Last Honor Harington book

dscott8 wrote:Just heard that the last book will be called "The Steel Crown of the Shadow of Honor", and will consist of 372 pages of politics, 188 pages explaining Honorverse technology, 162 pages of battles, 34 pages of characters making jokes about Victor Cachat's sex life, and a final 8 pages of treecats eating Detweilers.

I think you forgot the section recapping the previous book.

richardinor wrote:Last night I listened an interview with RFC on last week’s BAEN pod cast. Near the end of the interview RFC stated that he has a goal of completing the Honor Harington saga and have the last main line Honorverse book done by April 2018. That is the 25th anniversary of OBS.

I think that he will need more than one book to wrap this up... sometime ago I read that he was thinking of having the next generation take over...

I am looking forward to the continuation of the story line and my only issue with it is that I am going into Safehold withdrawal so soon after finishing Hells Foundations Quiver.

Like the old saying... two can live as cheaply as one <but only half as well > People who multi task are bound to reach a point where thing start to fall apart.

I like the fact that David has opened the Honorverse to other writers but the stories are not quite the same.

Oh Well

Marty wrote:

dscott8 wrote:Just heard that the last book will be called "The Steel Crown of the Shadow of Honor", and will consist of 372 pages of politics, 188 pages explaining Honorverse technology, 162 pages of battles, 34 pages of characters making jokes about Victor Cachat's sex life, and a final 8 pages of treecats eating Detweilers.

I think you forgot the section recapping the previous book.

And last but not least, the glossary (which seems to get bigger with every book)

C. O. Thompson wrote:

richardinor wrote:Last night I listened an interview with RFC on last week’s BAEN pod cast. Near the end of the interview RFC stated that he has a goal of completing the Honor Harington saga and have the last main line Honorverse book done by April 2018. That is the 25th anniversary of OBS.

I think that he will need more than one book to wrap this up... sometime ago I read that he was thinking of having the next generation take over...

I am looking forward to the continuation of the story line and my only issue with it is that I am going into Safehold withdrawal so soon after finishing Hells Foundations Quiver.

Like the old saying... two can live as cheaply as one <but only half as well > People who multi task are bound to reach a point where thing start to fall apart.

I like the fact that David has opened the Honorverse to other writers but the stories are not quite the same.

Oh Well

IIRC, Himself stated that there were two more books in the mainline, so that last one in 2018 is not the next one out.

All things subject to change, etc, etc...

[

Meshakhad wrote:First, I think we can assume that by "two mainline books" he means "not counting the accompanying Saganami Island and Wages of Sin books". So really six books left.

Weird Harold wrote:That would be a bad assumption since RFC has said the Saganami and Torch series are done and anything new will be "mainline."

quote="Meshakhad"]Well, I could see cutting the side series books, but I still doubt he can resolve the whole storyline well in two more books. Four, definitely. Three, maybe. I suppose he did manage to cram pretty much the entire Second Havenite War into AAC, but I still think that the collapse of the Solarian League and the defeat of the Mesan Alignment needs more than two books.

If he doesn't resolve the Alignment conflict by the finale, I'll be very disappointed.[/quote]

POSSIBLE SPOILER, SPACE





















You best prepare for possible disappointment. As I understand it, the "Last Honor novel" will finish off the Solarian League, and appear to finish the MAlign, but in reality they'll be underground, working to take over all humanity through the Renaissance League.

Skip about twenty years ahead. Raoul and his sister will be starting their adult careers, and they will gradually realize that the MAlign is still out there ...

In essence, this is pretty much what was going to happen when Honor was scheduled to die in At All Costs, except that Honor will be alive, but no longer a main character.

IF the League gets shattered and a significant number of the pieces (NOT the SL Bureaucracy) open serious trade treaty talks with Manticore, Haven and others...

IF the Renaissance League starts to form but isn't exposed as a creation of the Alignment,

IF the as yet unrevealed Houdni II actually works and all the knowlege of Darius plus the secret wormhole network gets erased with various agents of Manpower/Alignment that are still vulnerable to being swept up by the GA, Beowulf, Torch and any of the Fragment States that actually help the GA go after the Alignment.

Then we might be able to have the next story ark sometime in the future. But just how will we eliminate the Alignment Core and the problem of Darius as both an arsenal world and probably safe home base for the Alignment without A) finding out that Darius etc exists and B) dealing with that?

Dauntless wrote:so if pritchett dies but Thiesman survives they stay on course?

ok, i can see that but who would he chose to replace her, because no matter what the constitution says it WILL be his choice.

Kevin Usher? no he's too useful running internal security, though if he drops the ball on this he may be forced out but that would just make him more dangerous if there are no rules to hold him.

so that means they would probably have to take him out at the same time which puts VICTOR in charge! oh boy talk about out the frying pan into the fire!!!

so who would take over?

If somebody takes out Eloise but doesn't get Theisman, I don't think the coup will work. And unless the party/parties responsible could take immediate control of the government, I don't see them surviving long once Cachet and Usher start investigating the assassination.

Brigade XO wrote:IF the League gets shattered and a significant number of the pieces (NOT the SL Bureaucracy) open serious trade treaty talks with Manticore, Haven and others...

IF the Renaissance League starts to form but isn't exposed as a creation of the Alignment,

IF the as yet unrevealed Houdni II actually works and all the knowlege of Darius plus the secret wormhole network gets erased with various agents of Manpower/Alignment that are still vulnerable to being swept up by the GA, Beowulf, Torch and any of the Fragment States that actually help the GA go after the Alignment.

Then we might be able to have the next story ark sometime in the future. But just how will we eliminate the Alignment Core and the problem of Darius as both an arsenal world and probably safe home base for the Alignment without A) finding out that Darius etc exists and B) dealing with that?

Well, "Houdini II" is certainly a possible way of winding it up and leaving the actual MAlign still hidden in the background. It would be too much to expect that MFC copies Asimov and has it on Old Earth, which is no longer all that important since it's no longer the center of the Empire - oops - Solarian League.

As far as burying all knowledge of the Felix Junction and Darius, I don't see it. There's still the Torch terminus through the Twins, and whatever defenses the MAlign has set up will need to be maintained regularly - not even the best minefields will stay active for decades without maintenance.

I also consider it fairly certain that at some point Simoes, and possibly Zack McBryde, spills the beans about The Twins, including where it is.

The GA knows that Darius exists, they just don't know where, and they're not going to let that go. So Houdini II is going to have to be a spectacular ending, with all loose ends tied off.

Meshakhad wrote:Well, I could see cutting the side series books, but I still doubt he can resolve the whole storyline well in two more books. Four, definitely. Three, maybe. I suppose he did manage to cram pretty much the entire Second Havenite War into AAC, but I still think that the collapse of the Solarian League and the defeat of the Mesan Alignment needs more than two books.

If he doesn't resolve the Alignment conflict by the finale, I'll be very disappointed.

I don't see that it needs more than two books.

If the Solarian fleet is destroyed and the GA seizes the news networks (if you can demand a planet's total surrender from orbit you certainly can demand to make a worldwide broadcast) and explain the whole thing to the people the Solarian empire is going to crumble as the planets realize how disastrous the Mandarin's approach is and don't want such madmen manipulating them. This probably can be done with a single battle at Earth--for every other world they want to address send a few wallers, when they hyper in they send a message with the records of the fleet battle, "want this or will you let us make a worldwide announcement and then leave peacefully?"

That leaves the Alignment. We already know there are unhappy members of the Alignment, including at least one on a ship lacking it's suicide guards. We also know that the GA is aware of Houdini (although not the name) and knows they need to be hunting. One more defector in the right place and they find Darius. The Alignment has nothing that can stand up to the GA when they come calling.

It's also possible they didn't cover their tracks well enough when they pulled Houdini. Yes, the computers at Mesa are certainly scrubbed of anything that would identify the Alignment. However, to pull off Houdini they have to sacrifice all their Manpower facilities--the GA will find their coordinates on Mesa. While they will be prone to fighting to the death that Torch raider very well might take some of them intact. There won't be anything about the Alignment per se but they'll get traffic data that includes Alignment ships. Analyze that and it will point to where they need to go. Yeah, they can't traverse the wormhole but now that they know it leads to an Alignment world they'll put a lot of effort into figuring about where it is--remember, the top wormhole guy survived. Scout the systems that it could lead to, in time they find the Alignment.

We know of two clear wormholes that lead into the network that will take you to Darius. One -the presumed fatal one at Torch and the one that Mannheim is hanging about waiting to obtain , very quietly, title to the system it is next too.

The far side of the Torch wormhole has a squadron of Manneheim BC sitting on it. Remember all that discussion of not being able to take a defended wormhole by attacking throught it? At this point, ANYTHING that goes into it is going to get blow to bits.

We have not yet been told what is on the other end of the one from the Mannheim connection but the Alignment should have some sort of defensive force there. We don't have a description of any sort of Astro Control on this end and we don't really have any conversation of what and when there is traffic using it. The Alignment isn't stupid. Even parking a couple of old former SLN warships on the far side of the terminus Manneheim is hiding would keep it safe.

We don't know where Darius is. We don't know where the Twins are. That is in relation to ANYTHING in the human occupied space about the area where we find the SL, it's Protectorates, the Haven Quadrant or anywhere else. If nobody knows where it is, how are you going to get there through hyper-space?

We can presume that the Alignment has at least one ship and crew capable of doing wormhole detection and exploration.

Daruis is an industrialized world with trained workforce and shipyards for building starships. It also is cloning/growing its population using the processes similar to Mesa. The Alignment has AT LEAST three star systems (Darius, and each of the twins- unless that is a binary system) within it's secret wormhole network so there is a lot of material to work with to build stuff from simple consumer goods to warships and munitions.

Sure, the Sharks and the Ghosts and their transport shops probably came in via the secret wormhole networkd but they would be home now at Darius. We don't even know if anybody on the ships in the Oyster Bay raids even know the cooridinates of one or more wormhole leading to the network. If I were the Alignment, I would have only the navigator on each transport with the info and so there are dam few people who could be captured and spill the data. We don't know the operational security of covering movements in and out of the network or how they have to work to get people to a point they can be then moved about in the rest of human space.

Going to be tough to get at Darius if you have to fight your way though at least two wormholes--and you don't yet know where either of them is.