On Basilisk Station

Honor Harrington, Book 1

By: David Weber

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Having made a superior look a fool, Honor Harrington has been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin.

Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station.

The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens.

Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling; the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is up to something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system.

But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They've made her mad.

A Note from Author David Weber
There's been some confusion—not to say, um, energetic debate, readers and fans being readers and fans—about the correct pronunciation of "Manticoran." The truth, alas, is that a stitch was dropped. An error occurred. A mistake was made… and it wasn't Audible's fault. It was mine. Before Audible recorded the very first Honor Harrington book, narrator Allyson Johnson and I not only corresponded by e-mail but actually spoke to one another by phone. She wanted to make absolutely certain she had the correct pronunciations for names, places, star nations, etc., and I tried to make certain all of her questions were answered. And so they were. Unfortunately, at some point in the process, I replied to one of her e-mails by telling her that "Man-ti-core-ahn" was pronounced "Man-tik-er-ahn." Exactly how this happened is more than I can say at this point, except to blushingly disclose that the original e-mail remains intact, confirming to all the world that it was, indeed, my fault. I can ascribe it only to a temporary mental hiccup on my part and crave your forgiveness. If, however, you must blame someone for the mix-up, that someone should be me and not Audible, who have done everything they could to get it right.

©2002 David Weber (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

I got sucked into the series

While I do like sci-fi and space operas, this series is a lot more heavily military than is my usual read. I picked up the first book as part of an Audible $5 sale, and I'm now on book 8.

Strengths:
* I want to know what happens. The plots suck me in and leave me wanting to know what will happen next.
* Narration. This series has a huge number of characters, and Allyson Johnson does a great job of distinguishing them with different voices. Later in the series, a significant character has an injury to his mouth, and she manages to both make that clear, and yet still make him sound like the same character.
* Characterization. These are war books, but who "good guys" and "bad guys" are within the enemies, allies, and original colleagues is not cut and dried. Even many of the the minor characters feel fleshed out and realistic.

Both a Strength and a Weakness
* Diversity. Women are by and large treated as equals to men in the series, and where they aren't, it has a plot point, and is usually negative. But gender is still binary and unchanging, except for among some animal life starting around book 7 or 8. There are characters with identifiably Latinx, Asian, and Eastern European names, and some are identified as coming from planets that seem culturally homogeneous. Some characters are described as Black, although usually obliquely by description instead of directly. (But that seems oddly anachronistic for a book set 600-1000 years into the future. It seems like there would be more cultural changes, even if ethnic identities remained identifiable, as they have in the real world. Still, I think modern Germans, Mexicans, and Koreans, for example, are quite culturally different from our ancestors in the 1300s.)

Weaknesses:
* The politics. Some sections of these books feel like you have slipped into 1980s cold war era anti-Soviet propaganda. It gets really heavy-handed sometimes and distracts from the story. And the political factions still get called liberals, conservatives, and progressives, with heavy-handed explanations about how stupid the faction the author dislikes are. And some of these tangents are quite lengthy.
* The "old Earth history." It's 600 years or so in the future. Maybe 1000. It's a little hard to tell sometimes. But English is still spoken throughout the galaxy, the lessons of WWI and WWII are still critical parts of what people learn in military training, and the slang has to be explained but somehow still gets used. Nothing influential apparently happened between the 21st Century and when the story begins.

Mixed Feelings

I had this book in my wishlist for years! I had read the reviews and it sounds like exactly what I like. A nice long space opera / military fiction series to dive into. It went on sale and I finally purchased it. And it is.... pretty good? Okay I guess? The first 10 hours of the book, nothing of note happens. There is a lot of politics and talk, talk, talk. Honestly, I am not sure what I missed as the mind wanders with some much detail and political nuance. The character building is good, but the politics and science were overboard. I think they could trim 5 hours from the first part of the book and nothing would be lost. The last 5 hours were great, actual ACTION and what turned out to be a good story. Now the internal debate is do I continue the series or move on to something with a quicker pace and more action? Do the other book follow the same formula? Is this series just plane dated as it is 25 years old? If I answer any of those questions I will update the review, until then I will wait for book #2 to go on sale.

Loved the story

Loved the story. The cadence of the narrator was distracting for me, but the narrator did a good job of differentiating the characters voices.

A fan if the HONORVERSE from the beginning.

Loved it. Allison's read is amazing. He's is the voice of Honor Warrington. Must read.

a fun beginning to the honor saga

it took me a bit to really get into the story even though I've read at least one other Honor book. once I did though I will enjoyed the book with it's exposition and not terribly surprising space battle end.

Technobabble Hurts Story

Any additional comments?

Science fiction is sometimes plagued by too much technobabble - an attempt by the author to explain the non-existent science behind things like faster than light travel.

In a printed book, the reader can choose to skim over that but that's not so easy in an audio book. And it's a real shame because the characters and story in this book are basically quite good. But the long stretches of exposition in this book put me to sleep.

a very good frist book

it flow good and the narrator has a good voice her voice give you a good base to think and your mind will be amazed as you listen to her.

ok story

liked it well enough to finish the book but won't be looking for more in this series. I think this series is better suited to a teenage audience. I love that there is a female hero however. and she is a good complex character.

A credible first go!

I had read the book years ago, and came to Audible to refresh myself on the story before continuing on in the universe.

Yes, the narrator mispronounces Manticoran. Not her fault, as explained above. I think she did a fantastic job of differentiating the voices of the different characters, and once she got into the flow of the story, she even handled the (often lengthy) exposition well.

Give it a listen, I think you'll be pleased. :-)

Great

Nice action, accurate politics, great example of individual integrity. We need more Harringtons in this world.