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kathydavie's review
4.0
Interesting collection of short stories. The first, A Beautiful Friendship tells the tale of how the first treecat met Honor's ancestor, Stephanie Harrington.
David Drake's A Grand Tour was a lovely bit of revenge on two fronts---against dishonorable Peeps and an artifact-stealing Duke.
S. M. Stirling's Whiff of Grapeshot finally provides the background on Esther McQueen's fateful decision in the attack of the Levelers against the Committee of Public Safety in Nouveau Paris.
Lastly, Weber's Universe of Honor Harrington provides the background on the science and history of the evolution of space ships and the colonization of the universe.
David Drake's A Grand Tour was a lovely bit of revenge on two fronts---against dishonorable Peeps and an artifact-stealing Duke.
S. M. Stirling's Whiff of Grapeshot finally provides the background on Esther McQueen's fateful decision in the attack of the Levelers against the Committee of Public Safety in Nouveau Paris.
Lastly, Weber's Universe of Honor Harrington provides the background on the science and history of the evolution of space ships and the colonization of the universe.
readermeginco's review
3.0
As with any anthology, the stories were mixed. I enjoyed this entry in the Honorverse, especially the pieces by Weber himself.
ameliapancake's review
2.0
Waste of time. First story is just the first few chapters of A Beautiful Friendship. Second story was boring AF. Third story was actually mildly interesting. Last section was a bunch of dry data that I thought was pretty interesting and is why this book gets two stars instead of one star. I highly recommend skipping this one.
kejadlen's review
3.0
3/5 - I liked getting the backstory for how Stephanie Harrington discovered the treecats, as well as what McQueen did to stop the Levelers. All the stories were fun, but I was pretty disappointed with the ending of the second one, which really didn't make any sense and came out of nowhere. Although if nothing else, this is worth it for the technical appendix at the end!
katmarhan's review against another edition
3.0
I really liked the first story about Honor's ancestor and the first contact with the tree cats on Sphinx, as well as the third story about the Levellers' uprising in Nouveau Paris. The second story, about the scientists studying pre-human spacefarers' artifacts, with a standoff between the Peeps and Manticore thrown in, seemed like it would make the basis for a longer and more fleshed-out book rather than contributing to our understanding of the Honorverse. I even read the giant info dump at the end of the book and actually learned a lot. It was helpful to understand the colonization process and the history of both Manticore and Haven.
tome15's review
4.0
Weber, David, David Drake, and S. M. Stirling. More than Honor. Worlds of Honor No. 1. Baen, 1997.
In the Golden Age of science fiction, publishers often farmed out successful genre series to many low-paid writers, seldom good, mostly bad or indifferent. Tom Swift, for instance, is the creation of many different hands, most of whom are known for nothing else. At least one publisher created a whole fake biography for a phony French writer of routine space opera. These days, we are well used to television and movie series farming out novelizations to multiple writers, sometimes pretty good writers. Alan Dean Foster comes to mind, and many others made a small pile in the Star Trek and Star Wars worlds. More recently, icons of science fiction like Larry Niven have begun doing the same thing, attracting well-established writers to continue and develop their fictional worlds. There may be more Known Space stories now by others than by Niven. The Honorverse is a good example of the trend. Stirling has his own successful postapocalyptic series of Emberverse novels, and Drake is himself an icon of military science fiction. It is no surprise that these stories do such a good job of setting up the world that you could begin your reading of Harrington stories with them. The first story by Weber about the Harrington family’s first contact with treecats is a very logical place to begin the series. Enjoy.
In the Golden Age of science fiction, publishers often farmed out successful genre series to many low-paid writers, seldom good, mostly bad or indifferent. Tom Swift, for instance, is the creation of many different hands, most of whom are known for nothing else. At least one publisher created a whole fake biography for a phony French writer of routine space opera. These days, we are well used to television and movie series farming out novelizations to multiple writers, sometimes pretty good writers. Alan Dean Foster comes to mind, and many others made a small pile in the Star Trek and Star Wars worlds. More recently, icons of science fiction like Larry Niven have begun doing the same thing, attracting well-established writers to continue and develop their fictional worlds. There may be more Known Space stories now by others than by Niven. The Honorverse is a good example of the trend. Stirling has his own successful postapocalyptic series of Emberverse novels, and Drake is himself an icon of military science fiction. It is no surprise that these stories do such a good job of setting up the world that you could begin your reading of Harrington stories with them. The first story by Weber about the Harrington family’s first contact with treecats is a very logical place to begin the series. Enjoy.
peregrineace's review against another edition
4.0
The first Honorverse short story collection, with 3 stories and 1 in-universe essay.
"A Beautiful Friendship" is a fun tale about the first treecat-human bonding. Longtime Honor Harrington readers will be unsurprised to discover that the first bonded human was Honor's direct ancestor. This story adds to the Honorverse, showing more of treecat society than any previous book, which helps with the understanding of later, mainstream novels.
"A Grand Tour" was sort of odd. Ostensibly about an extension of the Manticoran-Peep war, it nonetheless involved a confusing number of (fairly useless) parties. The most interesting part of the story, the long-lost Alphane society which forms the spine of the story, never really develops.
"A Whiff of Grapeshot" could be taken straight out of the pages of HH#7, In Enemy Hands, which is impressive because Weber didn't write it (S. M. Stirling contributes). Telling the story of Esther McQueen's defeat of the Leveler uprising on Haven, it is very informative as to her character motivations in HH#7 and later.
The last entry, an essay titled "The Universe of Honor Harrington", contains some background information about Manticore, Haven, the Solarian League, and their technology, history, politics, and economics. It's slow reading but useful for dedicated fans of the series.
Overall, the collection is only for established fans of Honor Harrington. Worth one read through; later short story collections from this series offer better fare.
"A Beautiful Friendship" is a fun tale about the first treecat-human bonding. Longtime Honor Harrington readers will be unsurprised to discover that the first bonded human was Honor's direct ancestor. This story adds to the Honorverse, showing more of treecat society than any previous book, which helps with the understanding of later, mainstream novels.
"A Grand Tour" was sort of odd. Ostensibly about an extension of the Manticoran-Peep war, it nonetheless involved a confusing number of (fairly useless) parties. The most interesting part of the story, the long-lost Alphane society which forms the spine of the story, never really develops.
"A Whiff of Grapeshot" could be taken straight out of the pages of HH#7, In Enemy Hands, which is impressive because Weber didn't write it (S. M. Stirling contributes). Telling the story of Esther McQueen's defeat of the Leveler uprising on Haven, it is very informative as to her character motivations in HH#7 and later.
The last entry, an essay titled "The Universe of Honor Harrington", contains some background information about Manticore, Haven, the Solarian League, and their technology, history, politics, and economics. It's slow reading but useful for dedicated fans of the series.
Overall, the collection is only for established fans of Honor Harrington. Worth one read through; later short story collections from this series offer better fare.
leons1701's review
3.0
The first of the Honor Harrington anthologies, it establishes a number of traditions. There's a decent David Weber story, a story about treecats (in this case the same story), a Havenite story, and one story that barely fits at all.
A Beautiful Friendship is the Weber and the treecat story and it's quite good. It's the story of the first meeting between humans and treecats and as alluded to in Honor Among Enemies, it's one of Honor's ancestors that first discovers them. Because celery, of course. At least we get a sort of explanation for why treecats love the stuff so much. This was later expanded into a YA novel of the same name (and reasonably well at that).
The Grand Tour by David Drake is sadly the piece that really doesn't fit. It's not a BAD story, but it has only the most vestigial connections to the Honorverse and not one element from it, not even the 'Dole Fleet', ever appears again. The chief point of interest here is that Drake clearly took the ideas from this story and reworked them into something more his own a few years later when he wrote With the Lightnings and kicked off the Leary/Mundy series. If you read both, you'll clearly see exactly what I'm talking about, the characters here are prototypes of the main characters of that series.
A Whiff of Grapeshot by S. M. Stirling fills in a bit of the unrest in the People's Republic and fills the role of Havenite story. Stirling gives us some more background on the rise of Esther McQueen (an obvious suspect to be the Napoleon expy). A brutal story, a bit darker than most Honorverse works (hey, it's Stirling, goes with the territory) but a fine piece nonetheless.
The final part of the book is an overview of the tech and historical background for the Honorverse. Generally only of interest to those who like seeing the glossed over details of a background, but quite interesting for them for the most part.
A Beautiful Friendship is the Weber and the treecat story and it's quite good. It's the story of the first meeting between humans and treecats and as alluded to in Honor Among Enemies, it's one of Honor's ancestors that first discovers them. Because celery, of course. At least we get a sort of explanation for why treecats love the stuff so much. This was later expanded into a YA novel of the same name (and reasonably well at that).
The Grand Tour by David Drake is sadly the piece that really doesn't fit. It's not a BAD story, but it has only the most vestigial connections to the Honorverse and not one element from it, not even the 'Dole Fleet', ever appears again. The chief point of interest here is that Drake clearly took the ideas from this story and reworked them into something more his own a few years later when he wrote With the Lightnings and kicked off the Leary/Mundy series. If you read both, you'll clearly see exactly what I'm talking about, the characters here are prototypes of the main characters of that series.
A Whiff of Grapeshot by S. M. Stirling fills in a bit of the unrest in the People's Republic and fills the role of Havenite story. Stirling gives us some more background on the rise of Esther McQueen (an obvious suspect to be the Napoleon expy). A brutal story, a bit darker than most Honorverse works (hey, it's Stirling, goes with the territory) but a fine piece nonetheless.
The final part of the book is an overview of the tech and historical background for the Honorverse. Generally only of interest to those who like seeing the glossed over details of a background, but quite interesting for them for the most part.
shadrachanki's review
3.0
As is often the case with collections of short fiction, I enjoyed some parts of this book better than others.
A Beautiful Friendship (David Weber)
I really liked this story, which chronicles the first meeting between humans and treecats. David Weber later expanded this story into a YA novel with the same title, and as soon as I finished reading this version I went onto the Baen website to purchase and download the novel so I could read it too. I liked seeing more of the treecats as full-fledged characters.
A Grand Tour (David Drake)
This was my least favourite portion of the anthology. It wasn't badly written, but it seemed only tangentially connected to the rest of the Honor Harrington universe. It really seemed like it could have easily been dropped into another science fiction universe simply by changing the names of a few places and groups of people.
A Whiff of Grapeshot (S.M. Stirling)
This short story fills in background for an event that was mentioned more or less in passing in the book [b:In Enemy Hands|77740|In Enemy Hands (Honor Harrington, #7)|David Weber|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1321561738s/77740.jpg|2684782]. I liked this one a lot, and the events it covered really work best in short story format rather than as part of a novel as a whole.
The Universe of Honor Harrington (David Weber)
And this one read like a history book. Which, to be fair, is more or less what it is, so it fulfils its purpose in that regard. I enjoyed it for the background information it provides, but it isn't really a story. It was a slow read, and probably not strictly necessary, but for people who will read through all the appendix information and footnotes in various books because they find them fascinating this is an excellent addition. I do like how well everything hangs together.
Out of the collection as a whole, my favourite part was definitely A Beautiful Friendship.
A Beautiful Friendship (David Weber)
I really liked this story, which chronicles the first meeting between humans and treecats. David Weber later expanded this story into a YA novel with the same title, and as soon as I finished reading this version I went onto the Baen website to purchase and download the novel so I could read it too. I liked seeing more of the treecats as full-fledged characters.
A Grand Tour (David Drake)
This was my least favourite portion of the anthology. It wasn't badly written, but it seemed only tangentially connected to the rest of the Honor Harrington universe. It really seemed like it could have easily been dropped into another science fiction universe simply by changing the names of a few places and groups of people.
A Whiff of Grapeshot (S.M. Stirling)
This short story fills in background for an event that was mentioned more or less in passing in the book [b:In Enemy Hands|77740|In Enemy Hands (Honor Harrington, #7)|David Weber|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1321561738s/77740.jpg|2684782]. I liked this one a lot, and the events it covered really work best in short story format rather than as part of a novel as a whole.
The Universe of Honor Harrington (David Weber)
And this one read like a history book. Which, to be fair, is more or less what it is, so it fulfils its purpose in that regard. I enjoyed it for the background information it provides, but it isn't really a story. It was a slow read, and probably not strictly necessary, but for people who will read through all the appendix information and footnotes in various books because they find them fascinating this is an excellent addition. I do like how well everything hangs together.
Out of the collection as a whole, my favourite part was definitely A Beautiful Friendship.
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