Free David Weber Honor Harrington books on Kindle

[Vertigo]

Ooo dear Parson, reputations at stake here!

Ursa I think it's pretty safe to say you'll probably enjoy it. I would consider OBS to be possibly the weakest of the Weber only HH books. So if you enjoyed that you'll probably enjoy the rest. Though bear in mind the atmosphere slowly changes as the books go on and HH gets promoted; they gradually take on much more political thriller themes than the heroic military themes of the early books.

 

[Ursa major]

Though bear in mind the atmosphere slowly changes as the books go on and HH gets promoted; they gradually take on much more political thriller themes than the heroic military themes of the early books.

I'll be mortified if that means fewer mentions of rates of acceleration and other things of that nature....

 

[Vertigo]

Oh you've still plenty of them to get through, along with numbers of missiles and missile transit times and.... You need a calculator to read some of Weber's battle scenes. Or else you gloss over them using the figures to get a feel for things. A bit like a clock really; the clock tells the time accurately (so long as it's not the one in my living room) but much of the time you'll just read it as 'almost half past' or similar.

 

[Parson]

Based primarily on your recommendation, Parson, I have spent a huge some -- not far short of £5 -- to purchase Book Four. All I can say is that it had better live up to your billing....

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Ursa,(Gulp!) A princely sum indeed! (Parson worries about how Ursa will pay for his lunches during the next fortnight.) --- But I am not worried about your liking the book. If you've liked the first 2 (3 by now?) you will most certainly like "Field of Dishonor" as well.

I've been thinking about why this is my favorite book of the series. In many ways it is the darkest book of the series, which is not my usual bent at all. But something Vertigo said about the slowly changing atmosphere in the series as Honor gets promoted rang a bell with me. I believe that after the "Field of Dishonor" the stories become somewhat less about her and more about the political thriller side. Which is not to say that this was not present even in OBS, but it is drawn out more. It is also not to say that I stopped enjoying them. I still read them as they come out. When a new Honor Harrington shows up it is immediately at the top of my must be read now pile. The real question is whether I will continue to collect the hard cover editions.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Ursa, it's possible that the head-hopping is due to some poor formatting in the Kindle books. You'll have to point me in the direction of an example, to be sure, but I've noticed that a lot of dividing spaces between sections have gone missing in the Kindle version and it just plows from one thing into another with no distinction. The paper books don't do that.

 

[Vertigo]

Yes, TDZ, is absolutely right; this is one of the most frustrating things about ebooks; they are very bad at leaving blank lines between sections. Not a problem if they put something like *** in the blank line, but otherwise it's often lost. I have quite a few books in both paper and ebook and it is very common. Drives me up the wall. "Say what? What's happening now... ah we're in a totally different part of the world in someone else's head o...kay!"

 

[Ursa major]

I think you may be correct about the missing blank lines. And it doesn't help that new sections start with the same indent as all the other paragraphs. To be fair, it doesn't trip me up much -- the identity of the PoV character soon sets me straight as to whether there has been a change in point of view -- although a personal failing of mine (an inability to remember lots of new names) doesn't help me stay on track**.


** - To be fair, all the blank lines and asterisks in the world wouldn't help when I see a name and am not immediately sure not only on which ship the new PoV character is, but in whose navy they are serving....

 

[Vertigo]

I know that feeling Ursa! I suspect it's a factor of age though I've always had problems with names. That's actually one of the things I love about ebooks I'm forever selecting a name and doing a quick backwards search and then it's "Oh, yes, that's who it is!"

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I see a name and am not immediately sure not only on which ship the new PoV character is, but in whose navy they are serving....

Ha -- just wait until a couple of them end up on a different side.

I usually have that problem more with movies, myself. Jerry Seinfeld had a brilliant comedy bit about people who need subtitles in movies -- the kind that would tell you, "this is that guy you saw in the bar scene" and "here's what's going on now". I'm one of those.

 

[Parson]

Ha -- just wait until a couple of them end up on a different side.

I usually have that problem more with movies, myself. Jerry Seinfeld had a brilliant comedy bit about people who need subtitles in movies -- the kind that would tell you, "this is that guy you saw in the bar scene" and "here's what's going on now". I'm one of those.

I'm not alone???!!!! I thought I was the only one who had trouble recognizing characters from a few scenes back. I often bug my wife: "Now is this the one who...". Is this maybe a problem of being more literary than visual?

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Note to self: Never watch movies with Parson, unless there is someone else around to explain what is going on and who all those people are.