When does the story continue?

JohnRoth wrote:

Star Knight wrote:You dont need to have a big bad to write engaging stories. RFC already did this in WoH and AAC

Single stories, yes. If you're going to do a series, though, you've got to have a continuing menace lurking in the background, or else you're just doing either an extended biography (Horatio Hornblower, the early Honorverse books) or disconnected stories with the same setting and characters (Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Star Trek). Not to say any of these are bad, but they're not the same as the Honorverse, Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings or the Ring cycle.

Oh sure, you need some adversary. But this adversary doesnt have to be evil. It essentially could be any successor group of the Solarian League. Not really important actually.

IMO the best stories portraying conflict are those that tell us that there is no evil. Just actors with different interests... views, goals, dreams, compulsions...
In his earlier Honorverse books RFC repeatedly hit the mark on this. The Mesan Alignment is more a exception than anything else.

And since you mention it - A Song of Ice and Fire is the textbook example on how to write a story without big bad menace. At its a fascinating story about different factions in conflict with each other not because some are evil incarnate (unlike Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time) but because they are human - having different interests and capable of making mistakes, lots and lots of them.
And it works because its just like the real world. And because it has Dragons of course.

JohnRoth wrote:

Star Knight wrote:You dont need to have a big bad to write engaging stories. RFC already did this in WoH and AAC

Single stories, yes. If you're going to do a series, though, you've got to have a continuing menace lurking in the background, or else you're just doing either an extended biography (Horatio Hornblower, the early Honorverse books) or disconnected stories with the same setting and characters (Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Star Trek). Not to say any of these are bad, but they're not the same as the Honorverse, Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings or the Ring cycle.

And what was The Corsican if not a "Big Bad?"

noblehunter wrote:

martin wrote:And it's really 2 wars. One against the SLN and another against the MA. That surely can't be just one book.

The war against the SL will be short. It isn't resilient enough to survive the current crisis, not with MA setting fires where ever it can. Especially not with the Mandarins doing the wrong thing at every turn. Once the rest of the Core realizes that the Mandarins would send Battle Fleet against them just as readily as Beowulf, it'll come apart as fast as planets can ask for GA protection from the tyrannical Old Chicago.

Didn't some character once say something about the St. Just regime being seemingly impregnable until Operation Buttercup distracted him? SEM doesn't have to defeat each and every planet in the SL. All it has to do is distract the mandarins long enough for sanity to break out. The RF doesn't have to come out into the open either, if the league changes direction and SLN and FF remain relatively intact. It could go [remain] sub-rosa to return another day.

Star Knight wrote:And since you mention it - A Song of Ice and Fire is the textbook example on how to write a story without big bad menace. At its a fascinating story about different factions in conflict with each other not because some are evil incarnate (unlike Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time) but because they are human - having different interests and capable of making mistakes, lots and lots of them.
And it works because its just like the real world. And because it has Dragons of course.

Not quite true. Winter is Coming.

There is a Big Bad... and everyone's too busy with their own business to worry about it. The difference in the Honorverse is, nobody knew there was a Big Bad.

The next book may be the last one in the Honorverse, but due to certain facts which come under a Spoiler heading, I think we will have the Raoulverse to look forwards to where a twenty-ish-year-old Raoul Harrington-Alexander strides forwards to become an officer in the Grand Alliance just as they finally locate information on the Mesan Alignment's newest locus of operations.
Not certain if he'll be in the Royal Manticoran Navy or the Grayson Space Navy though... if it's the GSN he'll probably start his career under Captain Abigail Hearns.

So, I believe there'll be the delayed time-skip that Weber planned but which got derailed by Eric Flint's introduction of Oh-my-god-it's-him-run-away Victor Cachat.

If there's only one more book after SOV, then I wonder if it will reach epic level in pages....the doorstop to end all doorstops. Able to stop many bullets with a single turn! Super-book! These books are even more massive then my old college textbooks.

Even with my speedy reading it still takes me 3-5 days to get through a 700-900 page book. Wonder if the next one will reach 1200.

In any event I'll be here to read whatever happens.

munroburton wrote:
Not quite true. Winter is Coming.

There is a Big Bad... and everyone's too busy with their own business to worry about it. The difference in the Honorverse is, nobody knew there was a Big Bad.

Who knows if the Others are really bad.
The point however, they are not needed for most of the story. The game would work just as well without them.
Especially in the books were we see much, much less of the Others than in the show.

And i believe Winters coming when i see it

noblehunter wrote:

martin wrote:And it's really 2 wars. One against the SLN and another against the MA. That surely can't be just one book.

The war against the SL will be short. It isn't resilient enough to survive the current crisis, not with MA setting fires where ever it can. Especially not with the Mandarins doing the wrong thing at every turn. Once the rest of the Core realizes that the Mandarins would send Battle Fleet against them just as readily as Beowulf, it'll come apart as fast as planets can ask for GA protection from the tyrannical Old Chicago.

The Mesan Alignment is fragile as well. It relies on deception so completely and is so small that exposure would be disastrous for it.
Also the thing that ultimately will kill it is agreeing with their transhumanist goals but pointing out how vile their methods are and how undesirable the society that they are actually creating is.

noblehunter wrote:

martin wrote:And it's really 2 wars. One against the SLN and another against the MA. That surely can't be just one book.

The war against the SL will be short. It isn't resilient enough to survive the current crisis, not with MA setting fires where ever it can. Especially not with the Mandarins doing the wrong thing at every turn. Once the rest of the Core realizes that the Mandarins would send Battle Fleet against them just as readily as Beowulf, it'll come apart as fast as planets can ask for GA protection from the tyrannical Old Chicago.

Agreed... the SL is so fragile at the moment that it would likely come apart to some degree even if there were no further hostilities. It has no raison d'être, and hasn't for quite a while. From MWW hints it sounds like the upcoming raid on Beowulf is going to cause 7 figure planetary casualties, possibly from a nanotech agent or perhaps just luck, and having a founding Core World suffer that kind of hit is going to horrify at least some of the rest.

The real conflict of the last book will likely have to do with Our Heroes going up against the Detweiller (?) class SDs with spider and streak drives, and the siege/conquest of Darius. I don't see how you can leave Darius intact and hidden at the end of the series as they'd be too powerful of a threat to call it finished.

However, I definitely see the RF remaining 'hidden' as far as it's leadership being core MA. With the SL fragmenting into multiple alliances, the RF would just continue on as one of the many new polities, and without Darius and the Ghost Fleet to destabilize everyone else they'll have to try and rebuild the Detweiller plan on their own, providing a nice long-term Bad Guy for any further series.

Fragmenting the SL and taking out Darius/Ghost Fleet will make for a nice big, juicy book, but I don't see it necessarily taking Encyclopedia level page counts. Not that I'd complain if Himself wrote that much, though, to be sure.

martin wrote:Ciao Hans

The next book, which will be the last book, in the series is targeted at April 2018, the 25th anniversary of the publication of On Basilisk Station.

Hans, that's been my question too.

JohnRoth, that's going to be to be a monster of a book to be able to conduct and conclude the full war against the SL. I mean Bible or larger in terms of pages, without glosseries and whatnot at the end. Or maps. O my gods, we need more updated maps!!
The 1st Havenite-Manticore War spanned over several books. The SL, as stated many times on here elsewhere, is significantly larger and has its own quirks that would make that war last several more books still.

And it's really 2 wars. One against the SLN and another against the MA. That surely can't be just one book.

It can if you lose.