Although I’ve tried, I didn’t quite manage to make daily posts this month; but there’s still a lot going on around here, and my creative juices are still at low ebb. By way of–well, not precisely an apology, here’s what’s been going on around here over the last month of so.

I’m still deeply involved in my new project at work. We’ve got an ambitious schedule and a lot to get done; we’re going to make it, but there’s not a moment to lose (as Jack Aubrey would say). But it’s also a fascinating project, and as the lead developer I’m getting to use my favorite tools to their maximum advantage in a way I’ve never been able to before–and it’s paying off.

The chief among those tools is the Tcl programming language; and alas, things are such that I’ve not been able to devote much time recently to my various personal projects on that front, including Snit and Notebook. Indeed, I’ve not been over to the Notebook Wiki in ages, which is extremely bad form on my part. On the other hand, I’m involved in some interesting initiatives in the Tcl community, initiatives whose consummation is greatly to be wished, and for which I really don’t have the time I’d like. I’ve planned to do some work in this area this weekend; we’ll see how that goes.

And then last weekend we bought a piano–or, rather, a digital piano. It’s a Yamaha, with “graded weighted keys” for that real grand piano feel; I believe it’s the least expensive Yamaha piano that has all three foot pedals. We got a good price for it at one of our local music stores.

Why a piano? We’ve got four kids, of course, and I’m hoping that one or more of them will learn to play; but (at present) it’s mostly for me. I don’t play piano at all well, being a rank beginner; I took lessons for a couple of years over a decade ago, and have done nothing with it since. For the last five years I’ve been playing the recorder regularly with one of my friends from work; but he had a motorcycle accident last year which led to loss of function in his right hand, and he can no longer play. And frankly, recorder is much more fun to play as part of a group than it is to play on one’s own.

I want our kids to grow up in a house with music in it, both recorded and home-made. The recorded part is easy, and as Jane and I have eclectic tastes our kids are being exposed to a wide variety of music. But I also want them to learn that music is something you can make yourself. Hence, the piano. I’ve been spending half-an-hour or more each day working through my old method books, and I plan to continue that indefinitely. I’m having an easier time of it than I did ten years ago; I’ve learned quite a bit about making music since then, and I have more patience for the technical details of fingering and dynamic expression than I did. On the other hand, my aspirations are higher as well, so it’s likely to keep me busy for some time.

And then, we’re in the middle of our summer birthday season. I turned 42 this past Thursday, an event we celebrated by taking the kids to Legoland California the day before; my eldest daughter turns four on Sunday, and had a “princess party” yesterday with a gaggle of other little princesses; and my younger boy turns six next week.

Oh, and I will have completed six full months of dieting this coming Tuesday–I was down 43 pounds as of last month. I’m curious to see

how much more I’ve lost this month.

So there’s a lot going on. All things considered, I have to say that Jane’s holding up very well–though she just walked through here in high dudgeon. She’d gone off to the local family YMCA to work out, and it seems that she couldn’t get in; half of the parking lot is closed so that they can load a bunch of buses with kids going to summer camp. Ah, well.

This is the third of Weber’s “Honorverse” anthologies; featured are
stories by Eric Flint, Weber himself, and….Weber himself.
In fact, Weber has three stories in this volume to Flint’s one. I’ll
note, also, that the book is thick enough (at 469 pages) that at least two
of the stories could have been published as stand-alone novels twenty
years ago.

The first story is called “Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington”, and concerns our
usual heroine. Before they can graduate, cadets at Saganami
Island must pass one very special final exam–the “middie cruise”. They
must show that they have what it takes to serve as a Queen’s officer by
actually serving as a (well-supervised and extremely junior) Queen’s
officer. Honor has to deal with the usual stresses and plot
complications; but she also gets to serve with one Captain Bachfish, a
man whose style of leadership she later adopts pretty much completely.
Not a bad tale, all-in-all.

I can’t say the same about the title story, “Changer of Worlds”, which is
yet another story of pivotal historical events in the life of the
treecats. At the beginning of the novel In Enemy Hands,
after Honor’s treecats Nimitz and Samantha have had kittens, a small
group of treecats show up at the Harrington homestead on Sphinx and make
it clear that they intend to travel to Grayson with Honor, Nimitz,
Samantha, and the kittens, there to establish the first colony of treecats
off of Sphinx. This short story describes the discussion between
Samantha and Nimitz on the one hand and Nimitz’ clan on the other that
led to this unprecedented move.

Unfortunately, the moment might be historic; it’s also dull and
predictable. “You can’t do that; we’ve never done that.”
“Oh, but we need to do that; and it’s a logical progression.”
“But we’ve never done that.” “But if we don’t, think about what
could happen.” “Oh. I guess we have to do that.” At least it’s
short.

The third tale is Flint’s “From the Highlands”, and it’s a doozy.
This is the story that introduces Manticoran intel analyst Anton
Zilwicki, anti-slavery activist Lady Catherine Montaigne, Countess of the
Tor, Havenite agent Victor Cachat, and the anti-slavery terrorist
organization, the Audubon Ballroom. I have no idea why the organization
is called the Audubon Ballroom; but its members are all ex-slaves.
If you’re a slaver and members of the Ballroom catch up with you,
they say “Shall we dance?” And then they kill you. Nasty folks,
the Ballroom, but one sees their point.

Victor Cachat is a particularly compelling character; born in
poverty in the dolist slums of New Paris, he enlisted with the
Office of State Security immediately after Pierre’s Revolution–because
he believed in the Revolution’s political ideology. The
Committee for Public Safety has departed in large measure from that
ideology since, while paying it lip-service…but Victor has
remained firm. And that’s going to become a serious problem
for a surprisingly large number of people. In addition to his
fanaticism, Victor is also extremely competent, quick on his
feet, and completely nuts.

Anyway, Flint delivers as usual; “From the Highlands” is rather more
lurid than Weber allows himself to be (sometimes uncomfortably so,
to my taste) but it’s a darned good story.

Finally, we’ve got Weber’s “Nightfall”, a story I found it impossible
to get through. It’s the complete, detailed story of Admiral
Esther McQueen’s attempted coup against Rob Pierre and the
Committee for Public Safety. As so often before with this
series of anthologies, the relevant details are covered in the
main sequence of Harrington novels; and since I find Havenite
politics in general and Esther McQueen in particular to be deadly
dull there was just no point in putting myself through it.
Your mileage may vary; if I’d read the anthology when it first
came out, the story would have been new to me and I’d probably
have enjoyed it more.

This is the second of Weber’s “Honorverse” anthologies; the contributors
this time are Linda Evans, Jane Lindskold,
Roland Green, and David Weber himself.

The book opens with a tale by Linda Evans called “The Stray”. It’s
another story of the early days of men and treecats,
and takes place a few years after Stephanie Harrington became the first
treecat adoptee. It’s also a tale of murder and corporate greed; indeed,
this tale includes the earliest mention I’ve noticed of genetic slavers
Manpower Unlimited. It’s not bad, although the “Big Corporations Are
Evil” meme has been overused of late.

Next up is “What Price Dreams?” by Weber himself. Roger II is king of
Manticore at the this time, and his daughter Princess Adrienne is making
a royal visit to Sphinx. King Roger’s out of sorts with Sphinx, and with
treecats, and especially with the Sphinx Forestry Service; thanks largely
to the late Stephanie Harrington, large tracts of what were previously
Crown land on Sphinx are being held in perpetuity for the treecats, and
hence are unavailable to be given out as rewards to Roger’s political
allies. The power of the monarchy is under assault, and Roger needs all
the friends he can get. The last thing he needs is for his daughter to be
adopted by a treecat….

I’m afraid that “What Price Dreams?” was somewhat predictable, but heck, I
enjoyed it anyway.

Next is “Queen’s Gambit” by Jane Lindskold, which tells of the
assassination of King Roger III and his daughter’s
accession to the throne of Manticore as Queen Elizabeth III. Not a bad
story, all around, though it has the misfortune that many of the
pertinent details are summarized in one of the main-line Harrington
novels. As a result, I knew more-or-less what was going to happen before
I read it.

Then comes “The Hard Way Home”, again by David Weber, which is a tale of
Honor Harrington as a young officer. An avalanche buries a good bit of
a ski resort on Gryphon; a contingent of Manticoran Marines are practicing
drops nearby and immediately move to aid the rescue efforts. Along the
way Harrington has to deal with yet another obnoxious friend of her old
nemesis Pavel Young.

Finally, we have “Deck Load Strike” by Roland J. Green, a tale of a unit
of Manticoran Marines serving as advisors in a bush-conflict on a minor
planet rather far away from Manticore; Haven, naturally, is supporting
the other side. I liked this one least of all the stories in the book,
though it has the advantage that it involves new characters and settings.

All-in-all, not a bad outing.

Back in 1998, Weber began to allow other authors to write short works set
in the same universe as his Honor Harrington series–that is, in what’s
since become known as the “Honorverse”. Many of these stories have
introduced characters and bits of history that have later appeared in
the main sequence of the series. This is the first book of such
works; it includes one tale each by David Drake,
S.M. Stirling, and by Weber himself, including a lengthy
pieces on the series background; this latter is, I imagine, the place
where Weber goes to look stuff so that he doesn’t make foolish mistakes.

The first tale is called “A Beautiful Friendship”; it concerns the first
contact between humans and treecats on the planet Sphinx. Although
Honor Harrington herself is always accompanied by her treecat, who is
officially known as “Nimitz” and affectionately known as “Stinker”, I
haven’t said much about the treecats in this series of reviews. I shall
rectify that now.

Treecats are long, six-legged, and furry; they have a vaguely feline
heads, but their bodies look more like a weasels. They are as
intelligent as humans, but communicate telepathically with each other.
They can’t generally communicate telepathically with humans, but they can
feel human emotions. And certain treecats like the feel of human
emotions so much that they will seek out compatible humans and “adopt”
them. The bond between a treecat and his adopted human is such that if
either dies, the other is likely to pine away. Treecats often have
wicked senses of humor, and they’re sudden death in hand-to-hand combat.

Anyway, “A Beautiful Friendship” tells of how a young girl named
Stephanie Harrington, Honor’s ancestor, became the first human to be
adopted by a treecat; and though I find the whole idea of treecats to be
a little cutesy–it’s really just a veiled reflection of our culture’s
fascination with Love At First Sight–I enjoyed the story thoroughly.

The next tale, “A Grand Tour”, is by David Drake. It concerns a
Manticoran’s noble on a grand tour to see archaeological relics; and his
encounter with a scurrilous fellow with an appalling excavation
technique. This one has had no effect on the main series, which is a
great pity.

The final tale, “A Whiff of Grapeshot”, is by S.M. Stirling; it introduces the
Havenite admiral Esther McQueen, and tells how she saved Rob Pierre and
the rest of the Committee for Public Safety from armed uprising. McQueen
goes on to become a major character in Weber’s later novels, so Stirling
can be justifiably proud. The only trouble is, I read the later novels
before I read this story; and as one of those novels summarizes the
events told herein I found the story rather dull.

All-in-all, not bad; out of three stories, I quite enjoyed two of them.

This is the most recent book in the Honor Harrington series, and in most
ways the least satisfying to date. It’s simply not that pleasant
watching idiots fail by the numbers.

Manticore’s Centrist party lost power near the end of the previous book,
and following Manticoran tradition the Opposition parties were given the
chance to form a coalition government. And so they did–an unholy
alliance of the far right and far left, whose leaders were motivated by a
single goal: to gain power and to keep it for as long as possible. And
so for this entire book, we get to watch the new Prime Minister of
Manticore and his cabinet pissing away (you should excuse the expression)
all of the political and military gains of the last ten years for their
own personal political benefit, while compromising most of their supposed
principles.

This is one book that would really benefit from some serious trimming.
The main plot is explored in tedious and painful detail; it would really
have made a much better subplot while something more interesting was going
on.

The book does have a few high points; it’s not a total loss. And as with
its predecessor, if you’ve come this far in the series you’ll want to know
what happens next. But I sure hope the next book won’t be more of the
same.

I find I have to elaborate on my review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I described it as a quiet book, with rather less action than its predecessor, and this is true. On the surface. In point of fact, there’s quite a bit of action going on quietly, under the surface. We can’t see it happening, but the signs are plain to see.

This is the book in which Harry Potter grows up.

He still has trouble with his temper, but he’s beginning to learn to moderate it.

He’s learning when to be patient, and when to step in.

He’s learning to trust others to take care of themselves.

He’s learning compassion.

He’s learning to be upfront with those he cares about.

He’s learning to do the job that’s in front of him.

He’s learning not to be jealous of other people’s achievements.

He’s learning who he is, and what his task is.

At the beginning of the book, he’s still confused and unsure. At the end, he’s looking toward the future (and not a very nice one) clearly and with open eyes.

He’s a lot more mature, is our Harry.

Oh, my. That’s all; oh, my.

In many ways this book is less action-packed than its immediate
predecessor (and shorter, too); most of the story takes place at
Hogwarts, and for most of the book Hogwarts is a reasonably peaceful
place. There’s more teen angst and bickering, and a few delightful teen
victories–oh, and Harry spends quite a bit of time working with Dumbledore.
Doesn’t sound like much, put that way, but the book works, it definitely
works, even if it has a quieter tone than some of the others.

Of course, there’s always a lull before the storm….

Oh, my.

This is the next book about Honor Harrington, except that it isn’t really
about Honor Harrington. As a result of the rigors of her capture and
escape, she spends most of this book in rehab and on light-duty–teaching
at Saganami Island, Manticore’s naval academy. And of course she mostly
saves the day at the end of the book. We visit with her periodically.

The book is partially about the fruit of Honor’s tactical experiments in
Honor Among Enemies and Admiral White Haven’s execution of
(what should have been) the final phases of the war with Haven.

But mostly, it’s about Honor’s honorable opponents, those men and women
in Haven’s navy who are now fighting a double war–not only an open war
with Manticore, but also a covert war to preserve their nation from the
fanatics who now rule her.

And everything’s beginning to look nice and shiny,
and then it happens. I’d tell you precisely what happens, except that Weber
kindly devoted the whole next book to it so you’ll have to wait until the
next review.

Anyway, there was much of interest in this episode; there were a number
of things that annoyed me, including a subplot I have a real distaste for;
and there were a lot of extra words. In short, it’s worth reading if
you’ve read the previous books and want to know what happens next, but
there’s nothing special about it.

The Honor Harrington books have never been solely about Honor Harrington;
her adversaries and the various players in the governments of Manticore
and Haven have always had their turn on the stage. But starting with this
book, Weber ups the volume. I mean that literally; it’s longer than its
predecessors and although it’s nominally about Honor’s escape from Hell,
the prison planet run by Haven’s Office of State Security, at least half
of it is devoted to a variety of goings on in other places. It’s a fine
book, and I enjoyed it; but I fear the cast might be getting a bit too
large, and I suspect a little judicious cutting would have made it a
better book. It’s not so bad here, but becomes more pronounced in later
books.

There’s a park near our house where we sometimes go for walks. I was there a couple of weeks ago with my younger son, and noticed quite a few ant hills. Some were populated by little teeny black ants, but most of the ones I saw were populated by big red ants–they were about 3/8’s of an inch long.

Tonight we went back for another walk, and followed the same trail. I kept an eye out for ants, and although I spotted quite a few black ants, I only saw a few red ants–a solitary scout here and there, but that was it. Except for one place, where there was a red ant hill and a black ant hill about eighteen inches apart. There are black ants all over the place, and the red ants I could see were so aggravated they were practically vibrating in place. They were trying to attack the little black ants, I think, but they didn’t seem to be making much headway. And they were far fewer in number than the black ants.

Now perhaps there were buckets of red ants hiding out underground; I saw a lot of holes with no activity. It’s possible. But it looks to me like the black ants were involved in some ethnic cleansing, with remarkable success. I’ll be curious to go back in another couple of weeks and so how things have changed.