiously onto the quaking ground of gender
politics. There are (at least) four ways to view Weber's choice of a female
naval captain.  Was it...

...a bold blow against the male dominance of genre fiction plots? Well, no,
not hardly.  Emotionally strong, physically tough female leads have been
portrayed in recent years by Tepper, Cherryh, Moon, Joan Vinge, and others.
(Even Ian Banks' potboiler, AGAINST A DARK BACKGROUND, has as confident a
female lead as you could want, and Banks gives her some female-to-female
dialogue that I find more convincing and entertaining than any
Weber supplies).  In the mystery genre, there is a pack of  tough female
protagonists led by Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawksi.  Weber was breaking
no new ground here.

Well, was it what my spouse angrily suggested when I gave her a fast plot
summary: nothing but a cynical, patronizing attempt to cash in on feminine
progress in our society?  She was especially incensed at the idea that
Honor would have a love affair in THE SHORT VICTORIOUS WAR.  "Oh, right,
the captain is a woman so it is a huge plot point that she has a lover.  If
it was a man, that would be nothing but a side-show, nothing would be made
of it, but she's a girr-ull so she has to have a guy."

Was it, if not cynical, at least a clever commercial move by a professional
writer who wants to sell books?  If so, I have to say the gimmick worked on
me.  I fell for Honor like a ton of bricks, sober work ethic, white beret,
treecat, and all.  But, thinking about her afterward, it comes to me
that Honor achieves nothing that could not equally well be done by a
hypothetical twin, *Herman* Harrington.  Herman could wear all the character
traits Weber gives Honor: high intelligence, natural skills as pilot and
athlete, compulsive achiever, dedicated officer -- and Herman would be
dead boring.

It upsets me to realize that, for me, the traits of a fascinating female
character became merely laudable but boring when draped on a male character.
This self-discovery seems to call all my judgements about these
books into question, and I'm still not sure I am seeing them clearly.
At least it does suggest that, since the buying readership for SF is
heavily male, if Weber's invention of Honor was a calculation, it was right
on the money.

Fourth and last, suppose Weber just had a stroke of good luck?  I think
this is the most likely suggestion: that Honor sprang into his
imagination as the result of who-knows-what combination of half-digested
social and literary influences, the kind of happy invention that comes to
the lucky writer once in a while.

Since he was graced by her invention, how has he done by her?  And what
should we hope he will do in future volumes (which seem inevitable)?

In fact, the volumes at hand are merely good time-passers; entertaining
SF/military adventure with some original twists.  Personally I think the
Harrington character could sustain a much deeper, more powerful novel than
these (but see above about my questionable judgement).

The first problem with these books is Weber's generally flat prose style
and tin ear for dialogue. The prose is grammatical and clear enough; and
Weber does have good plotting skills; so when there is a battle or a
confrontation, you can't turn the pages fast enough.  But when characters
slow down and talk to each other quietly, or when there is scenery to be
described -- you can't turn the pages fast enough.

Perhaps a larger problem for some readers is Weber's open admiration for
all things military.  Most Naval types, indeed almost anyone in a uniform,
is honest, reliable, warm-hearted and clear-sighted -- even the military on
the enemy side.  One of the first things I noted about a Hornblower story,
when I reread one to check Weber's inspiration, was that Forester's Navy
was peopled with highly fallible humans.  Honor has only one discipline
problem in three campaigns (a medic who won't serve under fire). She never
has to steel herself, as Hornblower does regularly, to condemn crewmembers
to punishment, and to watch punishment carried out.  Very well, England's
navy was crewed by conscripts; the Manticoran Navy is apparently an
all-volunteer force.  I have it on reliable report that even a volunteer
military has more than a fair share of time-servers, shirkers, fools, and
jealous in-fighters.  And a mixed-sex military might have entirely new kinds
of disciplinary problems -- something that these books avoid exploring.

Not only are all Weber's military folk straight-arrows morally; they
possess almost the only accurate political perception in Weber's universe. 
The civilian government perpetually holds them back from doing the right
thing (striking hard, first, and fast) and it is portrayed as weak and morally
compromising.

This kind of fawning after the military really isn't necessary and it
unbalances the stories, removing what could be a rich source of irony and
plot conflict.  Honor simply doesn't  understand how to do a bad job; and
we are deprived in not seeing how she would cope when she had to work with
and through people who never want to do a good one.

But that wasn't the root cause of the dissatisfaction, the vague sense of
possibilities unfulfilled, with which these books left me.  Finally it came
to me: Honor never faces a hard choice.  She faces difficulty, hard work,
and personal danger with bravery and panache; but in every case the proper,
morally good, course of action is obvious; she only has to have the courage
to pursue it.  That is the essence of military adventure, of course.  These
books are at a far higher level than a game of DOOM -- so is it unfair of me 
to want more?  Weber could, like Robert Asprin, keep extruding books with
word-play titles -- Honor as prisoner -- Honor as admiral -- Honor as
embassador to old Earth.

But in order for Weber to write a story as memorable, as powerful, as Honor
Harrington could sustain, he will have to put her in a situation where
neither military skill nor physical courage is enough -- a situation in
which she has to choose the lesser of two evils or, better, has to choose
between two fundamental goods that are of different orders.

And in this effort, Honor's gender might at last be useful.  Manticore has
life-prolonging technology, so an officer like Honor has time to have a
career and still bear children. (Incidentally, Weber has not made explicit
this key point: that it could be precisely this stopping of the biological
clock that makes a gender-neutral society possible.)  But ultimately Honor
might choose to have a child.  That's something that Herman Harrington could
never do.  And on that hostage to fortune a large plot might hinge.  I look
forward to reading it.