How did you get hooked on Honor?

An aquintance of mine from Starcraft gaming on a political debate forum mentioned the Baen free library and the Honor-verse series, and as i was at the time doing a lot of nothing for a while, stuck in front of a computer, i read the two first books online over a week or so.

Hi RoseandHeather,

I think you will like all the very strong female characters on Safehold.

Enjoy.

There are some great male characters too.

Then there's the romance.

Enjoy that too.

L

roseandheather wrote:Like Amaroq, I first found the series through TVTropes. My weakness for all things military having been formed by Tamora Pierce's Tortall books when I was but a wee thing, I was naturally intrigued by the idea of a female Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE!

So, being helpfully pointed to the Fifth Imperium's collection of Honorverse CDs (I believe Storm From the Shadows had just been released, but don't quote me on that), I downloaded everything I could get my hands on and began reading.

Several days later, I had finished On Basilisk Station. "Okay," said I, "that Dame Estelle character is sheer awesome, and it was a genuinely entertaining book, but I still don't get the hype. Maybe I should read the next one."

Then I read The Honor of the Queen.

Long story short: hype bloody well gotten.

After that, I was hooked. I've read the whole series from the start at least three times (don't expect that number to increase, given certain events in At All Costs), and individual books even more than that - I've probably read HotQ at least ten separate times, and the Honor Among Enemies/In Enemy Hands/Echoes of Honor/Ashes of Victory arc at least half a dozen.

Let's not even talk about how many times I've read A Rising Thunder or the Saganami Island books.

And now I'm making my way through Off Armageddon Reef, so I suspect I will add another Weber series to my favorites before long. (And to the list of novel series that have repeatedly traumatized my soul, but that's okay.)

Hi all,

This has been a fabulous series of fascinating and very entertaining confessions.

I feel RFC is going to show up sooner or later.

For myself, I had seen some of the HH series in paperback at the post library in 2002-3, but had begged off reading them despite vastly enjoying In Death Ground, The Shiva Option and the Excalibur Alternative because I didn't want to get bogged down in a long series, ditto's for Patrick O'Brian etc.

In the Borders bookstore in 2004, I read the back cover descriptions that sounded quite interesting, but rather different in fact from what they implied, but still refused for what I thought were perfectly good reasons.

But in early January 2005 I spotted several at a used bookstore for only $2 each that I just couldn't refuse, there was only one I had to order from Ebay before I was almost caught up, besides a couple of the anthologies in a couple month's.

By the time I exhausted all the paperbacks, I was desperate for more and bought my first Hardback; Shadow of Saganami. Oh Wow.

Then I had to wait for At All Costs in November; it was excruciating!

Then I had to wait 4 years for Torch of Freedom!

Talk about excruciating desperate pain!

I bought the Saganami Island tactical Simulator in the hope of more David Weber text- though no such luck.

Thankfully I was able to appease my David Weber fix with Safehold and the Hell-gate series when I can home from Iraq.

BTW, I bought and read the Pat O'Brian series a couple years back when I saw the whole collection in paperback in the same used bookstore, except for just one book I got on Amazon, since I could not refuse $1.60 each.

Still eagerly looking forward to more great reads in all of RFC's created universes!

L


NTM I'm hooked on Eric Flint and the 1632 series now too!

lyonheart wrote:Hi RoseandHeather,

I think you will like all the very strong female characters on Safehold.

Enjoy.

There are some great male characters too.

Then there's the romance.

Enjoy that too.

L

Oh, God, RnH...

The Safehold series has more flippin' romance than ANY other MWW universe...and of more different KINDS.

You'll think you have died and gone to Haven.

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Hi RoseandHeather,

I think you will like all the very strong female characters on Safehold.

Enjoy.

There are some great male characters too.

Then there's the romance.

Enjoy that too.

L

Oh, God, RnH...

The Safehold series has more flippin' romance than ANY other MWW universe...and of more different KINDS.

You'll think you have died and gone to Haven.

dreamrider

Pun spotted and actually considered hilarious.

*rubs hands together whilst cackling in glee*

I found Baen's free library in 2007 and read On Basilisk Station. Never looked back after that. I downloaded all his free stuff from there and then bought the entire Honorverse (even the ones I downloaded) as funds became available.

I remember when I first encountered Honor, I was hooked immediately. This is back in June 1993, OBS had published in April and THotQ in June, just come out (despite reading and rereading these to the point the bindings wore out I still have these two books on my bookshelf which is how I know the dates for sure I checked again, although these days I read it electronically or with later releases).

I was looking in my local bookstore in the mall for some new SF to read, hopefully some military preferably naval SF at that. Not only was I a Hornblower fan as well as an SF fan since childhood, I was born and raised in a major Navy city with a long heritage (and been a sea cadet as a teen) especially with the British Navy before we in Canada went our own way. I found it hard to find much that really worked for me all that well but I kept looking.

Then I see these two books by an author I had not heard of at this point, but the cover art was interesting on the two, the first with Honor and Nimitz, the second Honor in a CiC, and the blurbs on each back cover made it appear worth my while. So I bought them.

That evening I after finishing off some work details with my housemates (at the time I was part of a small business that used out house as much for office as residence) I started into OBS. After a couple of chapters in I was already falling deeply into the book. Then my housemates decided it was time to have a bit of a party, but I was so engrossed I couldn't join in, and ended up taking the car out on a raining Friday night to a parking lot and put the CD player on, put Beethoven's 9th on infinite loop for background music, and then literally spent the rest of the night reading both books, and knowing I was hooked for life.

I can still remember hearing the intermingling of the raindrops with my imaginings of the battle in Basilisk, and how the Ode to Joy came up just as Honor went into that death ride in the Grayson system. I had originally not planned on reading both in a single night, even though I had the next couple of days off I wanted to spread them out a bit, but after I finished the first book I simply couldn't stop, and that was a truly rare thing for me then or ever.

For me the Harrington series is quite possibly my favourite fiction series ever of any form, and defintely my favourite military SF series without question. Weber managed to become my favourite SF author, I have never read anything from him that I did not enjoy, and with one exception enjoy greatly (that one exception was Out of the Dark, sorry Mr Weber, but no one as prolific as you can be perfect, even if you do come damn close for me), including everything he has co-written.

Thanks to him I found John Ringo, who I also love to read, thanks to the Empire of Man collaboration. I also ended up discovering the Eric Flint 163x shared universe thanks to Weber, which has become another one of my favourite series, and all this came from falling in love with Honor Harrington in those first two books a bit over 21 years ago now. All of Webers baen books are on my Kobo, and eventually I'll be adding the Safehold series in full (only in part right now), which since I have poor health and risk lengthy hospital stays is a welcome thing to keep my mind off of such when it happens.

That is how I found and fell in love with the Harrington series and Honor, I am one of the original fans who found her at the start of her creation and followed her as she developed in first edition releases. I remember being a bit irked once it went from paperback release first edition to hard cover first editions because of the price increase that came with it, but I never stopped for a moment buying them as soon as they came out. I have over the years been privileged enough to turn on others to her world and to the writings of David Weber, and everyone I have has always been grateful for it and equally fallen in love with this ficton.

I can rave and gush for pages about each and every book, I still retain the love that deeply, it is much like one's first love, which is always uniquely different from all other loves great and small later in life if you are not so fortunate to end up with your first love. I cannot think of another series, and other set of characters and world/universe that hit me as profoundly as this one did in my entire adult life, and it has been a true privilege to have been able to find this one.

Yes, I really love my Honorverse and all things Weber...

but bluenoser, how do you really feel about the MWW?

Me? I was swimming, and there was this big hook with a cheeseburger and a book on it, and.....

Seriously, I really don't remember. I hadn't read a lot of SF in the past decade or so, but something got me started on the Ring of Fire and Honorverse about the same time, and I can't remember which one led to the other.

Old age is Hell.

But I'm planning on living to 90 (28 more years) so I may yet see the conclusion to both series.

We shall see..eventually.

Hutch wrote:snip
Old age is Hell.

But I'm planning on living to 90 (28 more years) so I may yet see the conclusion to both series.

We shall see..eventually.

Hutch,
Why do you have such short range goals? I am currently 67, and am planning on making my investments last forever - as
Robert Heinlein (I think) once said, "A man should live forever, or die in the attempt"

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Hutch wrote:snip
Old age is Hell.

But I'm planning on living to 90 (28 more years) so I may yet see the conclusion to both series.

We shall see..eventually.

Hutch,
Why do you have such short range goals? I am currently 67, and am planning on making my investments last forever - as
Robert Heinlein (I think) once said, "A man should live forever, or die in the attempt"

fallsfromtrees

The quote is from Spider Robinson - Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) A voice is heard in Ramah

If you don't mind I would like to use it as my signature