Tag Archives: david weber

Book Review of “A Call to Duty”

call to duty

Cover for the Weber and Zahn novel “A Call to Duty”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

After I returned my previous book to the library, I was wandering the stacks trying to decide if anything looked interesting. I eventually came across A Call to Duty (2016) by David Weber and Timothy Zahn. It’s the first book in the four-part Manticore Ascendant series which, in turn, is part of the much larger Honorverse published by Baen Books.

I should say that I’m particularly fond of Baen, not just because of the quality of titles they publish, but because they are a truly egalitarian science fiction/fantasy publisher. They don’t hold your politics or social views against you if you happen to be a tad bit conservative (as opposed to many other publishing houses and official SciFi organizations).

That said, I haven’t specifically targeted a disproportionate number of novels from Baen for my reading list. I tend to read whatever gets my attention at the moment.

A few years back, I did read and review Weber’s flagship Honorverse novel On Basilisk Station. I had the same issues with Basilisk as with Call to Duty, they tend to drag.

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Book Review of “On Basilisk Station”

honor

Cover art for David Weber’s “On Basilisk Station”.

In my continued effort to review Baen Publications, I’ve just finished reading the first novel in David Weber‘s “Honor Harrington” series On Basilisk Station.

It was kind of hard to get into. Weber has a tendency to lapse into long pages of dense exposition, which tends to put the reader into one person’s head (more often than not, Honor’s) than into the action.

However, if you can power through that, you finally get to a space opera laced with political intrigue, the dynamics of provincial planetary plotting, and then the climax of classic space battle.

Weber seems to have a background in military strategy, which shows in how he depicts martial activities, both in space and on the planet. However, there were times when life aboard Honor’s ship “Fearless” felt a little like “Star Trek.”

The one thing that would have made his book better would be to cut back on each character seemingly talking too much about themselves. Also, antagonists like Lord Pavel Young and the ultra-wealthy Klaus Hauptman weren’t as prominent or as formidable as I expected them to be based on how they were initially presented.

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I Wouldn’t Want to Belong to a Club that would “Uninvite” a Guest of Honor

groucho

Groucho Marx publicity photo.

“I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member” –Groucho Marx

This isn’t so much about Jason Sanford and the Baen Books forums saga as it is about its major consequence: Discon III “uninviting” Toni Weisskopf to WorldCon 2021.

Once again, Mike Glyer’s File 770 (he must be pleased about all the free publicity I’m giving him and his fanzine) provides the catalyst.

Item 1 in Pixel Scroll 2/19/21 Why, I Sweep My Scroll With A Geiger Counter Every Day, And Nary A Pixel! is DISCON III REACTIONS.

The most interesting response was the first one, from David Weber (makes me think of Jason Bourne’s original name “David Webb”) as posted on his Facebook page on February 19th and quoted by Glyer the same day:

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