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.

Good fun...

I was looking for a series to take me through my long lunchtime walks this summer, and this series has been great so far, very fun, some interesting universe building, and good hard military-oriented sci-fi...

great

I had no problem with the narrator and the story was fantastic.

An unexpectedly well-written story.

There are some genre cliches in this sci-fi serial, and at first I was doing a bit of eye-rolling.

But Weber quickly won me over, and I found the story to be very engaging and fun. The characters were likable and believable. No one was too evil, or too stupid. I won't say that every character was nuanced, but they certainly weren't as flat as I feared they would be.

This book was fun, and mostly a page-turner. It did hit some notable lulls where Weber almost lost me. A lot of what happened on the planet was just boring to me. And at times Weber did a little bit too much "telling" instead of "showing"-- a classic rookie mistake.

The climax of the book was extremely well-done, if a hair predictable.

One thing that was notably absent was the presence of artificial intelligence, and any number of other technological advances that one would expect from a society that could build huge spaceships. This is a very hard oversight to swallow from a book written in the early 90s, well into the computer revolution.

I enjoyed this book for what it was: a book about the navy, but set in space. In that context it was really fun.

I've got the second one in my queue now. I'm hoping it's just as good.

Stubborn Honor

This a great story of a young captain in the Manticoran Space Navy who, faced with impossible situations, consistently not only rises to deal with them, but overcomes them. She lives up to her birth name of 'Honor.'

Good story, narration leaves me cold

Having listened to many audio books I find that fior a david weber book this one actually reads fairly well. My main complaint is the way the narattor pronounces manticoran, which frankly drives me bats. Frankly David Weber tends to have large expository lumps in his novels which makes them awakward for audio books. I read this novel quite a few times and am presently surprised that it reads as well as it does. All in all I wish that one of the other fine narrators found here on audible had read this work.

Loved the story as a kid, but the accents...

So I read the Honor Harrington series up until the then-current book 9 [Ashes of Victory] around the turn of the century. Loved the whole series; in fact, in retrospect - now that I'm reviewing the whole thing on audiobook 20 years later - I realize it had a much greater impact on my formative youth than I'd realized. But now that I'm hearing it read aloud - since I can't read a book while I do my job, unfortunately - dear lord, do I hate this woman's pronunciation and accents. I cannot overstate this. I'm well over 5 books into the audio series right now and I've been really enjoying my reliving of what was, for me, a childhood story. But it has been a real labor for me to overlook the voice performer's bizarre pronunciation and awful accents. God, it's been hard. I won't go into any detail, it's a personal preference probably, and if you can make it through the free preview without cringing, I *do* recommend delving into this series without reservation - provided an expansive and technically detailed space opera about a real bad-ass space heroine is what you're after.

Author great performance good

loved story. uneven performance Volume distracts from full enjoyment. overall still great. just not as good as it could have been.

great story, worst narrator

really, really really bad narrator. Characters start with one accent, end up with another. People who are speaking seriously end up whispering. the entire story devolves into high pitched squeaks and either poorly done Russian or Southern accents.

Info Dump

Mr. Weber is a passionate world builder. He has thought the ins and outs of his sci-fi world. But too much of it is laid out in his book. Perhaps I would’ve enjoyed it had it been the 5th or so book in the series, where I’d be more familiar with the setting and crave more information. But it’s simply too much for a first book in a series. I don’t need a history listen on hyperspace travel at the beginning of hostile pursuit. 2 lines of explanation would’ve sufficed. Nor do I need a lecture on hypothetical physics.

THE Dopiest Crew in the Universe!

LoLoLoLoLoLoohhhboy.
1. Despite the subject I actually did enjoy this book. Well, some of it anyway;
2. Capt Honor and her crew truly are the dopiest crew in the universe (imagine: Capt Kirk hammered to the gills on booze and benzos). Nobody on Fearless understands themselves or anyone around them — clueless to the point it’s actually somewhat entertaining.
3. Overall, the narration is quite good. Honor’s voice is, however, babyish and does not fit the image of a “hard” starship captain. In fact, Honor sounds exactly like Paris Hilton;
4. A few descriptions the author loooves to (re)use: “Her face was white with fear”, “Her eyes were hard like gray balls of steel”, “His face turned purple red with anger”, et cetera;
5. If you dig early Star Trek (pre-green screens and 20th Century tech), then you’ll probably dig this too.