You know your house is more than usually chaotic when you have to rummage around among the severed heads to find your watch.

This is the fifth Honor Harrington book, and it’s probably my
favorite…except for certain parts which I skipped.

As a result of the way she settled with Pavel Young in the previous book,
Honor is on the beach; politically, the Manticoran government
can’t afford to give her a ship. Not to worry; she bops off to Grayson,
where (thanks to her actions in The Honor of the Queen) she
is not only a planetary heroine but also Steadholder Harrington, ruler of
the newly established Harrington Steading. She’s a member of the
planetary nobility, and legally has more power over her Steading than any
Manticoran noble–the Queen quite possibly not excepted.

On top of that, the Graysons are expanding their navy as quickly as they
can, and they need experienced commanders. Which is why Steadholder
Harrington soon finds herself serving the Grayson Space Navy as…Admiral
Harrington.

All is not perfectly rosy, of course; Haven is plotting an attack, and
hyper-conservative forces on Grayson itself practically think she’s the
devil incarnate. (It’s some of those sequences that I skipped on this
reading; the characters are thoroughly unpleasant, and so are the things
they do. I know how it comes out, and see no point in subjecting myself
to evil tedium.)

The book has certain features in common with its predecessor, especially
as regards the climax; suffice it to say that Graysons aren’t
Manticorans, and that sometimes this is a good thing.

In celebration of Deep Impact’s successful mission to comet Tempel 1, we had a special event at JPL yesterday at noon: the Comets came and played for an hour in the mall outside the main cafeteria.

The Comets? You know, as in Bill Haley and The Comets? Haley’s dead, but the remaining members of the band have been touring for the last ten or fifteen years. And yesterday, July 5th, they were at JPL.

I didn’t listen to the whole show, but I did hear them play “See You Later, Alligator” and a cover version of Louis Prima’s “Buona Sera” among other songs; had I waited I’d most likely have heard “Rock Around The Clock” as well, but I had to get back to work.

They played extremely well–sax, electric guitar, stand-up bass, and drums–but I have to say, Haley was the lead singer for a reason.

This is the fourth book in Weber’s Honor Harrington series, and in its
original edition it had one of the Worst Covers Of All Time. Picture
Michael Jackson looking down his nose at you over a pistol pointed in your
general direction; this is supposed to be the tall, strongly built Honor
Harrington. Gag. However, the edition that’s in the stores these days
has fixed the problem. Alas, such changes are not retroactive.

Anyway, in this book we get to see what happens when Honor gets really
mad. See, there’s this guy named Pavel Young, the son of the Earl of
North Hollow. He was an upperclassman when Honor was at Saganami Island,
Manticore’s naval academy, and late one night, angry that she’d spurned a
pass he’d made earlier, he tried to rape her. As is all too typical in
such cases, Honor kept that detail to herself (though she pretty well
wiped the floor with him), and so he went on to be a Manticoran officer.

Honor and Young had another run-in in On Basilisk Station,
and then another in The Short Victorious War, after which
Young was cashiered. So Young feels he has a score to settle–and he’s
got his sights on Honor’s beloved Paul Tankersly.

I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that he comes to regret
that decision. For a while, anyway.

This book was rather unpleasant on first reading, mostly because some
very bad things happen to some folks I’d come to like; on re-reading,
though, though, I was fore-armed, and liked it rather better.

JPL’s Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1 is a complete success. The Deep Impact spacecraft rendezvoused with the comet yesterday, and released its Impactor; the Impactor collided with the comet early this morning, just as planned. You can see images of the collision at JPL’s Deep Impact page, and there’s an article at Space.com.

Kudos to everyone at JPL who made this happen, especially the Deep Impact development and flight teams, but also the Deep Space Mission System engineers and operators whose work is key in relaying commands and telemetry to and from the spacecraft. The ground system required to support missions like Deep Impact is shockingly complex; dozens of subsystems need to cooperate to process the uplink and downlink data and convey it around the globe so that we can see the pictures on the pages listed above.

I’d like to give special credit to the Uplink and Downlink subsystem engineers, who were on-call all weekend in case of problems–though I trust there weren’t any. Good work, folks!

The People’s Republic of Haven have a few problems. First, they’ve got
Imperial Politics syndrome in a big way–the politics of the capital
dominate the politics of the star nation. And the basic fact of
political life in Haven’s capital is that the majority of the population is
on the dole, and have been for generations–and the Dolists get nasty if
their standard of living isn’t maintained. On the other hand, the
Treasury is nearly empty. What Haven needs, decide its rulers, is a
short, victorious war. They need to go conquer some hapless (but
wealthy) star nation and use the proceeds to fund their social programs.

Honor Harrington has faced Havenite forces twice before. In
On Basilisk Station she faced a Havenite “Q-ship” (a
warship disguised as a freighter); in
The Honor of the Queen she saved Grayson from a
Masadan attack–an attack funded and led by Havenite “advisors”. But
this is the first book in which Haven declares outright war on the Star
Kingdom of Manticore. It’s also the first in which we see a major fleet
action; Honor is assigned to be Admiral Mark Sarnow’s flag captain in the
Hancock system. This is also the book in which she meets the first love
of her life, Paul Tankersley, who’s one of the officers at the shipyard in
Hancock.

So you’ve got some serious politics, fleet maneuvers, and a little romance,
all culminating (as usual) in a slap-bang battle in which Honor has to
make the hard decisions yet still come up roses while making herself some
series enemies. It’s a familiar pattern, but it works.

The July Issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line.

This is the second of the Honor Harrington books, and though it has a few
warts it’s not at all bad.

Following her successful endeavours On Basilisk Station,
Harrington is given command of a squadron carrying a Royal envoy to a
nearby system. The Star Kingdom of Manticore is much smaller than the
People’s Republic of Haven with whom they will soon be at war, and Her
Majesty’s government is busily assembling an Alliance of other small star
nations, especially those which lie between Manticore and Haven.

Two of these nations are the planets of Grayson and Masada, which orbit
neighboring stars. Both planets were settled by a single colony ship;
the colonists were all members of a sect called the Church of Humanity
Unchained. The ship went first to the planet the colonists named Grayson,
after Austin Grayson, the founder of their Church; later, there was a
civil war and the losers (fanatical hard-liners), ejected from Grayson,
went off to colonize nearby Masada.

Due to their religion, the Graysons hold to a wide variety of beliefs and
practices that strike Manticorans as downright odd if not outright wrong.
Polygamy is normal; and the protection of women is a cornerstone of
society. There are many jobs (such as commanding warships) that women
simply don’t do on Grayson.

The arrival of Honor Harrington commanding an entire squadron, many of
whose crewmembers are women, is rather a shock to Grayson society–and
equally a shock to Harrington herself.

I have mixed emotions about the portrayal of religion in the Honor
Harrington series; it’s something of a Maguffin, something used to
explain irrational behavior on the part of less enlightened people.
To be fair, Weber does portray the Graysons warmly and positively for
the most part; but at the same time, the Graysons he portrays most
warmly and positively are precisely the ones who are most willing–or
able, even if unwilling–to compromise their traditional mores in
favor of more “modern” standards. Those who choose to hang on to those
parts of Grayson tradition that Manticorans find objectionable are
invariably the bad guys. As a religious conservative, I find that
troubling, if typical.

All that said, there’s a lot to like here, too; if you have any taste
for military SF, it’s well worth looking into.

If anyone’s been trying to reach me, my home internet access has been down since the
night before last; apparently there’s a local network problem. So if I’ve not gotten
back to you, that’s why.

Update: The good news is, the net’s working again. The bad news is, no one tried to reach me. Ah, well 😉

This is turning into more of a hiatus than I’d intended, and there are two reasons. The first is that my new project at work is still consuming almost all of my creative juices; and that’s likely to go on for some time. It’s also likely that my production of creative juices will increase after a while (I’m in a bit of a trough at the moment, creativity-wise), so I should have more surplus juices in a few weeks.

The second is that Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest novel, The Hallowed Hunt, has just come out, and (as always) I’m reading it aloud to Jane in the evenings. That will end (as always) far too soon, but probably by the end of the week. Anyway, you should go find a copy.