Answer to published criticism of Honorverse

cthia wrote:BTW, Santino's act of sacrificing his entire crew, save one, simply to save face, just happens to be the epitome of tasteless.

"Tasteless" is more of an aesthetic judgement; Santino's sacrifice was stupid and senseless (which is a judgement on his decision making and intellect).

Tasteless:
1. having no taste or flavor; insipid; dull; uninteresting.
2. lacking in aesthetic quality or capacity; devoid of good taste: a houseful of tasteless furnishings; a tasteless director of stale, dreary films.
3. lacking in politeness, seemliness, tact, etc.; unmannerly; insensitive: a tasteless remark.
4. lacking the physical sense of taste.

i have not read the review.
i will not pay to read the review.
from the comments aboy the review thgat I have read I might agree with some of it.
All of the Honorverse books through Shadow of Saganami managed to advance the plot arc while remaining exciting novels in their own right. Most of the later books left me bored shitless. Uncompromising Honor was a very welcome return to the earlier style where the heros could actually loose. Hypatia was particularly inspiring.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:All of the Honorverse books through Shadow of Saganami managed to advance the plot arc while remaining exciting novels in their own right. Most of the later books left me bored shitless. Uncompromising Honor was a very welcome return to the earlier style where the heros could actually loose. Hypatia was particularly inspiring.

I just reread from Mission of Honor through Uncompromising Honor and my biggest problem is the repetition. Shadow of Victory begins at a time just after the Battle of Monica and continues to UH, that is about 6 books of overlap. How much better if each book had been written so they did not overlap and each chapter had been in time sequence with the viewpoint skipping between regions, Unfortunately that could not be worked with the divisions between the mainline Honor books, the Saganami books and the Flint books.

I am not certain this situation was also created by the complete reinvention of the story resulting from Honor surviving the Battle of Manticore.

cthia wrote:
BTW, it is rather interesting that you and ThinksMarkedly make the same grammatical mistake of placing the ending quotation mark inside the period or comma. I am no saint when it comes to proper grammar, believe me. But, as ThinksMarkedly once said, my OCD can act up on certain things. I simply ignore it as many undoubtedly do my own, many, grammatical mistakes.

Note that the American Chemical Society style rule when last I checked it is that anything inside the quotation marks must be in the original material being quoted; otherwise the terminal punctuation goes outside the quote.

phillies wrote:

cthia wrote:
BTW, it is rather interesting that you and ThinksMarkedly make the same grammatical mistake of placing the ending quotation mark inside the period or comma. I am no saint when it comes to proper grammar, believe me. But, as ThinksMarkedly once said, my OCD can act up on certain things. I simply ignore it as many undoubtedly do my own, many, grammatical mistakes.

Note that the American Chemical Society style rule when last I checked it is that anything inside the quotation marks must be in the original material being quoted; otherwise the terminal punctuation goes outside the quote.

I was taught almost the same rule with the caveat that we should avoid the terminal punctuation if it directly follows a quoted punctuation in the end of a paragraph.

phillies wrote:Note that the American Chemical Society style rule when last I checked it is that anything inside the quotation marks must be in the original material being quoted; otherwise the terminal punctuation goes outside the quote.

The only benefit that I have seen expressed for this stylistic "rule" is that compositors were concerned that commas and periods would be difficult to see otherwise. So why didn't they consistently use bigger periods and commas, since the size of these items is just set by convention in a font?

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Wait, did the reviewer just compare Allison Harrington to Lwaxanna Troi?

Not a particularly illuminating question, if you are not going to add additional comments on why this is good or bad.

I don't have an argument. But there wasn't much to take from a review of a review... the Lwaxanna part was the only thing that struck me as surprising. I can understand
how John Lennerd can feel what he feels but I also sympathise with the reviewer's point that he goes too far.

I understand the reviewer was comparing two mother-daughter relationships and using a more caricature example to show how the very pretty and sexually-centred Allison Chou Harrington would have an effect on her third-gen prolong, very tall daughter. But that placed a comparison between Allison and Lwaxanna and that was really weird to me.

Allison liked to tease those she knew and she wasn't above causing a few scandals in Grayson society, but she always struck me as mature (intellectually), unselfish, and having her self-esteem under control. She didn't need confirmation of her beauty or her appeal by anyone (other than Alfred, I guess). So to me, Allison never raised her voice; in fact, I imagine she always spoke softly.

And that's in direct contrast to Lwaxanna, who never missed an opportunity to be boisterous, scandalous, and to remind everyone she was a "daughter of the Fifth House, holder of the sacred Chalice of Rixx and heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed" (Deanna once said [in one of the novels] that the Chalice of Rixx was an ugly pot). Lwaxanna overcompensated her insecurity and could never show weakness, though of course it's difficult to say "insecurity" about a gifted telepath who was raised in a society where the concept of lying would be absurd.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Wait, did the reviewer just compare Allison Harrington to Lwaxanna Troi?

tlb wrote:Not a particularly illuminating question, if you are not going to add additional comments on why this is good or bad.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't have an argument. But there wasn't much to take from a review of a review... the Lwaxanna part was the only thing that struck me as surprising. I can understand how John Lennerd can feel what he feels but I also sympathise with the reviewer's point that he goes too far.

I understand the reviewer was comparing two mother-daughter relationships and using a more caricature example to show how the very pretty and sexually-centred Allison Chou Harrington would have an effect on her third-gen prolong, very tall daughter. But that placed a comparison between Allison and Lwaxanna and that was really weird to me.

Allison liked to tease those she knew and she wasn't above causing a few scandals in Grayson society, but she always struck me as mature (intellectually), unselfish, and having her self-esteem under control. She didn't need confirmation of her beauty or her appeal by anyone (other than Alfred, I guess). So to me, Allison never raised her voice; in fact, I imagine she always spoke softly.

And that's in direct contrast to Lwaxanna, who never missed an opportunity to be boisterous, scandalous, and to remind everyone she was a "daughter of the Fifth House, holder of the sacred Chalice of Rixx and heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed" (Deanna once said [in one of the novels] that the Chalice of Rixx was an ugly pot). Lwaxanna overcompensated her insecurity and could never show weakness, though of course it's difficult to say "insecurity" about a gifted telepath who was raised in a society where the concept of lying would be absurd.

Thank you for the elaboration, this is much more informative of your views than a drive-by "wait, did that just happen?".

I think that essentialy giving Countess Young a head start rathern then ripping open all sorts of political and personal problems across a wide swath of Manticorian society was a brilliant move. Would you really want her on the stand in a courtroom surrounded by a mass of documents of the sort North Hollow collected and used? And even if you had manage to "destroy" all of them, would you really be sure, particularly as she might have way more than enough information in her head to liberaly sow a minefield of where and at who people should be looking even if the files are actualy gone. Knowing- even if it might be considered malicious slander- that Lord Dirtwater Lake is being said to have been involved in price fixing on governent contracts give at least a starting point for interested people. And, given that North Hollow was catholic in his collection of information and documents, giving interested people threads they might pull on to unravel the true storys would be "bad".
As noted, she was going to have Jeremy X and friends on her trail. Not exactly a comforting thought if you are Young. The further she gets from Manticore, sort of the less usefull any information she had in her head becomes. Sure, she might find people who could make use of it but the cost to her might be more than she would want to pay. It is also not like Jeremy and the Ballroom (particulary the more radical factions) are going to be overly concerned about local laws if they catch up to her. She is going to have to be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life- however long that may be and reguardless of where she thinks she finds a place to get out of sight. Prison on Manticore for a person with Prolong, or a longish time running in fear of sudden death from some person with a tattoo on their toungue?
No, other than she is alive and on her way outbound from Manticore, the future is going to be intersting in a bad way for Young.

Argh, English predates programing languages.posting.php?mode=reply&f=1&t=10498#

?!: all include their own period. SO a sentance does not need both! and . or ?. BOTH are totally wrong.

A Quote should include the original punctuation, right or wrong. But ending .". is indeed redundant in English usage but perfectly valid in quiet a few programming languages!