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Moon Slayer posted:I'm gonna do all the Honor Harrington books over the weekend and nobody can stop me. I'm just trying to decide if skimming Wikipedia to keep what books have what bullshit in them is in the spirit of the thread or if I should just wing it even when it turns into a mess of "and then I think this happened." I consulted wikipedia to make sure I wasnt crazy about the number of Man Kzin wars books but Ill be damned if I let some so called wikipedia editor tell me Im wrong about the mentor in wishsong of shananananananara being named Al Anon
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Jun 6, 2020 00:52
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Moon Slayer posted:I'm gonna do all the Honor Harrington books over the weekend and nobody can stop me. I'm just trying to decide if skimming Wikipedia to keep what books have what bullshit in them is in the spirit of the thread or if I should just wing it even when it turns into a mess of "and then I think this happened." Most definitely wing it
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Jun 6, 2020 01:13
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OK, so mankind is conquered by aliens. But it is about the nicest alien conquest you could ever wish for. Giant ships several kilometers across appear above every capital on Earth, and broadcast the message "we're in charge now, but otherwise be chill and keep doing what you are doing." Working through the UN, the aliens outlaw war and restructure the world economy to provide for all. They also sometimes drop new technology that improves people's lives. They don't give a poo poo about government structures as long as they are more or less just and effective. Not everybody takes kindly to this, but attacks on the vast alien spaceships always fail. One memorable time a nuclear tipped was aimed at one of them, but the missile...simple vanishes when it reaches the ship. Not only do the Aliens not respond harshly, they completely ignore that it ever happened. In defiance of the alien's animal cruelty laws, somewhere in Spain have a bullfight. The first javelin that goes into the bull is felt by both the bull and every human in the arena. That was the end of bullfighting. Our boi early on is the Finnish diplomat who was selected by the UN to communicate with the aliens - occasionally even talking to them directly on one of their spaceships. The alien leader's name I forget, but let's call him Keith, and he has a good working relationship with the Finn. OK, so the aliens have never shown themselves for some reason. Keith has a good sense of humor and a quite beyond human intellect - just to slightly annoy Finn, Keith has apparently memorized that Finnish national mythological work that starts with a K. Finn is kidnapped one night. After some shenanigans he ends up in a cave far beneath the earth with the conspirators. The UN asks Keith if they should do something, and Keith David sends them a note saying "Don't worry, respond at your discretion, best, -K". Finn is talking with the conspirators when suddenly time freezes and Finn discovers a hovering orb behind him that speaks in Keith's voice. He says "let's get you home, don't worry about these dudes, time is going to start for them and you will just vanish and be back home. Plus, now we know who all these people are." Finn never finds out what the overlords look like, except for being really big. A time-jump of about 50-100 years happens. One thing that has happened in the interm is the Overlords mostly undermining religion. They do this by lending humans a device that can see backwards in time. When they inevitably look at religious events, they are human events and not divine ones, which is a bad knock to lots of abramic religions, anyway. Then the Overlords finally show themselves. They look sorta like the receved image of demons: bat wings, 3 m tall, several color shades. This is seen as a little weird but is ignored. Oh, and there was only ever one giant overlord ship - the rest were holograms or something. Another time shift, and we're following a typical earth couple. Earth as such is pretty cool; it's a golden age of arts, culture, and technology. Typical earth couple has two kids, and are going to a party at a friend's house. Two other characters are here, a Australian dude interested in psycic powers, and a scientist dude who would probably be involved in epic level engineering projects about space and poo poo if the Overlords hadn't taken some of the fun out of it. An overlord is at the party too, casually reading the Australian dude's library on the paranormal. Female of typical earth couple is not really interested in telepathy etc, but her friends and husband jokingly think she has a mind reading ability. Party happens, people discuss stuff about the overlords, etc, why they are here, what their ultimate purpose is. This causes scientist dude to decide to stow away on a Overlord ship. While the big overlord ship never leaves, smaller overlord ships go someplace via FTL. We also see the overlord after go back to the big ship and talk with Keith David. Party overlord is not impressed with the human pseudo-science, "especially on this topic." Keith has one of those moments where he contemplates Earth outside the window. The vibe is that Keith is sad, because he just has to wait, now, and autumn has come to humanity. Scientist dude successfully stows away, but when he reveals himself, the Overlords are all "ah, Up I see? Let us show you this planet." The Overlords have something like a sky city on a planet with ruby-red sunlight. Overlords are flying around, and we get a few glimpses of overlord society, which surprise, seems pretty chill. Scientist dude infers, though that the Overlords are on earth at the direction of...something. It's something the overlords call the overmind, and surprisingly for such people with godly technology, they are its servants. Scientist sees something that the overlords describe as a small part of the overmind, which to the scientist looks like a psychedelic mountain range that then effortlessly shoots to the sky and vanishes. On earth, all children under the age of 10 have become psychic, and soon develop a linked hivemind. The children of typical couple are the same children, but soon have moved so much beyond their parents that they do not need them for anything anymore. Keith David radios the world, and reveals all: the human race is going through its next phase of evolution. This was helped along by the subtle social engineering of the Overlords, admittedly, but that was done basically to make the process as smooth and as kind as possible. The Overlords were sent to earth by the overmind to oversee this process. Despite their immense powers, the Overlords as a species have evolved into a cul-de-sac of evolution; the transformation of earthlings is something they cannot achieve. He reveals why the Overlords sorta look like demons: some sort of ripple in the collective unconscious that associates the Overlord's shape with the end of things. His final message to humanity is "we will always envy you." So soon, all the children of men leave earth to join the overmind. They basically teleport themselves into the sky. Humanity is naturally devastated; there's no future for the human race without children. So the entire human race kill themselves. Typical couple dies when their colony is exploded in a nuclear bomb. Then Scientist returns from FTL, and discovers, well, he's the last man. The overlords let him stay on earth so he can send data as to what happens next. That isn't clear; it's like the entire earth is psychedelically phase-shifted like those mountains, or maybe the cradle of humanity self destructs, its purpose complete. Pretty sure the Scientist dies. The End. Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Jun 6, 2020 |
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Jun 6, 2020 02:13
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Moon Slayer posted:
I came in here to describe this book: The Accidental Time Machine And one of the weirdest parts of the book is when they're on a spaceship, they have zero G sex and the woman becomes fascinated by the main character's man juice floating around the room. It ends with them doing another time jump, and meeting either yet another AI, or an alien, can't remember, who can finally send them back to the past. But due to reasons that probably involved the word quantum, he can only get sent back to either the exact time he left, but anywhere in like a 150m sphere around it, or the place he left, but within a 150 year window. The AI convinces him to do the exact place, but not exact time, because the AI could guarantee he'd be safe. If he chose the exact year he left, there's a good chance he'd time travel into the Earth and die as literally part of the ground, or he could appear in the sky and fall. So he chooses the safe spot, and ends up about 100 years in the past. He becomes a janitor at MIT, then with his big 21st century brain, convinces them to eventually admit him and he once again becomes a professor, and lived out the rest of his days in the early 20th century, and I think it's implied he also becomes his advisor's great-great grandfather or something.
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Jun 6, 2020 03:57
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DrBouvenstein posted:I came in here to describe this book: The Accidental Time Machine That's it, thanks! Come to think of it I do vaguely remember that ending, but I definitely scrubbed the zero-g jizz from my memory. Anyway, stand by for a whole bunch of "monarchy and colonialism ... good?"
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Jun 6, 2020 14:37
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All right, here we go. First, let’s do some world building: The good guys: The Star Kingdom of Manticore. Victorian England in space. They have a queen that everyone likes but it’s okay because she’s got dark skin so get off the author’s back, okay!? Also a land-holding nobility with space counts and dukes. Nobody thinks this is a bad way to run a modern society. All the military branches have “Royal” in front of them and all their ships have names like HMS Indefatigable. The Navy is run by the Lords of the Admiralty except they have titles like First Space Lord. Nobody thinks this is dumb. There’s also a Parliament and a Prime Minister but the Queen seems to be the one making strategic military decisions. Anyway, Manticore is only a single system with a couple inhabited planets but they absolutely dominate trade and have a huge Navy to protect it. Actually come to think of it they’re much more like the 18th-century Dutch than the 19th-century British. The reason they’re so good at trade is because they control the Basilisk wormhole. There’s a stable wormhole in Manticore that leads to the Basilisk system but the Basilisk end leads to multiple different systems. So they make a killing on tolls and customs fees from ships using the wormholes. Despite this, guarding the Basilisk wormhole is considered a punishment duty for Navy fuckups. The bad guys: The Republic of Haven is a corrupt oligarchy instead of a noble monarchy but is also clearly supposed to be Space Tsarist Russia. But also a lot is made about how most of their citizens are “on the dole.” Haven has fallen into an “expand or die” economic model but also it’s supposed to be a metaphor for the Great Game between Russia and Britain in the 19th century. It’s a multiple-system empire like most of the galactic powers instead of a single-system polity like Manticore. Our Hero: Commander Honor Harrington of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy is: - Abnormally tall and big-boned. Later it’s revealed that she’s slightly genetically engineered. This is mostly used as a device for her to be able to eat as much as she wants for other women to be jealous about. - A martial arts master. Also proficient with swords. - She can read your emotions because she has a treecat. Treecats are psychic animals that only bond to ~special~ humans and grant them some empathic abilities. They look like six-legged lynxes but are about the size of a small house cat. They have sharp claws and teeth and like to go for people’s faces. Honor’s treecat is named Nimitz and rides around on her shoulder. - She’s like, super professional and honorable. I’ll admit it takes quite a bit of confidence to name your character for their defining trait. - When she was a cadet a male classmate tried to force himself on her and she totally kicked his rear end. But he is the son of a nobleman so there were no consequences for him but her assignments have been pretty sucky her whole career. But she won’t complain about this or criticize their system of government because of how honorable she is and how honorable it is to serve the Crown. Space: Ships use something called an “impeller” for sublight travel and a hyperspace drive for interstellar travel. Impeller, a word that will quickly lose all meaning because of how often it’s said, is basically a space sail fore and aft has to be charged up (“raised”) before use. The impeller also acts as an impenetrable shield for both incoming and outgoing fire so ships mostly fight with beam and missile broadsides. Hyperspace also had tides and currents so you’re never 100% sure how long it will take to get somewhere. This is why the wormhole is so critical to trade. Okay, with all of that out of the way, stand by for our protagonist’s first adventure where her ~honor~ is continually tested by her circumstances. Moon Slayer fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Jun 6, 2020 |
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Jun 6, 2020 15:10
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Book 1: On Basilisk Station (all the books have names like “For the Queen’s Honor” and “Defenders of the Honorable Crown” and the like) Commander Honor Harrington arrives to take command of a light cruiser. Honestly I forgot what the name of this ship was but it was something like HMS Courageous or HMS Valor. I’m going to call it the HMS Protagonist. Her uniform has a white beret to show that she’s in command of a combat vessel, a fact that will be repeated roughly a billion times over the next few books. There’s a lot of naval ritual porn (“You are relieved” “I stand relieved” “Attention to orders” etc.) that I’m going to skip over, which cuts out about a quarter of the dialogue. Anyway her crew don’t like her because she has a reputation for having a powerful noble enemy that makes sure her ships get poo poo assignments. Everyone knows that if she just played politics a little and sucked up to a few admirals or counts this would be taken care of but she would rather eat poo poo her whole life than besmirch her ~honor~. Her XO also was passed over for command of the Protagonist because he’s not the protagonist and has a chip on his shoulder about it. War games time! The Protagonist has been outfitted with an experimental plasma lance that’s the pet project of some admiral but everyone else thinks is probably going to be useless. But Honor is such a tactical genius that she uses this to win their first round in a way that’s embarrassing for the commander of the other team and they focus on making sure the Protagonist gets killed first in all the next rounds. Crew morale is low and then the ship is assigned to Basilisk Station to enforce customs patrols around the wormhole. For some idiotic reason, despite being the source of Manticore’s prosperity this is considered to be the assignment given to people the Navy considers too stupid or unpopular for real work doing … something? Fighting pirates probably. There hasn’t been a real war in living memory so I’m not sure what else the Royal Navy has going on that’s more important than guarding the only stable wormhole humanity knows about. Anyway the Protagonist transits through the wormhole and Honor finds out that the commander of Basilisk Station is none other than the noble who assaulted her back at the academy. I don’t think he remembers who she is but he says “hey actually my ship is in need of repairs so we’re going home, you’re in charge while I’m gone, peace” and fucks off. So Honor has to do the job of two ships with just one. She knows she’s been set up to fail but won’t offer a single complaint or report this dick’s clearly negligent behavior because technically he didn’t violate any Navy regulations and she’s too ~honorable~ to criticize a superior officer in public or private. The Basilisk wormhole is also close to a planet inhabited by a pre-industrial alien race. Manticore has a few scientific and trade outposts near some of the friendlier tribes. No prime directive here but they also try not to interfere too much. Not sure what exactly they’re trading for. Anyway the director of the science team says some local religious leader has been trying to rally the tribes to drive away the offworlders. The locals’ (you’d better believe they’re referred to as “natives”) religion is centered on ingestion of a drug and this agitator seems to have an unusually large supply of it so he’s pulling in lots of followers. Oh yes and also there’s a big freighter from Haven that’s been parked in orbit for a few months because of some tariff dispute. Since Basilisk Station is where the Navy sends its fuckups there’s a lot of smuggling and tariff evasion going on. Most inspection people are on the take as well. But since our protagonist is so ~honorable~ she actually enforces the letter of the law. This pisses off business tycoons at home who got used to getting around the fees. There’s lots of discussion about shipping regulations and whatnot. Also a B story about a young Ensign and a crusty chief petty officer who are put in charge of inspecting for contraband and learn to respect each other. Blah blah blah. One of the business tycoons comes out to yell at Honor and then try to bribe her but she doesn’t give in because she’s so ~honorable~. Anyway over time they find a bunch of clues that someone is making drugs and guns for the inhabitants and trying to whip them up into attacking the trade enclave. They find a drug lab with offworld tech and eventually the “native uprising” (yikes) kicks off. Honor puts all the pieces together that Haven did this and there’s a fleet waiting outside the system on “routine exercises” that will just happen to be contacted by their freighter and will then come in to “secure” the enclaves and then Haven will own Basilisk because ???. The freighter takes off for deep space. Honor sends some Royal Marines in power armor down to massacre the locals and then takes off after it but not before sending a message through the wormhole with the super-special code that you only use when Manticore territory is going to be invaded. But the freighter is not a freighter but a heavily-armed Q-ship! The Protagonist is obviously outgunned but its commanding officer is too ~honorable~ to just let them go because the rest of the Manticore Home Fleet won’t get there in time. Oh yeah, there’s no FTL communication in this universe so if they stop the freighter from getting in range of the Haven fleet it won’t be able to tell them to move in. The two ships slug it out and the Protagonist is blasted apart around Honor. Her crew has come to respect her and want to be ~honorable~ too so nobody says “hey maybe we shouldn’t get ourselves killed over this?” In the end she uses the plasma lance to do something and blow up the Q-ship. Most of her crew is dead and her ship is a floating husk but she acted with ~honor~ so everybody understands. The Manticore fleet shows up, the Marines massacre the local population, the Haven fleet is found lurking outside the system and told to gently caress off. Honor’s old assailant from the academy is in big trouble for not uncovering this plot and leaving his station. Honor is promoted to captain and given a bigger, newer ship. Her XO gets a command of his own. Now she has the respect and admiration of her crew, superiors, and government. So they reward her by sending her as an emissary to a repressive, patriarchal Christian fundamentalist planet. Next book!
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Jun 6, 2020 16:48
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Congrats on swiftly moving me from "I should probably read these books" to "Nah, I don't want read 19th century British Navy Porn in Space (tags: solo female, honor)"
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Jun 6, 2020 16:56
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Barudak posted:19th century British Navy Porn in Space (tags: solo female, honor)" Got it in one.
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Jun 6, 2020 17:01
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Book 2: The Honor of the Queen (I’m not making that up) Captain Honor Harrington is now in command of the heavy cruiser HMS Protagonist II. Her new assignment is to be part of a diplomatic mission to the nearby planet of Grayson (Greyson?). Grayson is a patriarchal, conservative Christian world that practices polygamy and is significantly less technologically advanced than Manticore, so of course it’s imperative to get these assholes on our side post haste. Everyone knows war with Haven is coming and Manticore is going to need all the help it can get. Also Grayson for some reason. Honor is sent along as head of the diplomatic corps’ escort as a way for Manticore to pay lip service to criticising Grayson’s stance on women’s rights without being too strong about it as to risk antagonizing a potential ally. This is called out as bullshit in a surprisingly progressive stance for a military scifi novel. Anyway they get there and meet with the Grayson prime minister who is something of a reformer but has a large group of hard core conservatives in his coalition that he can’t afford to piss off who don’t want outsiders giving their women ideas about voting or legalizing divorce or serving in the military and the like. I think he only has two or three wives which is why he’s seen as a radical liberal by The Church. Grayson also has a noble land-owning aristocracy but I don’t think they have a monarch. Anyway there’s problems with like pirates and domestic terrorism and such. Of course it’s a Haven plot to derail the negotiations. Terrorists attack the Prime Minister when he’s having Honor over for dinner and she and her shoulder cat kill them all and save the PM and his family so now he’s all for women in the military and alliance with Manticore. They find out that Haven “sold” a few modern ships with “advisors” to the local pirates or separatists or someone. I don’t really remember this one all that well, tbh. There’s a big space battle, Honor is again victorious despite being outnumbered and outgunned. One of the Grayson nobles was working with Haven and challenges Honor to a duel. Despite being a white evangelical society with names like Jebbidiah and Enoch they have always dueled with katanas. Honor of course eviscerates this guy on the floor of the parliament and now everyone is on board with the alliance. Honor is gifted a patch of land on Grayson making her a noble which confers some associated nobility status back home. The End!
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Jun 6, 2020 17:27
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Book 3: The Short Victorious War I’ll be honest, I didn’t remember anything about this book and had to look up what happened. I remember some of the events but didn’t know that they were in this book specifically. Haven is falling apart so they attack Manticore because of the title of the book. Captain Harrington is now in command of the Navy’s biggest and best battlecruiser. There’s a bunch of battles and stuff, her old assailant from the academy is put in charge of the defense of some system and royally (heh) fucks up but Honor saves the day of course. Haven then has a coup by a bunch of radicals who create a revolutionary government and start purging the military leadership. That’s right, baby, our Tsarist Russia analogue is now a Soviet Union analogue! And that’s pretty much all I remember.
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Jun 6, 2020 17:56
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(I asked Moon Slayer if I could do Book 4, it's cool) Book 4: Field of Dishonor The guy who assaulted Honor at the academy is fired, so he has Honor's boyfriend shot in a duel as revenge, because none of Weber's bad guys have a brain or spine. Honor demands to 1v1 him. He says "no". This continues for most of the book. Eventually, she legal-loopholes him into dueling her. She is the best shot ever, so she hits him non fatally and makes him fess up. Then he shoots her in the back because none of Weber's bad guys have a brain or spine. Honor decides to go live on the religious planet and learn their Country & Western hymns. Nobody goes to space, is fired in space, or shoots anything in space. Epilogue: Manticore's dueling tradition, which had never come up before, never matters again.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:31
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Thank you, I did not remember a single drat thing about book 4.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:32
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Moon Slayer posted:Thank you, I did not remember a single drat thing about book 4. It's basically the Phantom Menace of the Honorverse. I do not blame you. 
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Jun 6, 2020 18:33
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Artemis Awakening and Artemis Invaded The planet Artemis was once the famed vacation world for the elite of a galactic empire - thrilling and dangerous! (all carefully regulated by advanced technology hidden underground, the charming and sexually free and universally well-endowed noble savage natives were genetically engineered that way and to instinctively obey the commands of off-worlders, etc etc). Until the empire fell, and Artemis was forgotten about. Now a ship from one of the recovering successor states, thousands of years after the galactic apocalypse, has crash-landed on Artemis and found that after being abandoned by the galaxy for thousands of years, Artemis' systems have gone... wrong, and the planet has started to become something very different. Season to taste with quasi-furries, sexual slavery, the White Savior being a fully fledged Chosen One, rape, Artemis actually being Black Mesa in Space, a telepath's alter ego taking over the body of a mentally disabled child and none of the heroes having a problem with it, and the one LGBT character being a sadistic rapist.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:34
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Turns out I also remember nothing about book 5 so Dalris will take that one as well.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:38
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Honor Harrington Book 5: Flag In Exile While Honor is chilling out on Grayson, the religious fundie planet, they ask her to take command of their Navy, because serving in another nation's military is totally fine if you're Honor Harrington. Grayson is a deathworld with way too much heavy metal particulates, which is why everyone stays inside as much as possible, wears filter masks, and practices polygamy. The fact that this "completely totally excuses" viewing women as fragile babymakers to be kept safe at all times is surely a coincidence. The planet is divided into governmental districts called "steadings", which are run by a "steadholder". Traditionally, the steadholder has near-absolute authority within their steadings. Super-dukes, if you like. Naturally, they make Honor a steadholder too, because as a foreign national raised in a completely different governmental tradition, she'd make a fine head of state. Naturally, most of the existing steadholders don't like her because she's an uppity woman who don't (currently) need no man, doing a man's job gul dang it. This drives most of the actual conflict in the book. One of her first acts as steadholder is to start building a bio-dome over her steading because gently caress wearing a mask everywhere. The company she founds to do the work becomes massively wealthy over the next 50 (?) pages or so. However, midway through one of the books, one of the domes collapses (!) On top of a bunch of children (!!) And it's because they cheaped out and used sub-standard materials (!!!) Maybe Honor is in over her head trying to balance all of these responsibilities, thus displaying human frailty and forcing her to do some soul searching and delegating more of her workload? Actually, wait, no, it was a false flag operation run by the fundies to make her look bad. Honor is God, Honor's people are Good, and everyone else is either Bad or Good, but Honor has to beat them in battle to flip them over to her side first. Honor demands to katana duel the steadholder who ran the false flag operation and slices him vertically in half so hard his head pops off in the middle of the government building. There's also a subplot about the eeevil Havenites being tricky and plotting with a somehow-even-more-fundy Grayson exile group, but since the book doesn't really throw it in as more than an afterthought, neither will I. They do have spaceships shooting each other, though, so +1.
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Jun 6, 2020 18:55
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It's also worth noting that most of the things Moon Slayer is being sarcastic about are present in the books I'm summarizing too, I'm just being sarcastic about new bullshit he added.
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Jun 6, 2020 19:08
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Yeah turns out the guy getting katana-ed in parliament was book 5, not book 2. Anyway! Book 6: Honor Among Enemies Because you can’t just gun down a noble and run off to your land in a foreign state without some kind of consequences, Commodore (?) Harrington is put in charge of a Navy Q-ship and sent off the fight pirates. If you aren’t familiar with the phrase Q-ship it’s a warship disguised as a freighter. They were used against submarines in the world wars because subs would usually surface to shell unarmed merchant ships instead of wasting torpedoes. Then the guns would come out and blow up the sub. So they go out and fly around alone and try to look like a tempting target, then when pirates come in to board surprise, missiles to the face! I actually liked this book quite a bit. They’re doing this in a kind of lawless border region between Manticore and a third polity that’s only been mentioned in passing before now: Anderman. This is a militarized warrior state big into honor. It’s people are descended from colonists from China but German is the official language for some reason that I can’t remember and is probably dumb. Also a lot is made of the fact that their uniforms are pure white which honestly sounds like a nightmare to maintain but is probably easier with future space tech. Anyway they fly around for a while blowing up pirates. Haven is also out there doing commerce raiding because the war has been going on in the background this whole time, despite seeming like what the whole series was building to. Also there’s a B plot about some enlisted kid on his very first cruise being bullied by other enlisted. He takes a few karate lessons from Honor to try and stand up for himself. Of course, instead of just being jerks the bullies are planning to mutiny and join the pirates because you either an ~honorable~ member of Her Royal Majesty’s Space Navy or you’re a traitor. No shades of grey allowed in this military. Anyway the kid discovers this plot and helps foil it, becoming a confident hard-working enlisted crewmember along the way. There’s some big fight at the end of course and Honor does such a good job that everyone forgets that she murdered someone on live TV (even if he was a jerk) and then hosed off to a different state entirely despite her home being in a war for their very survival. Anderman is also so impressed they join the war on Manticore's side.
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Jun 6, 2020 19:13
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Let's see if I remember the Safehold series right. Off Armageddon Reef - first book in the series, decently interesting! By Schism Rent Asunder - Cayleb gets married, conquest of Emerald By Heresies Distressed: Conquest of Corisande, assassination attempt on Sharleyan A Mighty Fortress: Conquest of Tarot, battle with the Navy of God How Firm A Foundation: War begins in Siddarmark, battle with the Densairian Navy Like A Mighty Army: the one with the ironclads Hell's Foundations Quiver: Weber read a book about the Eastern Front At the Sign of Triumph: Good guys win. Through Fiery Trials: Timeskip, war in Harchong There's more I remember of the series, but I genuinely can't remember what happened in what book beyond the one or two big things per book.
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Jun 6, 2020 19:21
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Book 7: In Enemy Hands The title pretty much gives this one away. For the first time Honor is defeated in battle while on a convoy escort mission. This is about where the series establishes how almost all battles will end for the rest of the series: initial maneuvering and engagement followed by a previously undetected force powering up and outnumbering the other side. Usually it’s Honor’s fleet doing this but not this time. Anyway she and most of the other main characters are captured and Haven’s propaganda minister puts on a big show trial and sentences her to death for the whole Basilisk Station thing from the first book. Haven has, by this point, gone full “dictatorship of the proletariat” and everyone has to call each other “citizen.” Of course the original revolutionaries are just as corrupt as the previous regime. A few of the non-purged military leaders are conflicted about this but are too ~honorable~ to do anything about it, thus establishing a few Haven characters as One Of The Good Ones. Oh and I haven’t mentioned it yet but over the past six books Honor has been getting an increasing collection of cybernetic parts due to battle damage. I think at this point she has an artificial eye and artificial arm and a few other bits and bobs. Also at some point along the way (maybe now maybe later but who cares it doesn’t really matter) she has started teaching her treecat sign language which nobody up until now has ever thought of. They’re more intelligent than previously thought. Anyway Honor and the crew obviously escape and blow up the ship in orbit around the prison planet that was to be their destination. They take a bunch of sublight shuttles down to the surface and that’s how the book ends.
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Jun 6, 2020 21:59
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Book 8: Echoes of Honor The book starts with the good guys hiding out in their stolen shuttles in a valley on the Haven prison planet. They’ve got a camp set up and are planning their next move. Also I didn’t mention before but the prison planet is named Hades (or maybe Tartarus, definitely one of the mythological underworlds). The actual prison is a compound on an island so they’ve got a whole planet to hide in. Unfortunately the planet has an orbital defense grid designed to prevent anyone leaving and even if they did they don’t have any ships capable of interstellar travel so they’d be stuck in the system. After a while the crew manage to take over the prison compound and free the POWs. Honor 3D prints a Grayson uniform because she’s a fleet admiral there and not a Manticore uniform because then she’d only be a commodore and assumes command. This doesn’t seem very ~honorable~ tbh and the highest-ranking POW rightfully objects to this but he’s a blustery incompetent and so it’s a good thing Honor’s in charge and not him. Only fools get captured by Haven (ignore the last book). Anyway I don’t remember specifically how they get off the planet but I think it involves taking over the supply ship or luring in a Haven destroyer or something. Either way they get everyone off the planet and fly back home to a hero’s welcome.
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Jun 6, 2020 22:24
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A friend of mine whose taste I don't trust tried to upsell the Honor Harrington novels a few years ago to me and I'm glad I didn't listen.
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Jun 6, 2020 23:03
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The galactic league sent its ambassador to this planet they didn't know much about though it might have colonized like a million years ago by some kind of polity that predated the galactic league. There were no records left of that time, but people in that era probably did some kind of genetic experimentation because the planet was populated with a bunch of different humanoids who roughly corresponded to fantasy people. There were small people who mined underground and sometimes got free tools from the galactic league, and really tiny and pretty people who lived in the woods and and were a little bit psychic. So something bad happens, either the ambassador's ship got destroyed or he found out something, and it turns out one of the planets in the galactic league has been secretly building an army and are plotting to take over the pretty egalitarian galactic league and turn it into a space empire. They recently built a secret base on the planet that only the ambassador knows about. So he wants to send a warning to the galactic league but since his ship was blown up the only way to warn the galactic league is to get to the communication relay on the other side of the planet. So he explains the problem and sets off with a fellowship of the ring style party made up of representatives from some of the various fantasy analogue people and they make a few more friends along the way. His only piece of technology is an invisible suit that is completely impenetrable. They go through the woods and then cross through some mountains and have to convince a posturing king that they have good intentions and eventually convert him. Then they get like a prince to join their team and a bunch of knights who have honorable alien beliefs. A little while later they all get kidnapped by freaky humans who are all naked and have wings. Turns out they are eusocial and they just go around collecting people to eat, but luckily the heroes mostly escape. They also run into somebody who tries to cook the ambassador alive but he is protected by the suit. One of the nice forest elf people gets killed though so that's sad because the forest elves had a psychic bond. Eventually they have to go across the ocean and they mostly get separated in a storm. The ambassador clings to a log and it's super cold but the invincible suit saves the day. He washes up on shore and it turns out his friends already arrived and made friends with the locals. They thought he was dead. The local people are super scared of the evil space army who just kill everyone on sight with lasers, so they're happy to help with the mission. The ambassador and his friends manage to defeat the bad aliens and send a warning and the secret plot is stopped. However I think he died in battle or he lives out his life alone on this planet cause there is no spaceship that can get there fast enough. Everybody on the planet tells legends about him and also they name the planet after him when they join the galactic league.
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Jun 7, 2020 00:28
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Moon Slayer posted:Book 8: Echoes of Honor They get off the planet because the prison guards suck because they're Havenites and Honor has Honor, which carries the day of course.
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Jun 7, 2020 01:15
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Cythereal posted:Let's see if I remember the Safehold series right. Oh good, I was thinking of these with Moon Slayer's posts. I've finished the one with the Ironclads. I really didn't realize that the Honor Harrington series AND the Safehold series have almost the same protagonist, though. In the Safehold series, it's a copy of a dead woman's personality put into a cyborg for the mission of breaking humanity out of its stagnation. The cyborg, needing to deal with a early enlightenment civ, remakes her cyborg as a man. (In the first book this straight woman in a male cyborg's body still likes men, but I think that aspect character vanishes.) Because she's a cyborg, she has way beyond human speed, strength, and ability to take damage...and uses a Katana. The battle in that series is space Catholics (boo!) vs. space Protestants (yay!) Did you know only Catholics commit war crimes?! It's too bad the series defaults to good guys advancing technology to defeat an enemy that outnumbers them, the first book has a lot of interesting ideas. I actually thought the entire series was a social engineering experiment to make humanity capable of defeating the hyper-orthodox aliens that genocide humanity; I'm disappointed to hear it's all about murdering those awful Cardinals. The series has a serious flaw in that the good guys are so perfect and goddamn boring, to the point you like it when you sit in on the evil cardinals, since those dudes are at least recognizably human. If you like a story about how military technology changes and evolves, it's tolerable.
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Jun 7, 2020 01:44
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I posted a link to Moon Slayer's summaries to the milhist thread: mllaneza posted:And goon author General Battuta did a complete re-write of Mission of Honor that is baller as gently caress. Well worth a read, GB is a better Weber than Weber. And for long-time readers, you get to see Manticorans try and cope with a technological surprise.
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Jun 7, 2020 02:00
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Haven't read these since I was a young'in (in fact it's one of the first works of science fiction I ever read) so let's see how I do. Will is a boy in a village somewhere in pre-industrial Europe, and he's about to undergo the traditional ceremony of adulthood, a ritual in which he is taken to be Capped by the giant metal Tripods that rule the world. The Cap, a metal mesh that attaches to his head, will mark him as a productive member of society. Everyone gets one. Except sometimes it goes wrong and drives people insane, as happened to Ozymandias, a 'vagrant' who wanders into town one day. Only Ozymandias isn't insane at all, he's wearing a broken Cap as a disguise to allow him to move freely and share the truth with people. The truth being that the Tripods are aliens who conquered the world and destroyed the advanced (i.e. modern) human society that had existed before, and who use the Caps to keep people happy and enslaved. Something happens to Ozymandias (I think the Tripods get him) but not before he directs Will to a hidden refuge in the mountains. Will, along with his brother Henry, flee the village and set out to find this refuge. Along the way they meet a French boy they nickname "Beanpole", travel through the ruins of (I think) Paris, and have numerous adventures. Along the way Will is severely injured and restored to health by a local noble girl and her family, who are of course all capped. Will falls for the girl but eventually manages to escape a trap, but not before being briefly abducted by a Tripod. When he returns to the others, he's not Capped, and is still himself, but something isn't right, and they discover he's had a tracking device surgically implanted. They cut it out of him and resume their journey. There's a close call with a Tripod where Will is almost captured, but manages to destroy it with a "metal egg" salvaged from the ruined city from before. They eventually find their way to the white mountain base and are welcomed by the resistance leader, Julius. Somewhere along the way Will gets a false Cap of his own, but I forget what book it happens in. Some time later, Julius sends Will and the others in an attempt to infiltrate the Tripods' cities. There are games and first prize is an all expenses paid one way trip to Tripod Town, their fate afterwards being unknown. Will and another boy, Fritz, win the tournament and are taken to one of the cities, where they discover that the Tripods are simply vehicles, piloted by the alien Masters. They've been brought in to be slaves, and Will is expected to be the personal attendant to one of the Masters. He occasionally manages to meet up with Fritz but it's very difficult to get away unseen. Will slowly earns a bit of his Master's trust, and discovers a few key facts; namely that Earth's environment is poisonous to the Masters (and vice versa), and that this occupation is simply a temporary situation until they are able to alter the Earth to better suit their needs. Will kills his Master and is able to escape. He is forced to leave Fritz behind so that one of them can return to share the bad news with Julius and the rest of the resistance. They're eventually able to rescue Fritz, and together they all come up with a plan to use airships to bomb the cities or something. (This is the book I remember least well). They're ultimately successful in driving the Masters from Earth, but the various factions of the Resistance quickly turn to fighting among themselves. Will abandons his dream of exploring the world in order to help rebuild society.
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Jun 7, 2020 02:26
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(There's also a later prequel in which the Tripods brainwash everyone using TV.)
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Jun 7, 2020 02:27
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docbeard posted:(There's also a later prequel in which the Tripods brainwash everyone using TV.) I read that one in elementary school! Never knew it was a prequel to anything.
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Jun 7, 2020 02:42
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Okay, one more before I call it a night. Book 9: Ashes of Victory So, our hero has returned from being a POW. Everyone thought she was dead and they had a funeral and everything, but now she’s back. Not everyone can say they’ve escaped from the galaxy’s most dangerous prison. Honor can. Honor says it and she says it outloud every day to her superior officers and all they do is prove that high-ranking admirals can be petty assholes. Anyway someone finally says “hey this lady has foiled every single Haven plot she’s been up against, maybe we should … listen to her?” So they stick her at the Naval Academy to teach. Meanwhile Haven has a coup and then a counter-coup leaving most of the leadership dead. But they’re still winning the war. Until now. Manticore has been building a new fleet of next-generation ships with a bunch of new technologies, mostly developed by Honor on Grayson who have gone from being a lovely third-rate power to building the best ships in the galaxy. Because of Honor’s influence, of course. Anyway these new ships are pretty much unbeatable due to the new superior tactics of “hey maybe we should fire ALL our missiles at once by just shoving them all out into space at the same time instead of just shooting them in batches of a dozen.” This proves to be a completely unbeatable advantage and soon they’ve pushed Haven back to their capital. Haven terrorists attack a bunch of stuff and kill the Manticore Prime Minister. Honor personally saves the queen and leader of Grayson. This is still bad because up until now the Good Party has been in the majority, but with the death of the prime minister now the Bad Party is in charge. Instead of finishing off Haven like the military wants they negotiate a peace treaty. How dare they. Up until now we’ve had a few Haven admirals who have been shown to be ~honorable~ and as I said early One Of The Good Ones. The Haven leader of the month tries to arrest one of these admirals but he launches the third coup in like six months. Because he’s ~honorable~ this admiral starts putting together a civilian government. That’s right, Haven has gone from a Tsarist Russia analogue to a USSR analogue and is now a post-Soviet-breakup Russia analogue!
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Jun 7, 2020 02:58
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Moon Slayer posted:That’s right, baby, our Tsarist Russia analogue is now a Soviet Union analogue! And that’s pretty much all I remember. Love all of these summaries, having read the books I feel you're doing more justice to them than they deserve. I will say given the main Haven bad guys name is Robert S. Pierre, it's pretty clearly a French revolution analogue though. In true Weberian fashion it's not a subtle name.
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Jun 7, 2020 04:17
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Weber has written the same book so many times at this point (which I keep reading, sooo I don’t have a ton of room to mock). The Safehold series is an expanded version of Heirs of Empire when it comes to “church holding technology in black powder era, scrappy heroes must raise army to smash church and raise tech level.” The March Upcountry series with John Ringo leans heavily on the “improve local tech, introduce historical tactics, win” bit too. Slightly different, still Weber: Carrier battle group fights aliens; aliens fight aliens and fighter jets; one alien ejects and lands next to a yacht sailed by Protagonist. Turns out Alien is human and a smokin’ hot lady pilot, but Protagonist is a gentleman and does no more than leer while rendering first aid. Lady pilot regains consciousness and infodumps: she’s from the future, the other ships she was fighting were piloted by human brains in boxes that were more machine than man, twisted and evil, manufactured by a hostile actually-alien species that was losing a war with humans. Losing the war meant they went all in on a Star Trek style “do things that the ship wasn’t meant to do to go back in time” stunt to dump a bioweapon on Earth before it can be done a threat. These aliens are good at bioweapons - lady pilot’s home planet got hit with one that killed almost everyone on it, but a few of her ancestors survived and now they’re basically Deadpool because of it and can live forever and heal super fast, but aren’t able to interbreed with Original Flavor Humans. She’s worried that one of the evil brain boxes escaped and might still murder the planet. Protagonist was a badass special operations type who was sailing on his retirement boat, but he knows people, so between that and lady pilot’s futuristic weapons and stuff they convince the entire US government to pay attention to them, especially when the brain box steals a bunch of plutonium to fuel its evil plans. Big special ops raid on the brain box lair leads to defeat of the brain box, but at what cost?! Protagonist sacrifices heroically to ensure the mission succeeds and wakes up in the hospital to find that hot lady pilot has transfused him with her blood (it was a million to one chance!) and he’s now immortal and in love with her and happily ever after. The Apocalypse Troll
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Jun 7, 2020 04:42
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Barudak posted:Congrats on swiftly moving me from "I should probably read these books" to "Nah, I don't want read 19th century British Navy Porn in Space (tags: solo female, honor)" Tulip posted:A friend of mine whose taste I don't trust tried to upsell the Honor Harrington novels a few years ago to me and I'm glad I didn't listen. They're cheesy, enjoyable scifi and the summaries here aren't doing them justice. I mean, they are dumb, but generally in a fun way. Book 1: The crew dislike her after the fleet exercise in which she was saddled with a ship with a gimmick weapon system that only works the first time because as soon as your opponent knows about it, it's trivial to counter. So she uses it capably on the first day, taking out the OpFor flagship, but is then is deliberately targeted and "destroyed" ASAP in every subsequent simulated battle. This naturally has an effect on morale. The wormhole nexus is Manticore, Basilisk is the end of one of the branches and is a nowhere backwater. The Havenite plan is to foment a rebellion and be the ones in orbit to recognise the new local government and accept its "request for aid". Book 2: She is able to defeat the superior enemy ship because the Havenite commander on the scene has realised the operation isn't going to work out and tried to pull the plug, but the local religious zealots they're using as cats' paws instead mutiny and take over the ship, which they don't know how to use to its full abilities (Haven was controlling it by limiting their training in the advanced systems). Book 3: How could you forget that the leader of the revolution in Haven is called Rob S Pierre? Book 4: Lord Coward is hiding from Honor the entire time and it takes her using a legal loophole to surprise him by turning up in the House of Lords while he's there to challenge him in person. During the duel he turns and opens fire early, and despite being injured, Honor Protagonist gets a shot in to him at the same time as the referee guns him down. Lord Coward is politically forced to accept the duel challenge because Honor publicly accuses him of arranging the murder of her boyfriend (she has evidence of this because Lord Coward made the mistake of forcing himself on his subordinate who knew where all the bodies were buried). Book 5: It's the perfidious false-flag steadholder who challenges Honor to the duel after the evidence of his crimes is laid out in front of all the others, with trial by combat being a long-unused archaism but still technically legal in their parliament. He does this because if he wins he'll be exonerated and also because he thinks she'll be a pushover as she's tired, injured and he's spent his life training in Midwest Space Weeb Kendo. Honor beats him because he's spent his whole life treating it as a sport whereas her martial arts background trains her to kill. Also because she's the protagonist. Book 6: The weedy new ensign takes karate lessons from marines, Honor is only in his subplot tangentially when she tacitly approves of his actions at the end by sentencing him to a only day's confinement to quarters for crippling the bully in a fight. The Andermanis don't join the war, they remain neutral to Manticore instead of making a territorial push. These books are stupid as hell but I keep coming back to read them again.
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Jun 7, 2020 09:14
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Isn't there at least one other big series out there that's at least as blatantly Hornblower But In Space? I mean besides Star Trek.
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Jun 7, 2020 10:47
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Carillon posted:Love all of these summaries, having read the books I feel you're doing more justice to them than they deserve. GotLag posted:They're cheesy, enjoyable scifi and the summaries here aren't doing them justice. I mean, they are dumb, but generally in a fun way. In summary, the Honorverse is a land of contrasts. Also yes I completely forgot Robert Pierre. Wikipedia also reminded me that the group that takes over calls themselves the Committee of Public Safety which is also pretty on the nose. I still maintain that Haven's arc is closer to Russia than revolutionary France but it's a bit of a "you got your World War II metaphor in my Napoleonic War metaphor! Well you got your Napoleonic War metaphor in my World War II metaphor! Hmm ..." deal.
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Jun 7, 2020 12:24
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Dalris Othaine posted:They get off the planet because the prison guards suck because they're Havenites and Honor has Honor, which carries the day of course. More specifically the guards are part of the state propaganda arm of Haven and are chosen far more for ideology and brutality than anything else. One of the side stories feature a would-be revolutionary group in The People's Republic of Haven called the Levelers, which is a group from UK history. Oh and social safety nets are bad. The big drive for Haven's conquests pre CPS is consuming more world's to fund the dolists who do nothing in the core of the original Republic of Haven. They're also technologically less advanced because of insufficient levels of capitalism or something. Taerkar fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Jun 7, 2020 |
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Jun 7, 2020 12:51
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Just wait until we get into what the Bad Party is doing now that they are in charge! Coming later today.
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Jun 7, 2020 12:58
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Book 10: War of Honor So in the years since the war ended, the Bad Party has been busy running Manticore into the ground. They hate the military, they hate Honor, they hate her friends and crew, they hate Manticore's allies, they hate Haven. TBH I couldn’t remember if the Bad Party was really as bad as I remembered it so I checked Wikipedia and saw the phrase “diverting from the Royal Manticoran Navy's budget for their welfare programs and vote-buying schemes” so, yeah … Anyway they’ve also started going all Treaty of Versailles on Haven pushing them further and further away from any potential reconciliation. Haven’s new leadership starts to worry that Manticore is just going to take them all over so they start preparing for another war. Honor is doing … something. I don’t remember if it’s started yet or not but there’s a whole side plot where she and a fellow high-ranking admiral (did I mention she’s an admiral now?) clearly have feelings for each other. Problem is he’s married, but his wife was in an accident many years ago and is an invalid. Since they’re both so ~honorable~ they push their feelings deep down inside. Even when this guy’s wife proposes an open marriage. Anyway it gets resolved at some point where she marries both of them and Honor is satisfied. (heh) Another side plot is the fact that scientists have discovered a way to access a new destination through the wormhole. Turns out this new terminus is in a relatively distant star cluster home to several poor backwards colonies. Most of these colonies realize that this is probably their big break and ask to become part of the Kingdom. This is all a setup for a spinoff series dealing with fixing these colonies’ problems, which I remember enjoying a lot more than these later main-series novels because the characters for the most part aren’t demigod paragons of ~honor~. Anyway Haven has finally had enough and attacks Manticore. Haven has managed to copy most of the technological advantages Manticore had and since they’re a bigger state with more shipyards they now also outnumber Manticore. Most of their attacks succeed but of course the one system Honor is in is the only one that pushes them back. The Bad Party’s government collapses and the Good Party takes back over. But the war is back on! What did you expect, the series isn’t called Star Peace after all. Wait wrong franchise.
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Jun 7, 2020 14:06
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Book 11: At All Costs So we’re back at war. Haven has the numbers and has rapidly closed the technological advantage Manticore had. The Bad Party also managed to alienate a lot of Manticore’s allies from the previous war. Haven’s officers have also closed the ~honor~ gap with Manticore. If nothing else, at least a fair amount of the enemy is portrayed as being decent people just trying to do what’s best for their people and state. There’s a bunch of battles. Like 90% of the book. At this point it also starts to be revealed that there was some other group that was meddling with the peace talks and agitating the two states towards war. A new peace conference is likewise sabotaged in a way to make each side think the other was responsible. Haven’s leaders know this but without direct proof they can’t do anything about it. Manticore suspects but is less sure, except Honor who is totally sure but ~honorably~ follows orders to prosecute the war. This book ends when Haven attacks the Manticore system itself but are defeated by Honor, of course.
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Jun 7, 2020 14:40
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