Global Honorverse reading order

I've found lists to find out the reading order of the books, but they're now obsolete because many books are missing, and some specify the stories or chapters outright.

I'm trying to work out the best reading order for all the books.
I've created a google doc with the book titles, which anyone can edit: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Can you help me order all the titles? I don't want to make any distinctions within a book, such as "read half of book A, then read book B and then the second half of book A". I've already put all the books in the honorverse into the google doc and then ordered the ones I could.

piviga3610 wrote:I've found lists to find out the reading order of the books, but they're now obsolete because many books are missing, and some specify the stories or chapters outright.

I'm trying to work out the best reading order for all the books.
I've created a google doc with the book titles, which anyone can edit: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

Can you help me order all the titles? I don't want to make any distinctions within a book, such as "read half of book A, then read book B and then the second half of book A". I've already put all the books in the honorverse into the google doc and then ordered the ones I could.

Hello piviga

Welcome to the forum!

The reading order I recommend is the publication order for the regular novels, the Crown of Slaves and Saganami Island sub-series. I used the Wikipedia Honorverse page and paid attention to the dates. Those really need to be read in this order, or you'll miss details by the time of the 2009-2010 books (War of Honor, Torch of Freedom and Storm from the Shadows).

The Anthologies can be read at any time, but in-order. I read them in publication order among the other novels.

The Manticore Ascendant and Star Kingdom sub-series can be read out of phase with the rest of the novels.

Hello and ty for your welcome

The Wikipedia list is good but it specifies the stories within the books and I want to avoid changing books while reading. What I'd like to do is make a list that's as logical as possible chronologically but limited to the books without going into detail about the stories they contain.

For example, the wikipedia list says to read "Promised Land" from "In the service of the sword" then "On basilisk station" and to come back to "In the service of the sword" with the story "With one stone", which I'd like to avoid.

piviga3610 wrote:Hello and ty for your welcome

The Wikipedia list is good but it specifies the stories within the books and I want to avoid changing books while reading. What I'd like to do is make a list that's as logical as possible chronologically but limited to the books without going into detail about the stories they contain.

For example, the wikipedia list says to read "Promised Land" from "In the service of the sword" then "On basilisk station" and to come back to "In the service of the sword" with the story "With one stone", which I'd like to avoid.

Yeah, the anthologies each jump around significantly within the chronology from story to story - so if you want stories in strict chronological order you're going to be jumping back and forth.

If you don't want to jump there are two approaches that look reasonable to me.
1) Just slot the anthology in within the mainline books based on relative publication date.

E.g. stick February 2001's Changer of Worlds between March 2000's Ashes of Victory and October 2002's War of Honor.

2) Pick whichever story within the anthology feels like it's most important (or the most important to place into chronological order) -- so maybe David's story -- and sort it into the Honorverse's internal chronological reading order based on just that one story.

E.g. stick In Fire Forged before On Basilisk Station due to RFC's story Let's Dance about an event in Honor's pre-OBS career. (And ignore where the other stories fall)


If you want to take that 2nd route then folks here might be able to suggest (or argue over ) which story in each anthology is the one that's important to place correctly into the chronology.

Jonathan_S wrote:Yeah, the anthologies each jump around significantly within the chronology from story to story - so if you want stories in strict chronological order you're going to be jumping back and forth.

If you don't want to jump there are two approaches that look reasonable to me.
1) Just slot the anthology in within the mainline books based on relative publication date.

E.g. stick February 2001's Changer of Worlds between March 2000's Ashes of Victory and October 2002's War of Honor.

2) Pick whichever story within the anthology feels like it's most important (or the most important to place into chronological order) -- so maybe David's story -- and sort it into the Honorverse's internal chronological reading order based on just that one story.

E.g. stick In Fire Forged before On Basilisk Station due to RFC's story Let's Dance about an event in Honor's pre-OBS career. (And ignore where the other stories fall)


If you want to take that 2nd route then folks here might be able to suggest (or argue over ) which story in each anthology is the one that's important to place correctly into the chronology.

I agree with Jonathan: don't read in the internal chronological order. That would mean you'd start with the Star Kingdom series, then Manticore Ascendant, then the the regular HH books. You can do that, because the three series are independent from one another and just share the fact that they all take place in the Manticore Binary System. The problem are the Anthologies and House of Steel, which are after-the-fact clarifications on what has already happened. They draw upon knowledge that you'll acquire in the earlier books but with later internal dates. And for House of Steel, even though the main narrative takes place in the 1830s to 1850s, you definitely don't want to read the last chapter until you've read Ashes of Honor!

That may be a fun order for a re-read.

I think you're better served by reading in publication order. So I recommend using Jonathan's #1 guide.

Publication order ONLY

Or: You will read spoilers and ruin almost every book in terms of suspense.

The only time chronological order may make sense is some of his later books and that is purely so you can SKIP portions of REPEAT baloney which should have been edited into oblivion.

Ignore Manticore ascendant AND the Stephanie Harrington books. If you wish to read these later--> Ok, but after all the other books already published.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I think you're better served by reading in publication order. So I recommend using Jonathan's #1 guide.

Addendum: Our Sacred Honor (in "The Year's Best Military and Adventure SF, Volume 4" or in "Inifinite Stars"), Recruiting Exercise and Dark Fall should also come second-to-last: before To End in Fire.

Why is this ever a question?

The only answer is publication order, unless the author specifies otherwise.
And original publication order, now what the publisher changes it to 50 years later (I'm looking at you Chronicles of Narnia.)

ZVar wrote:Why is this ever a question?

The only answer is publication order, unless the author specifies otherwise.
And original publication order, now what the publisher changes it to 50 years later (I'm looking at you Chronicles of Narnia.)

AMEN BROTHER!

Why would anyone want to read a series out of the order that it was conceived in the author's head???

I don't care what anyone says. I will always feel proud that I was lucky enough to get sucked into the Honorverse via a WH On Basilisk Station!

On Basilisk Station should be the very first read. You establish an intimate relationship with the characters. I read that book on a riverfront in a certain city and cried. I have been a member of Honor's Inner Circle since! Eat your heart out people. I was sleeping with Honor way back On Basilisk Station when her entire crew was giving her a hard time. But I always had her back.

On Basilisk Station should be the first read, or you are cheating yourself out of the intimacy between the characters and a chance to be adopted into the most idolized and coveted Inner Circle.

ZVar wrote:Why is this ever a question?

The only answer is publication order, unless the author specifies otherwise.

Yes, publication order generally works best. Where you run into trouble is where the author has two or more books that are happening at about the same time, but in different parts of the Honorverse. So there are places where the same material appears in more than one book, in case it was needed by someone starting with it. Also we are about to get a new book that needs to be slotted around the time of Field of Dishonor.

The anthologies can still be read in publication order, because the relevant stories present material that either give background or introduce new characters that will appear in later books.

However the anthologies also have stories that are irrelevant. The David Drake story is an example; it is not important in the Honorverse, but as the inspiration for his stories about Daniel Leary and the Republic of Cinnabar Navy.