David Weber (1) (1952–)

David Weber and Jacob Holo write science fiction that goes Doc Smith’s Lensman series one better. Smith only gave us war between galaxies, but Weber and Holo create and destroy universes with abandon.

The style is familiar from other Weber space operas. The time-traveling spaceships would be right at home in an Honor Harington novel:

“Numerous impeller contacts in the near present,” Andover-Chen said. “They’re clustered around Tesseract, too close to parse out individual ships.”

And there is plenty of eyebrow-lifting tech talk:

“It’s not the cleanest math, given that I’m dealing with realspace, temporal, and transdimensional coordinate systems all stacked on top of the other. But I think I’ve identified the overall flow vector.”

Or this:

“So what exactly are we building?” Raibert asked.
“A ‘conical exotic matter shell for high-yield chronoton storage and release,’” Elzbietá quoted.
“Whatever the hell that is,” Raibert grumbled.

What indeed?

I like the idea of resurrecting Samuel Pepys, but he doesn’t sound like himself after a while. It would be better if we got some of the diary’s “naughty bits.”

The Gordian Division series now runs to six volumes, but two are enough for me. Even four-dimensional warfare in the Honor Harrington tradition gets old after 1,200 pages. No matter how many universes get the big bang treatment, I don’t have the energy for another 2,000 pages. 3.5.… (more)

broken finger review #3:

first of all, people, i wanted to call this the 'one-handed review series,' as i'm typing entirely with one hand (at one point, my prior rate was over 100 words a minute, so maybe you can feel my pain), but i know you people and that is just asking for trouble.

that said, this is david weber's first entry into a series about captain picard honor harrington, a kick-ass woman in the royal navy that has the ice-queen routine down pat. except for her empathetic cat--i said, stop it. she doesn't think she's beautiful, being so tall and strong from a high-grav planet, but pretty much everyone else admires the almond eyes and short brown curly hair and sees a regal ice goddess. thank goodness--i just hate vain heroines, amirite? we know she's stunning, especially when she's being all authoratative, because lots of other people tell us so (hello, male gaze. literally).


she's just been made captain of some class of spaceship or another, although a bureaucrat has made disturbing weapons modifications that seem to cripple their offense. the first mate is envious. they kick ass in a war maneuver and are promptly demoted to a forgotten corner of the realm, assigned to be TSA and Customs. the current commander there hates her because she kicked his ass when he tried to rape her, so he bales back home on a flimsy pretext and leaves her with the mess. harrington and elderly Dame Kick-Ass decide it is time for order, so harrington starts enforcing rules and pissing off every smuggler in the galaxy.

so. plotting fairly predictable. pace had potential but was interrupted by long info-dumps about weapons, cruisers, military strategy, and a whole bunch of stuff about physics that i skimmed over, because vicodin brain don't care (just like honey badger)


acceptable but ethnocentric world-building of weird non-bipedal aliens (savages, the lot). really didn't move discussion of political protectorates beyond surface level.

i liked the building of camaraderie, because everybody loves star trek when the team comes together (i believe she actually had a 'make it so' line). the ending... i feel was a problem. character--kind of fun, but generic. weber jumps into various character heads at times for more thinkingness and to create tension not achieved by info-dumps.

so, how do you rate a book like this? i enjoyed the sections i read, but brain mostly turned off and i skimmed a lot. call it a 2.25.… (more)

This was my first encounter with the "Honorverse", the world of Honor Harrington. While she's a little too good to be true, I liked her--her patience with her crew, her sense of duty and integrity.

This was also my first encounter with read a book as an ebook--I read it on an iPad. It worked out just fine.

Although I love science fiction, I sometimes struggle with the science and that was especially true in this book, notably when the author tried to explain the development of FTL light. And military strategy is another of my weak areas, so some of the maneuvering and tactical discussions were a little dense for me. But those aspects of the story were well-balancedd by the plot and the character development. The crew members of "Fearless" were individuals to me, not nameless, featureless crew.

I want to learn more about Honor's relationship with her "pet" treecat--there seems to be a lot more there than meets the eye. Looking forward to her next adventure!… (more)