Spin off books

I have read all the mainstream Honor books and absolutely loved them. Can I say however that on my second read through while awaiting the new book, I decided to read them in chronological order with the side novels.
I can't overemphasis the way that it enriches the experience, especially in Mission of Honor. There are so many references to the side novels that I missed that is literally like reading a new book.
So I guess what I'm recommending is to go back, if you need to, read the torch series and the Saganami ones. Amazing in their own right but what they add to the mainstream story is epic

I always felt you could bypass the Torch books if you want. But bypassing the Shadow books really leaves some big holes in the experience.

Direwolf18 wrote:I always felt you could bypass the Torch books if you want. But bypassing the Shadow books really leaves some big holes in the experience.

Leaving aside the fact that seventy percent of my favorite characters are central to the Shadow series and my indignation that anyone could bypass them, the so-called "spinoffs" are as central to the story as the main-line novels. (RFC wrote a very interesting and edifying essay on this topic, I believe.) I rarely read the Torch books more than once - unless Eloise or Tom is involved - but I'm glad I did, anyway.

While Crown of Slaves might be considered to be a bit afar from the main thread of the Honor stories, Torch of Freedom and Cauldron of Ghosts are quite critical to the overall story arc. And you need Crown of Slaves to set the background for those two books.

David has been quite clear that the Shadows books and the Torch books are part of the main story, and most people who have commented in the past agree.

SWM wrote:Torch of Freedom and Cauldron of Ghosts are quite critical to the overall story arc.

Umm, what exactly happened in CoG that makes it critical? Some people fled, the MA demonstrated (for those who might still have any questions about this) they really were ruthless and not very nice people as a bunch of people got killed, Mesa's paramilitary and military forces showed they have no idea how to use moderns weapons and at the end the GA had a better idea that what they had strongly suspected was going on, but still had no proof.

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:Torch of Freedom and Cauldron of Ghosts are quite critical to the overall story arc.

Umm, what exactly happened in CoG that makes it critical? Some people fled, the MA demonstrated (for those who might still have any questions about this) they really were ruthless and not very nice people as a bunch of people got killed, Mesa's paramilitary and military forces showed they have no idea how to use moderns weapons and at the end the GA had a better idea that what they had strongly suspected was going on, but still had no proof.

I would say the fact that Mesa was taken out of the equation as a star nation (off page at the end). You no longer have Mesa, Manpower, or any of the other Mesan headquartered transtellars able to advocate for genetic slavery (what they called indentured servitude) in the future. That includes money flowing to parties (can include individuals, companies, and star systems) in the Solarian League. (When you stop dumping raw sewage (everything required to support/shield genetic slavery) into a body of water (the Solarian League and its components), the body of water starts to recover. At the very least, the pollution level stops getting worse.)

Vince wrote:

kzt wrote:Umm, what exactly happened in CoG that makes it critical? Some people fled, the MA demonstrated (for those who might still have any questions about this) they really were ruthless and not very nice people as a bunch of people got killed, Mesa's paramilitary and military forces showed they have no idea how to use moderns weapons and at the end the GA had a better idea that what they had strongly suspected was going on, but still had no proof.

I would say the fact that Mesa was taken out of the equation as a star nation (off page at the end). You no longer have Mesa, Manpower, or any of the other Mesan headquartered transtellars able to advocate for genetic slavery (what they called indentured servitude) in the future. That includes money flowing to parties (can include individuals, companies, and star systems) in the Solarian League. (When you stop dumping raw sewage (everything required to support/shield genetic slavery) into a body of water (the Solarian League and its components), the body of water starts to recover. At the very least, the pollution level stops getting worse.)

I get that (but it was clear from the other books that someone on the GA/Andie side was going to take Mesa (and soon). And there were some potential loose ends in CoG that might lead to the unraveling of Houdini.

But it's hard for me to think that those few event couldn't have been (or maybe will be) just be summed up every in a couple of retrospective sentences in the next book. I think that would probably give anyone who missed reading CoG all the key info they'd need to make sense of the events that happened in it.

I liked the book, but a lot of it was tactical stuff around Mesa which is unlikely to tie tightly back into the next book. (Could be wrong about that, but that's my guess at the moment)

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:Torch of Freedom and Cauldron of Ghosts are quite critical to the overall story arc.

Umm, what exactly happened in CoG that makes it critical? Some people fled, the MA demonstrated (for those who might still have any questions about this) they really were ruthless and not very nice people as a bunch of people got killed, Mesa's paramilitary and military forces showed they have no idea how to use moderns weapons and at the end the GA had a better idea that what they had strongly suspected was going on, but still had no proof.

There's one thread in there that I think is going to be very important, but otherwise I tend to agree. The issue is that RFC hadn't made up his mind about how the next time slice was going to play out, so the book had to be a bit generic to avoid forcing his hand one way or the other. We're just going to have to wait to see how it's going to meld with what comes next.

JohnRoth wrote:There's one thread in there that I think is going to be very important, but otherwise I tend to agree. The issue is that RFC hadn't made up his mind about how the next time slice was going to play out, so the book had to be a bit generic to avoid forcing his hand one way or the other. We're just going to have to wait to see how it's going to meld with what comes next.

That would be the thread that rhymes with a 60's TV show...and no I don't mean ST:TOG. <Grin>

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