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This collection of stories set in the world of the popular Honor Harrington series of future Naval adventures provides interesting background for Mr. Weber's most popular creation.
Reviewed by David on January 31, 1999
Genre: Science Fiction (Military)
Synopsis: "The Stray" by Linda Evans is story of a treecats, the sentient and empathic natives of the planet Sphinx, and their behavior when faced with deadly danger to their chosen human companions.
"What Price Dreams" by David Weber himself is another historic treecat story, this time featuring a crown princess of Manticore and a tumultuous treecat "adoption". In this story, the royalty is no barrier to pain or danger, and the 'cat loyalty and compassion earns them an honored place in the Star Kingdom.
"Queen's Gambit" by Jane Lindskold tells how Honor's Queen Elizabeth became the monarch at eighteen. Once again, the now entrenched treecats act to protect their friends from the evil around them, although their loyalty is hardly a match for the ingenuity of treason. There is an off-hand reference to Honor by one of her friends, Mike Henke.
"The Hard Way Home" is another piece by Weber, previously posted by Baen on their Preview Chapters page. Unlike the rest of the stories, it deals with the nature's wrath, when a group of children get trapped by an avalanche on Griphon. This one has Honor as a young officer (before On Basilisk Station), her treecat Nimitz, and one of Honor's future friends and comrades.
The last story, "Deck Load Strike" by Roland J. Green, shows a couple of brave officers in the early stage of Haven-Manticore conflict, when "advisors" and spies fight their covert but bloody wars on the grounds and bodies of neutral planets.
Note: normally, I pay little attention to copyediting, but in this case there is a glaring typo on the cover, and a malformed sentence on page 3. Such obvious errors are disappointing, especially in the relatively expensive hardcover edition.
Full Review: First I will confess my prejudice against short stories, including thematically linked collections. I strongly prefer at least novel-length works. Therefore, my ratings for this book may be lower than would otherwise be justified by the quality of the material.
That being said, the quality of the book is quite high. This could be subtitled "the Treecat Book", as they play significant roles in all but one of the stories.
This book is rather grim in tone. In all of the stories, the heroes and innocents suffer and frequently die, usually as a result of malice. Assassination and murder play a significant role in the stories, and in the end Justice doesn't exactly triumph, rather it survives, battered, to fight another day. Not all villains get punished, and the price of even partial justice is high. For a book with no official war episodes, Worlds of Honor has a high casualty count.
This book adds intriguing and enjoyable material to the background of Weber's excellent series. Nevertheless, the episodic format, and the slightly divergent tones of the different contributors, make this book significantly less satisfying than one of the full-length Honor Harrington novels.
Universe: Honor Harrington
Includes: The Stray; What Price Dreams; Queen's Gambit; The Hard Way Home; Deck Load Strike
Overall: 6; Plot: 5.5; Characters: 6.5; Style: 6; World-building: 6.5; Originality: 5.5;
Copyright date 1999, Baen Publishing Enterprises (Baen), February 1999, Cloth, 343 pages
ISBN: 0-671-57786-7 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com