Beginnings: Worlds of Honor 6 (Honor Harrington- Anthologies)

Star Wars Legends Book Bundle. The Short Victorious War. The Dragonback Series Books 1—3. A Call to Vengeance. Specter of the Past: At the Sign of Triumph. The Quadrail Series Books 4—5. The Shadow of Saganami. Midst Toil and Tribulation. The Road to Hell.

Vision of the Future: How Firm a Foundation. Storm from the Shadows. Like a Mighty Army. Commander Cantrell in the West Indies. The Blackcollar Series Books 1—2. The Sword of the South. A Call to Arms. March to the Sea. The Safehold Series, Volume I. A Call to Duty. The Dragonback Series Books 4—6. Oath of Swords and Sword Brother. Heir to the Empire: Honor Harrington - anthologies Book 6.

How to write a great review. The review must be at least 50 characters long. The title should be at least 4 characters long. In this scenario, proxies for Manticore and Haven oppose the same hidden enemy, the genetic slavers and powers behind the government and corporations of the planet of Mesa. Mesa is later revealed in Mission of Honor to be part of a secret cabal of about a dozen highly capable planets that are busily building a secret navy using advanced technologies at a secret planet and known to itself as the Mesan Alignment.

The Mesan Alignment's navy has new technology and conducts a sneak attack on Manticore in PD during the twelfth mainline novel, Mission of Honor. The Mesans have a year-old [7] secret program to reinstitute purposeful genetic engineering of humans and break up the Solarian League, while taking down all opponents opposing such genetic engineering. This makes the staunchly anti-genetic-slavery star nations of Haven, Manticore, and various associates of the planet Beowulf primary targets of the Mesan Alignment.

The "Crown of Slaves" sub-series books and last two mainline Honorverse novels detail the rising extent of this threat. As the two sub-series progress, albeit with somewhat-separate casts of characters, each is expected by Weber to carry the detailed storyline events particular to their astrographical region forward and tie together into an ongoing plotline concerning the massive and monolithic Solarian League, which foreshadowing in the most recent novels suggests is about to undergo severe disruption. This book confirms the Solarian League is officially now the new Mesan cat's paw, effectively at war with both the Star Empire of Manticore and the Republic of Haven, as it has been manipulated into error after error by the operatives of the Mesan Alignment.

Many of Weber's books are available at the Baen Free Library ; chapters of some texts are otherwise available online. Among a handful of anthologies, the thirteen Honor-centered novels, and two subordinate sub-series starring some different characters, the universe first explored in On Basilisk Station has a diasporal historical background for the backstory storyline , in which mankind, over almost two millennia, migrated to systems beyond the Sol system, first in slower-than-light starships, then by increasingly efficient and effective hyperspace drive-propulsion systems.

Early daughter colonies also spawned colonies, forming regional networks of related populations. With travel limited to slower-than-light speeds, any marginally habitable nearby planet was of interest, and Earth's scientists went through a period in which they regularly genetically modified the human genome for survival positive adaptations to marginal environments, such as heavy gravity, thin atmosphere, thick atmospheres, or toxic environments e.

Some corporate entities also began breeding for super soldiers and superior intellects, good looks, sexual prowess, etc.

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Long-established and advanced daughter colonies like Beowulf mounted a variety of rescue missions and initiated a thousand-year effort to clean up the Earth gene pool. For a time, the cultural centre moved off the Earth as it took about years for the planetary economy to recover its pre-eminence within its shell of highly populated, highly developed planets. By the Gregorian calendar currently in use, the Honorverse novels are dated beginning with year A. The FTL hyperspace propulsion system in the stories is around years old at the time period in which the novels are placed.

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This technology uses the ability to "sail" along a vast network of "gravity waves" on different successively higher hyperbands, each higher band giving a more-efficient speed multiplier but requiring more powerful therefore bulkier and more expensive engines to reach; the higher bands significantly shortening transit times on a given gravity wave for a given base speed, which is limited by particle densities and radiation shielding as Newtonian speeds increase.

Analogous to prevailing winds creating certain favoured trade routes, the relatively static fixed gravity waves form favoured travel paths. A lack of gravity waves in some regions means that they must be plodded across by relatively slower means. These favorite routes and desert crossing points are susceptible to illegitimate exploitation by pirates and commerce-raiding warships, both interested in preying on the rich pickings of the interstellar merchant cargo ships that carry upwards of 2—7 million metric tonnes of cargo.

Within each hyperband, ships have a local speed limited by particle densities that, at high relative speeds, become cosmic radiation. Better physical shielding or a better particle shield generator enables faster speeds within the band, on which base speed, multiplied by that band's multiplier, results in shorter journey times. Merchant ships have immense size and thin walls with virtually no physical shielding, as well as cheaper, relatively weak particle shield generators and hyper generators.

Commercial carriers, like sailing ships and freight trains of Old Earth, trade off journey time by increased size and volume carried, so as to keep shipping costs economical. Military vessels, having no profit motive and already physically shielded, also carry better particle shield generators and can attain much faster interstellar voyage times both within a band, and because their better protections enables them to enter higher hyperbands with higher local particle counts, but higher speed multipliers.

The interaction of gravity effects also manifest in much rarer, generally widely scattered wormholes , through which hyperdrive equipped ships can travel virtually instantaneously between the wormhole's end points. In some systems, several of these wormholes are found to be co-located forming an irresistible trading nexus, perhaps because their ends have some mathematical affinity: The greatest known aggregation of these co-located "Junctions" or Terminus Loci occurs in the Manticore binary star system , whose wormholes connect the wormhole junction to six later seven other star systems, giving the Manticore system an astrographic position to be coveted, and an immense revenue stream from transit tolls, manufacturing and trade, and a large carrying trade.

The stories include numerous dependent and independent polities and several major star nations including two giant aggregations of many planets, Haven and the Solarian League. Protagonist Honor Harrington is a citizen of the Star Kingdom of Manticore which is, during the first 20 or so works of the series, the key rival and the main stellar protagonist against the star-conquering People's Republic of Haven ; these two nations are consciously based on Imperial Britain and Napoleonic France, although Haven also seems to be influenced by the former Soviet Union.

The first books deal with a universe of escalating tensions and military incidents until war breaks out in the third novel and lasts until the formal peace in A Rising Thunder , the thirteenth mainline novel. Each star nation suffers horrendous losses at the end of the eleventh novel, At All Costs , during the Battle of Manticore, when Haven makes an all-out bid to conquer the Star Kingdom before general deployment of a feared 'super weapon'.

In the anthologies, Eric Flint and Weber wrote stories that birthed the first sub-series, resulting in the novels Crown of Slaves and Torch of Freedom. The sub-series introduced some far-more dangerous adversaries, the interstellar corporations of Mesa: Manpower Unlimited, Jessyk Combine, and others. This group was then revealed to be part of the even more dangerous and hidden secret adversaries of the shadowy Mesan Alignment.

The Alignment included corrupted leaders of Solarian Core worlds promoting the destruction of the old order. Mesan puppet masters are revealed to be pulling the strings of corrupt Solarian League bureaucrats and admirals in both the sub-series and the main series. Enormously ambitious, the Alignment plans the overthrow of the Solarian League, and the complete destruction of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, Haven, Beowulf, and all of those polities' historic allies.

Disruptive technological advances have been few in the Honorverse for most of the years leading up to the series; as the series opens, that technological stagnation has led to a similar stagnation in both military strategy and tactics.

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The Honor Harrington series was produced several times in audiobook format. At first in cassette 90 min format by Library of Congress , narrated by Madelyn Buzzard books 1—10 , later by Audible Frontiers beginning in , narrated by Allyson Johnson. The finale basically invents an explanation for everything that's happened that conveniently allows the hero to determine the fate of the human race. A minor plot point relies on the entire cast failing to understand the basic concept of quarantine in short, the main character completely violates the quarantine he himself put into place.

The main character is somehow a decent guy, totally lacking the inane stupidity that drives the rest of the 'Dirtsiders'. This is, of course, due to him being brought up by a bunch of people who still believe in the US Constitution. The sole solace of this story is also one of it's worse features. The only connection between By The Book and the Honorverse it's supposed to be set in is a crudely taped-on epilogue, giving a historian's perspective on how this affected the history of the Honorverse spoiler alert: This is one of the laziest ways to connect two stories I've ever seen.

Add in the fact that it's also not very well written on a scale with the rest of the story, to be honest and well it's all a bit of a waste. It's entirely obvious that the epilogue was added on afterwards and solely to tie it to the Honorverse. The only good thing that comes from it is that you can easily pretend the whole thing has nothing to do with the Honorverse.

Over all, By The Book is simply one of the worst short stories I've read in recent years. It's driven entirely by lazy stereotypes, the main character's so frikking perfect one-dimensional seems like a compliment and the plot seems to mostly rely on a general dose of stupidity. How this got into a book with this large an expected readership is incomprehensible. A Call To Arms Timothy Zahn 4 Stars Given its predecessor, it's hard not to massively over-egg this simply just for having the temerity to be decent. However, A Cal To Arms is a genuinely decent, engaging story, possessing the only moment of this book where I went 'That was awesome!

Its only real flaw is that it reads like it's a bit of a rehash of many Honorverse themes without a lot of originality. Setting the story in the early days of Manticore initially seems like an odd choice, but once the plot gets going, this really works. Zahn uses the technological limitations of the setting 'Autocannons, really? It also emphasizes in many ways the timeless nature of the conflicts that are at the core of the Manticorian Navy. A nice touch is the finale, which emphasizes the political conflicts, to produce a bittersweet ending. What works less well is that it uses a lot of the same tropes as many other Honorverse stories.

The clash between patronage and professionalism is something that's been done over and over in this setting and this doesn't do as much new with it excepting the bittersweet ending. A few extra touches, a page or two here or there could also have done wonders to flesh this story out a bit more. A Call To Arms is perhaps more satisfactory than great. It's got some great moments, but the overall story is perhaps a bit more weak than I'd like.

While this shows a lot of initial promise, it really fails to do as well as could be hoped. Unfortunately, the most interesting parts of the story are generally ignored in favour of a fairly extraneous subplot and what's hard to describe as anything other than a really odd narrative choice.

Let's get to the story's main problem. Early on in the novel, Alfred and Abigail form a powerful psychic connection, which not only allows them to know what the other is feeling, but also their bearing. While this is the story's main driver, it suffers on a number of levels. Firstly, this connection isn't even hinted at during the novels that the Harringtons have appeared in, which makes the idea a little hard to swallow, but it's also a level of psychic ability the series really hasn't shown in humans it's more treecat level.

Now while this isn't in itself, a huge problem, the way it's used to resolve the plot is. In short, this psychic connection allows Weber to short-cut around the problems his characters face. This plot point's sole saving grace is that both characters regularly mock its absurdity, making some unfavourable comparisons to bad romance novels. Far more interesting are the problems that Alfred faces outside of this psychic connection. His lust for violence and his horror at it are some of the most effective parts of the narrative.

This side of Honor's father is a surprise, but a welcome one. Also interesting is his desire to find a cure to neural disruptor effects. Not only is this a fun bit of foreshadowing, but it's also a good way of illustrating his guilt over the battles he's been in. Both of these elements of the story are, to be honest, far more interesting than the psychic connection, but they receive far less time. To be honest, I found that Beauty and the Beast had more potential than satisfaction. Parts of it feel simply trite and overdone, with a plot that's unfortunately exceedingly predictable.

It's a quick, short piece that hits a few high notes, but is unfavourably close to a story from a previous Worlds of Honor book. The short problem with this is that this preceding story which introduced Stephanie Harrington, the first person to bond with a treecat, which formed the core of Weber's young adult novel is simply better. It's a more interesting story, a better take and is simply a lot more thrilling. In comparison, Best Laid Plans has a lot less going for it. It's less engaging, with smaller stakes and a simpler narrative. Still, that said, it's fun to see Honor being utterly uninterested in bonding with a treecat.

It's a take on her character that's missing from the main novels, in particular because of the way it reflects on her ambitions. Unfortunately, this is only a small part of the story and doesn't do a whole lot to raise it up. Obligated Service Joelle Presby 5 Stars Quite simply, the highlight of this book, Presby's story is an excellent piece dissecting the institutional and occasionally unconscious sexism of the Honorverse's Graysons, managing to be something quite unique. Out of all the Mil SF I've ever read, this is one of the very few books that's really made me think.

What's kind of awesome about this is that Presby doesn't write about a great leader or a skilled warrior, but rather an ordinary woman. Claire's just a skilled engineer with some severally lacking social skills who just wants to finish her term of enlistment and get a decent job. She's only in the Navy because it offers her an opportunity she can't find anywhere else. I'll be honest and say I've never seen a character like her in a SF novel before and she's extremely welcome.

Even better for a kind of grim, depressing version of 'better' is the dissection of the often unconscious sexism that fills her life. It's one thing to read about the unfairness of gender stereotypes, but it's another thing to see a character being ordered to beauty clinics to fix skin scars or upbraided in the street about her dress by strangers purely because of her dress.

It's exceedingly well written and, again, genuinely unique. I dare anyone to not be enraged by the frequent, petty problems inflicted on Claire, just because of her gender. What really works in this novel is that most of her problems come not from genuine misogyny, but rather simple thoughtlessness. Claire's cousin, the 'man of the house', piles indignities on her because he's too young and feckless to take responsibilities for his actions. Several other characters take offensive actions simply because they're making incorrect assumptions.

Only her first captain acts stupidly because of genuine misogyny, making bizarre assumptions that rely entirely on his belief that Claire can't possibly be anything other that an incompetent sex addict. Claire in many ways is also guilty of this, having internalised many of these ideas and her rebellions against it are some of the most impressive parts of the story. Overall, I found Obligated Service to be excellent. The really good news is that apparently Presby and Weber are planning to collaborate on a novel in the future, which I won't deny I'm really looking forwards to.

Obligated Service is, quite simply, excellent, a depiction of unconscious sexism that manages to not only make it pervasive and offensive, but also really stupid. Overall thoughts I bought Beginnings primarily because it was signed by David Weber and as a result I wasn't disappointed. That said, I was quite disappointed by its contents. With the exception of Presby and Zahn's entries, the stories were nowhere near as satisfying as I'd hoped. Both of Weber's entries were below what I expected and it's hard to look at Gannon's opener as anything other than utterly terrible.

It's not something I would recommend as a hardback and as a paperback it's only for the dedicated fan. Jul 29, Kathy Davie rated it really liked it Shelves: Five short stories in the sixth in the Worlds of Honor military science fiction anthology series which is a part of the Honorverse. My rating on this would have been a "5", except that Presby's story brought it down a point. The Stories Charles E. Gannon 's " By the Book " is a clever story of betrayals, sabotage, and terrorism as sidelined members of a universe-wide government struggle to achieve their own respect and battle the arrogance and callous indifference of those in power.

And man, the power Five short stories in the sixth in the Worlds of Honor military science fiction anthology series which is a part of the Honorverse. And man, the powers-that-be must be really bad as there are so many dissidents including their own leaders as well as the downtrodden. An interesting possibility of what could occur if terrified Greenies should rise to power, and much too and Brave New World for me to want to live there: And, LOL, the manipulation of the system by the "rebels" to achieve their own ends is priceless.

It's incredible how very much information and world building Gannon manages to pack into a mere 94 pages! I gotta find out if this is part of a series, 'cause I wanna read more. Timothy Zahn 's " A Call to Arms " is part of the Honorverse and provides a window on some of the earlier issues the navy experienced. It's sad that most of the navy is more concerned with weaseling their way up the promotion ladder than in being prepared, although I suppose that's reasonable since said navy hasn't experienced a battle of any sort in over years. Still there's no reason to treat Long as the captain did, jerk.

Reading this had my heart in my mouth! The battle tactics, the suicide thrust…! Egads… Weber or Zahn might want to change that first Epilogue to a Prologue, though. It was irritating that Zahn left me hanging about the fate of the Phoenix! The Characters Yeah, I know, I don't normally track the characters of short stories, but I want the information for myself since this plays directly into the Honorverse with the Royal Manticoran Navy, and I didn't see much point in holding it back from y'all.

A fact that is not welcomed by those over and under him on HMS Phoenix which is commanded by that jerk, Captain Castillo. I mean, no one has threatened their navy in, well, a century. Ensign Locatelli is onboard through nepotismhis uncle is Admiral Carlton Locatelli , and he expects this to grease his way upward. Lieutenant Commander Bajek is the ship's weapon's officer. Brad Fornier is one of the capable ones and also sympathetic. Commander Vance Sladek is the Phoenix 's executive officer. Lieutenant Commander Alfred Woodburn is the ship's tactical officer. Captain Shapira is part of Heissman's task force.

King Edward is the current ruler of Manticore. Jeremiah Lyn is short and unassuming in appearance and works for the Axelrod Corporation; he's hiring the Volsung Mercenaries for his employer's ambitions. Captain Sweeney Imbar is the commander of the Odin.

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Captain Blakeley is a scrappy if snarky fighter. McConnovitch is a data scavenger. Captain Olver 's ship, the Naglfar , is playing the dying "swan". Which of course, I loved.

I do adore getting the backstory on characters I love. And Weber provides both humor and dramatic tension in this. The Characters Lieutenant Karl Alfred Harrington has just been promoted from sergeant and received the Osterman Cross for his very hush-hush action on Clematis. Upon accepting his promotion, Harrington requested a transfer into the Navy and to attend the Ignaz Semmelweis University of Beowulf in Grendel , the most prestigious medical school in the galaxy. She wants to carve her own way, on her own merits and is studying gene therapy and surgery.

He portrays a dilettante but is actually in an undercover role with the Biological Survey Corps BSC , which is actually more of a black ops military unit that coordinates frequently with the Audubon Ballroom. Sojourner X is a genetically modified slave who escaped; he's now a professor at the university, an informer with Jacques, and a member of the Ballroom. Colonel Sean Hamilton-Mitsotakis is Jacques' superior. Franz Iliescu is a jerk of a Manticoran with a huge chip on his shoulder studying at the university and very annoyed with Harrington's presence.

Penelope Mwo-chi is probably the most highly qualified neurosurgeon in the galaxy and the reason why Harrington wants to attend this school. Manpower is an extremely wealthy private corporation which manufactures genetically modified slaves and is located on Mesa. The Solarian League is Earth. And it all begins with an illicit field trip into dangerous territory for a bouquet of her mother's favorite tulips.

Beginnings (Honorverse) - Wikipedia

Lucky for Honor, that Laughs Brightly and Sharp Nose are there inspecting the promise, or lack thereof, of the pods that are important as part of the treecats' winter diet. The Characters Honor Harrington the treecats call her Dances on Clouds is thirteen years old and quite adventurousvery like her ancestress, Stephanie Harrington. Laughs Brightly , descended from Climbs Quickly, is a mischievous scout with the Bright Water Clan of treecats, and he has no intention of bonding with a human.

Sharp Nose is his younger brother; Songstress is the clan's newest memory singer and the daughter of their mother's sister. Death Fang's Bane Clan is how the treecats refer to Stephanie's descendants. Allison Harrington is her mother. Joelle Presby 's " Obligated Service " was terrible. Oh, it was, um, emotional enough, but Presby didn't keep it together enough for me to understand the subplots going on. It took forever before I figured out that the Grayson Navy officers were trying to scare off the Grayson women.

I still don't understand what Claire's underlying reason was for staying in the navy. Oh, it was easy enough at the very end, thank god, but I struggled throughout the story. It read more like Presby had ideas that she dropped in place but forgot to connect and smooth out. It was just too disconnected for me. It takes place in the early days of the Grayson Navy's cooperation with Manticore.

The Cover The cover is Baen-proud with brilliant colors and dramatic action as a fleet of spaceships hover over an armor-clad man racing through flames with an unconscious woman over his shoulders as the bad guys are firing at him. The title reflects the time period in which the short stories are set; they are Beginnings and take us back in time. May 28, Steven Lee rated it liked it. Another one of the short story anthologies set in the Honorverse universe. This book is the sixth collection and features the authors David Weber, Charles E. Gannon, Joelle Presby and Timothy Zahn. I enjoyed this "Worlds of Honor" book more than others in the series, however, these books are only only good as the stories within.

Th Another one of the short story anthologies set in the Honorverse universe. The story follows the life of a young enlisted woman in the Grayson Navy. The young commoner exposes the sexism and classism that troubles Grayson society that Weber has previously minimized. It takes place centuries before the core stories and reveals some of the politics of Earth in the early exploration period.

I didn't care for 'The Best Laid Plans'. The story tells the fateful meeting of Honor Harrington and Nimitz. I've never cared for the stories from the tree-cats perspective and as the series has moved forward I have become annoyed at Honor's Mary-Sue status. She might be the least interesting character in the series by the later books. It is the entirely saccharine story of how Alfred and Allison Harrington met. It's over the top and way too long.

Allison Chou's abduction is meaningless because we know she gets free and is in no real danger. I'd happily recommend skipping this one. It's set early in Manticore's history when an early Solarian plot is launched to conquer the kingdom. It probably gets simple pass for having some naval combat and politics in the story. So as you can see some highs and some lows. Read at your own discretion. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Beginnings is great anthology collection with things kicking off with a detective story and then bouncing around all over the place with great stories and introductions to new character and expanding on events in the other books!