This is the 8th Honorverse anthology. While the cover claims that the
stories are from the earliest days of the Star Kingdom of Manticore,
IMHO, 2 of the 5 stories don?t qualify. However, those 2 stories do
feature two heroes of the RMN.
?One Controllable Step? by Marisa Wolf(1)
A Beowulf medical team travels to Manticore to help fight the Plague.
They succeeded in creating a vaccine for it, though several team members
died the disease. The Bassingford that the RMN?s chief medical center is
named after appears. BTW, the vaccine they developed failed several
years later when the virus mutated again.
?Deadly Delusions? by Jane Lindskold
This is a prequel of ?The Stray? (which appeared in the 2nd anthology,
_Worlds of Honor_, written by the late Linda Evans). We meet the people
who were killed in that story in more happy times and two sisters, one
of which had an imagination that could be described as excessive.
?The Great Condiment Caper? by Jacob Holo(2) with Thomas Pope
Ensign Edward Saganami, assigned to the Stores Division of the RMN?s
first Dreadnought, the?Ad Astra?, is ordered to help look for a missing
pallet of barbecue sauce (600 liters worth). Since this takes place
years after the first passage through the Manticore Junction, I don?t
consider this to be early Star Kingdom, struggling to survive. This is a
baby titan, growing like a weed. BTW, Ensign Saganami found the pallet
and impressed his superior and a chief petty officer in doing so.
?XO? by Daniel Allen Butler
Lt. Commander Ellen D?Orville takes command of an RMN frigate when the
captain collapses due to a medical emergency (this takes place several
decades after the previous story). The baby titan I referred to in the previous story is now old enough to kick ass and take names (which it
had done several years before in Silesia). D?Orville has the opportunity
to do some kicking and name taking herself and does so. However, this
was in somebody else?s star system whose government was loudly annoyed
(but several members of said government were privately thankful for her intervention).
?Crystal Singer?s Song? by David Weber
This takes place a couple of decades after ?One Controllable Step?.
Aldona (I believe that is her on the cover), a member of the Sphinx
Forestry Service, is delivering emergency supplies during a major storm.
Her transport is hit by a lightning bolt which took out all navigation equipment; she ended up lost over the ocean and crashing on an unnamed
island. There she discovers a colony of treecats (note that this is
several decades before Stephanie Harrington discovered them) - how they
got there is a different epic of survival. She spends the rest of her
50+ years of life there, teaching the treecats some relatively advanced techniques, such as spears and spear throwers, primitive agriculture,
pottery wheels, and klln-firing pottery. This is contained inside an
envelope story (3) involving Honor Harrington (said unnamed island had
been noticed and the treecat colony contacted several years before).
IMHO, this envelope weakens the story.
Notes:
1) I have heard that Marisa Wolf will be replacing the late Eric Flint
as the co-author of the books dealing directly with the Mesan Alignment.
2) I have heard that Jacob Holo will be writing more Edward Saganami
stories.
3) There is a reason why Honor was involved, but IMHO it would had been
better as part of an epilogue. BTW, upon consideration, I find it ?
difficult ? to accept the premise that NOBODY had visited that island
(and it was fairly large, between Sicily and Tasmania in size) for more
then 4 centuries after Aldona crashed there. I don?t care how close it
is to the southern ice-cap of Sphinx. It had forests and thus was part
of the responsibility of the Sphinx Forestry Service.
--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_. ?-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward
robertaw@drizzle.com
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