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In the 25th century, only the Shaol possess the secret of faster-than-light travel (FTL), thus exerting an economic stranglehold on all interstellar travel. For a century and a half, mankind has operated within their influence, till now there are at least a dozen human colony worlds scattered along Shaol trade routes.

Dakota Merrick, while serving as a military pilot, has witnessed atrocities for which this alien race is responsible. Now piloting a civilian cargo ship, she is currently ferrying an exploration team to a star system containing a derelict starship. From its wreckage, her passengers hope to salvage a functioning FTL drive of mysteriously non-Shaol origin. But the Shaol are not yet ready to relinquish their monopoly of a technology they acquired through ancient genocide.

Information

The online description of this paperback lists 400 pages but my book has 601 (Tor UK has 592), but I believe my own eyes the first page with story is page 3 and last page is 603.

This is a story about taking responsibility. The main character is Dakota and followed by Corso and the main antagonists are the Shaol Trader-In-Faecal-Matter-Of-Animals and the human crime boss Bourdain.

Dakota is a machine head, her brain is wired with enhancements once used by the military but outlawed since the Port Gabriel Massacre where enemies took control over the enhanced soldiers and killed off a whole town of Freeholders. Her dark secret is that she was victim to that mind control.

Corso is a Freeholder expert in ancient protocols blackmailed to hack into the ship they found while Dakota is the designated pilot.

The Author

Gary Gibson is a new acquaintance. According to Tor UK he is a graphic designer, previously magazine editor, in his home city of Glasgow. He has been writing since the age of fourteen.

World building

Humanity is forbidden knowledge of FTL travel or even attempting to get it or face boycott by the Shaol but the Shaol themselves hides a secret that starts to come to light when light from multiple Nova’s in the Magellanic Clouds reach our part of the galaxy.

Humanity is not united; it consists of different fractions that often fight each other. The Consortium dominates but wars are still fought on some worlds. Principal in this story is Freehold who fights a war against the Uchidan but are losing ground so in a desperate attempt to turn the tides they go after FTL travel.

The world building is quite extensive and includes some surprising twists. The underlying threat is intriguing and it is with anticipation I read the next books in the trilogy.

Plot

Trader is always there when something happens, he tries to steer events to the most favorable outcome for the Shaol.

Dakota is hired to bring a secret cargo to Boudain’s asteroid but she is betrayed and in that confusion the astroid is destroyed making her even more a fugitive than before. Boudain and his scary bodyguard go after her bent on revenge. That is about the time she gets an offer to pilot a Freehold frigate to the derelict starship. She doesn’t have much choice in the matter; she got to take the job.

Here is where the real action starts with the hardcore Freehold investors on one side and Dakota and Corso on the other side. But the thing is that they find so much more than an FTL drive and someone has to take responsibility to what is going to happen with that new knowledge.

Characterization

Again a story with wonderful characters. I am on a roll when it comes to new authors. Dakota is a complex character with lots of luggage and she makes many mistakes and she is not always in full control of events but she is still endearing. Corso grew up in a society where might is right, where the only way to become a full citizen is to kill but yet he manages to keep his humanity and grows as the story unfolds. I especially like Dakota’s ship. I have a thing for sentient ships with an attitude since Mutineers’ Moon.

My view

Stealing Light is a fast paced space opera about ancient alien secrets and a great start of a series. I read it in two days; it was pretty exciting to read. It’s the kind of story I like with strong characters and a mysterious past to decipher. The only thing missing is a love story. I sincerely recommend the whole series as a good example of modern science fiction.

Title: Shadow of the Scorpion
Series: prequel to the Agent Cormac series
Author: Neal Asher
Cover Art: Jon Sullivan
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Nightshade Books 2008 (US) | Tor UK 2009
Genre: Space Opera | Military Science Fiction | Post human
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[blurb] Raised to adulthood during the end of the war between the human Polity and the vicious arthropoid race, the Prador, Ian Cormac is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn’t remember.

In the years following the war he signs up with Earth Central Security, and is sent out to help either restore and simply maintain order on worlds devastated by Prador bombardment.

There he discovers that though the old enemy remain as murderous as ever, they are not anywhere near as perfidious or dangerous as some of his fellow humans, some of them closer to him than he would like …

Information

The book is dedicated to the Island of Crete, because the scorpions are small there which doesn’t fit the one in the book, but then he is not on Crete either.

The protagonist is Ian Cormac the young boy and Cormac the soldier in training. The book starts with a flashback to young Ian alone with his mother in the desert. That’s where he sees the scorpion-shaped old war drone for the first time. The story focuses mainly on a selection of mission made by young Cormac with flashbacks to his youth.

The Author

Neal Asher is a British science fiction author living in Essex. I am most familiar with and love the now six Agent Cormac novels in the Polity universe. He has also written the Splatterjay Trilogy and a number of standalone novels and short stories in the same universe that I am keen on reading (expected summer reading 2010).

World building

The world Neal Asher paints is the Polity where humanity has spread hundreds of light years ruled by benign artificial intelligences (AIs). Instead of evolving into something in-comprehensive by humans the AI:s choose to stay with their creators. There are some post human features in there mind-upload into golem bodies, nano technology, body enhancments, computer-brain interfaces, sentient spaceships and much much more.

One thing that sets Neal Asher apart from the usual Space Opera is the complex and well thought out future society he created. It is complex and believable.

The Plot

Young Cormac has to find his way as a soldier on the war thorn planet Hagren where he first experience the Separatists as they tries to sneak into the crashed Prador warship to steal warheads. Faced with both the Separatists and surviving Prador crew Cormac has to make some hard decisions and learn just how far he is prepared to go. Fighting your own people is not what he expected.

The big mystery is the war drone, where is it from, what do it want?

Characterization

The other thing that sets Neal apart is the characterization. Neal is a wizard with characters, a new character comes to life in a few paragraphs and they all makes sense and add their part to the story.

The main character Ian Cormac, or Cormac as he prefers is easy to love, but he is a complex character with many dimensions. He deeply contemplates the choices he makes and feels bad about the hard ones he has to make but he comes through with determination and adaptability. He and the other characters grow and take on new roles.

The questions the characters ponder are also high quality. In this novel Neal ponders moral questions about being a parent and protecting your child as well as many of the questions a soldier has to ask himself when he stands against his own. Many of those questions are current today, the technologies exist today but they are used on soldiers returning from war and they are just as controversial now.

My View

The Shadow of the Scorpion is an excellent introduction to Agent Cormac and the Polity universe. It takes on some deeply moral issues as well as being a fast paced science fiction story with aliens, rebels and sentient war machines. It works as a standalone novel and gives great background if you are already into the Cormac series.

Title: The Orphaned Worlds
Series: Humanity’s Fire 2
Author: Michael Cobley
Genre: Space Opera
Cover art : Steve Stone
Design: Peter Cotton
Publisher: Orbit 2010
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Darien is no longer a lost outpost of humanity, but the prize in an intergalactic power struggle. Hegemony forces have a stranglehold over the planet and crack troops patrol its hotspots while Earth watches, passive, rendered impotent by galactic politics. But its Darien ambassador will soon become a player in a greater conflict. There is more at stake than a turf war on a newly discovered world.

An ancient Uvovo temple hides access to a hyperspace prison, housing the greatest threat sentient life has ever known. Millennia ago, malignant intelligences were caged there following an apocalyptic war. And their servants work on their release.

However, Darien’s guardians have not been idle, gathering resistance on the planet’s forest moon. Knowledge has been lost since great races battled in eons past, and now time is short. The galaxy will depend on the Uvovo reclaiming their past – and humanity must look to its future. For a new war is coming.

The Author

Michael Cobley is a new author for me; the first thing I read was Seeds of Earth in September last year but it impressed the hell out of me.

Information

The cover is of burning space ships that are leaving a planet’s night side. They leave paths of burning gas and dirt-brown clouds behind them. They are appropriate to the content. The first part had a cover of a blue planet with spaceships in front of it; this planet is shaded by night and looks brown and lifeless wonder what book three will hold?

The book is dedicated to David Wingrove author of Chung Ho and co-author of the three Myst novels. He is a friend of the author.

In the beginning there is a list of the Main Characters that is an important list good to have to handle the many characters in this book. It is followed by a list of the Main Sentient Species in Humanity’s Fire, there are 18 different main races in this story.

Background

Way back in ancient times there was a cataclysmic war with a race from another universe. That race was imprisoned in the Warp Well on Darien but they left allies behind.
In this universe three colony ships where sent out from Earth, one of them ended up in the Hegemony where they become the commando soldiers and body guards of that techno-dictatorship, but their loyalty is built on a lie. The second ship ended up on a mining planet where they are kept as indentured laborer. The third ship landed on Darien, the final battle ground of that ancient war. Darien used to be a living world, a sentient world but it was deeply wounded in the war and has slowly been growing back. It became a new battleground when the legendary Warp Well was discovered there.

Worldbuilding

The worldbuilding is extensive in this series, Michael Cobley have created believable alien cultures, each are not described in detail but instead they are exemplified by the characters that represent them. There are 18 major races and numerous minor ones. Sometimes I wish the list at the beginning was a bit more extensive.

Plot

The human and Uvovo underground fight the Hegemon occupation of Darien, but other players involve themselves too. Especially Legion a technology construct that fight to free the prisoners of the Well and the Construct that strive behind the scene to gather allies to fight back. One novel and entertaining part of the story takes place inside hyperspace where ancient races live on in tiers.

Humanity fights its own fight to unite again, to free the indentured and liberate the minds of the other colony. Not much is known about the fate of Earth but it is believed lost to the Hegemony.

There are some ‘improbable’ plot twists but what do you expect from Space Opera?

Characterization

This is very much a character driven novel with an important plot. Michael’s Characters be they friend or foe are complex full entities with understandable motivation. Many of the characters makes an inner journey of self discovery as they discover the realities behind the façade of the world they live in.
Each chapter is named after the character whose point of view it presents. There are many different main characters here but to my relief their stories start to converge and merge. The first book was worse in that respect. But it works great

My View

The Orphaned Worlds is a well written, fast paced and coherent multi character novel that I enjoyed to read and had trouble to put down. The pace picks up and the novel ends in a cliffhanger. The players have been presented and the board is laid out for The Ascendant Stars in 2011. You should read Seeds of Earth before this one.

Title: Strength and Honor
Series: Tour of the Merrimack 4
Author: R. M. Meluch
Cover art: Stephan Martiniere
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: DAW 2008
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Earth’s space forces, spearheaded by the United States, had long been at war with the forces of the Palatine Empire, a neo-Roman culture that broke away from Earth’s control long ago. But when the alien life-form known as the Hive – a biological force whose only imperative was: seek and devoure – began wreaking destruction across the galaxy, the Romans were forced to turn to Earth for help. Ceasar Magnus surrendered to Captain John Farragut – commander of the pride of the U.S. space fleet, the battle class starship, the U.S.S. Merrimack – and the period known as the Subjugation begun.

Ever since the surrender, an uneasy peace and alliance had been in force, as all humanity and their alien allies joined to battle the Hive.

When the threat of the Hive seemed to have been neutralized, John Ferragut was summoned to Caesar Magnus’ fortress to be honored. But instead, Caesar Magnus was assassinated, and Farragut and the Merrimack were lucky to escape from what could have proved a deadly trap.

Now Magnus’ son Romulus has taken control of the Palantine Empire and has had himself proclaimed Caesar, and Captain Farragut and the Merrimack are about to face their greatest challenge ever.

The forced alliance between the interplanetary Empire of Rome and the United States-led Earth forces is shattered as Caesar Romulus declares war, striking at the U.S. Deep Space base, and then following up with a direct attack against Earth. Merrimack has no choice but to retaliate with an assault on the Roman capital world of Palantine. In the midst of this chaos, the Hive renews its invasion. And even if John Farragut and his crew can survive all of this, the rogue Roman patterner Augustus – who has long been assigned to his own mission aboard Merrimack – flees the ship when war is declared, and no one knows whether he is only biding his time, waiting to meet Ferragut in a final deadly showdown.

The Author

R. M. Meluch has been publishing science fiction for thirty years. She holds degrees in communications and classical civilization, and dabbles in speaking in various languages, including Greek and Latin. At one point she traveled through Greece, Israel, and Egypt on the track of Alexander the Great. Meluch also holds a second-degree black belt in taekwondo and “plays” with electricity. She resides in Medina, Ohio, with her husband, Jim Witkowski, and their ferrets, fish, alpacas, and a Doberman.

Ms. Meluch has deep and abiding interests in Roman history, airplanes, flying, and World War II. She has stated that she is interested in good characters on the wrong side in wars or conflicts.

Background

The Roman Empire never died, it just went underground. Have you ever wondered why most scientists or intellectuals speak Latin? They are part of a secret society that eventually will break loose from earth civilization and start their own Palantire Empire. A long war commence between Palantire and Earth.

Then they meet a new threat a race of hungry space faring insects that eats everything biological that comes their way. The Hive onslaught forces the old enemies to an uneasy peace to fight the new threat.

Now they believe the threat from the Hive over.

Worldbuilding

The neo-Roman culture flesh out quite well in the story but is a bit stereotypical at times. I like the way we get to see more of old earth’s political mesh up and that it still is divided into countries with different cultures and agendas.

Plot

Caesar is dead and his son Romulus seems determined to start the war with Earth all over again. Captain Ferragut and Roman patterner Augustus suddenly end up on different sides in the conflict and both have orders to eliminate the other if war is declared. But Augustus have another agenda.

Then the Hive starts stirring in unsuspected places.

War is a risky business which some of the Marines experience first hand in and out of enemy hands. Life is just a circus sometimes.

Some of the twists and last minute saves might be a little bit unlikely but, this is Space Opera, what do you expect?

Characterization

Rebeca has a delightful and endearing ability to create lovable and colorful characters like Captain Farragut and his Roman liaison Augustus. Dialog is also one of her strengths.

The Roman Caligula twist is excellent and there is one or two steamy relationships stories in there too.

My View

In this story revenge is the new black. Characterization is an important part of my enjoyment when I read, and I am very happy that I found Rebeca M. Meluch (I hate that female writers have to hide their sex to sell more books) that write characters I can love and root for. Strength and Honor is a healthy mix of military action, mystery, humor and sex.  It was a fast and fun read. I can warmly recommend this book and this series to any lover of military science fiction with strong characters.

Extra

• Read excerpt

Chloe, Mathew and Eli is left behind when Destiny starts to cross the void between galaxies.

Young is not a happy commander, he has to reinstall rationing and abandon all hope to rescue the ones left behind, deal with personal failure and T.J’s pregnancy.  You feel his emotional pain as he watches himself in the mirror, deciding not to shave before facing the crew. He isn’t forgiving himself it seems.

Rush discovers that they all are going to die of old age before reaching the next galaxy, Destiny have been trying to conserve energy for a reason. The jump will be five percent short, leaving Destiny to drift powerless for thousands of years before it reaches their destination. Their bones will be dust long before that, he state.

Amanda Perry is the only one able to help them repair the ship in time according to Rush, but she is paralyzed from the neck down. She also has a history with Rush. Lt James is the first one to use the much hated stones but she can’t stand it. Camile Wray takes her place.

Camile wants to go home. Her girlfriend is creped out you can tell, imagine someone else with the mind of your loved one. I am not sure I would have kissed them.

Rush and Amanda walk around the ship like two starstruck teenagers. I can understand Amanda’s delight in being able to move and eat by herself for the first time since she was nine. Rush clearly has feelings for this woman.

An explosion shakes the ship out of FTL, one of the drives is damaged. The transit disturbs the mind stone connection and Lt James experience short time memory loss. Considering what happens later I wonder if the aliens somehow spoofed the stones signal here? Staying connected to the mind of Lt James without her knowing it? They where able to intercept a stone transmission before. Lt James dream about being locked in a dark room, so she don’t sleep much. Could this be something going back to the attack on the gate planet?

Franklin, the guy who became comatose after using the command chair where also affected by the transit. He seems almost lucid now.

They get the scare of their life when someone dial in on the Stargate, but it’s just Eli, Chloe and Mathew coming back. That was an anticlimax. No expansion on their experience on the planet? They discover aliens on the planet they just left when they dial back. Is it only me that find that suspicious? At least they arrived after the explosion.

They seems keen of doing a rock video kind of sequence in every episode now? food stinks, people shave, run and make moonshine and drink.

The robot is a bit of a disappointment, it repairs the engine and bypass the damage.

Of course Amanda tries to sleep with Rush before she leaves. What is it with these body switchers? It creeps me out that they feel free to use the bodies they borrow to sleep around. Luckily TJ walked in on them.

The explosion in the engine was probably a sabotage by the aliens to disable the ship and signal their position to them. Or is Rush mind affected? Chloe seems to have memories from her short imprisonment in the aliens mind reading machine. Rush was there much longer.

The Aliens reappears and commence to attack Destiny. Young write his will and prepare to sit in the command chair when Franklin speaks and asks to sit in the chair, strapped in he tells the others to go and a mist starts to fill the chair and they jump to FTL at the last minute.

Amanda says an emotional goodbye to Rush before leaving. Young and James open the command chamber only to find the chair empty. Where is Franklin?

Sabotage was a good episode, it would have been great but for the abrupt ending of the two episode left-behind arc, that felt just wrong, it might have it’s explanation in later episodes but here it felt too simple. I have all respect for the writers, but why didn’t they expand on the stranded people, cancel the cripple and put Amanda Tapping on?

So what’s next? A total reset as they leave that galaxy behind? Next episode is called Pain and is about something they brought along from the last planet.

Mission of Honor is a long awaited Honor Harrington novel the 12th in an extremely popular series. This is one of my absolute favorite series, I love everything by David Weber [profile], he is the master of military science fiction in my humble opinion.

MoH-snippet One Chapter 1:

December, 1921, Post Diaspora

“To understand Solly foreign policy, we’d have to be Sollies
. . . and nothing would be worth that!”
– Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

Arsenovich Kolokoltsov, the Solarian League’s Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs is struck speechless by disbelief and shock by the report from New Tuscany. Then he calls a conference with Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Wodoslawski, Abruzzi, MacArtney, , Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce Quartermain and Fleet Admiral Rajampet Kaushal Rajan and start to raise hell.

MoH-snippet Two: The Solies start to realize how far behind they are on the technology curb.

MoH-snippet three- The byrocrates are shocked by the Solarian League Navy utter defeat and the following surrender. They worry about the consecuences.

MoH-snippet four – they continue to talk about the battle at New Tuscany. Hot heads want to retaliate at any cost, cooler heads try to reason that it would be suicide to go up against the Manticorian navy at this time.

MoH-snippet five - they discuss declaring war on the Star Empire

MoH-snippet six: – they continue to discuss a war with the Manties and comes to a conclusion.

MoH-snippet Seven Chapter 2: Fleet Admiral Winston Kingsford, CO, Battle Fleet and Fleet Admiral Rajampet continue discussing the Mantis in private. Especially putting some analysts on the data right away, then they continue talking about fleet deployment, mantis missiles and when they will go after the Mantis home system. Winston is having an intresting inner dialogue about Sandra Cranell and her task force being deployed in the Madras sector.

MoH-snippet Eight: – Rajampet finish his meeting before we switch over to Queen Elizabeth III for a chat with Admira l Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington. They start out talking about Stacy Hauptman and her father before they switch over to Manpower and the Talbot Cluster.

MoH-snippet Nine Honor and Elizabeth continue to speculate on the Solarian response. It’s four days to Christmas. Honor will be leaving on an unspecified mission (Haven?) after celebrating Christmas with her family.
Honor meets with Admiral Tourville afterwards

MoH-snippet ten Honor, Nimitz and Tourville remembers previous meetings and do social niceties before coming to the point in the next snippet.

Snippet 11 Honor want to know about the political leadership in Haven but they end up talking about the surrender demands.

MoH-snippet 12 Chapter 3: Benjamin IX, Protector of Grayson talk with the commander in chief of the Grayson Space Navy Wesley Matthews about their security situation.

MoH-snippet 13 Mathew and Benjamin continue to discuss the political and military situation especially considering the Mantis, the Sollis and the Havenite.

MoH-snippet 14 They confirm Lady Harringtons mission.
The Royal Manticoran Navy’s Destroyer Division 265.2, known as “the Silver Cepheids,” prepare to go home from their position a light-month from Manticore-A

MoH-snippet 15 The Silver Cepheids prepare to leave while the officers involve them selfs in cheerful banter about SCA. Then we switch over to Commodore Karol Østby of the Mesa Alignment Navy and his task force that quietly have been scouting the Mantis system in preparation for Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 16: Chapter 4 Some officers of the Solarian Office of Operational Analysis discuss a memo before switching over to Mesa and Aldona Anisimovna on her way to meet with Albrecht Detweiler.

MoH-snippet 17 Detweiler and his two sons meets with Aldona and the Streak drive is clarified in her internal dialog before they continue to discuss the recent ballroom activities

MoH-snippet 18 the Mesans continue to talk about Manticore.

MoH-snippet 19 The Mesans continue to talk about how to spin the Talbot story and it ends with them going to talk about Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 21: With such bad results from the evacuation exercise the new commander of the station sets out to make it better.

MoH-snippet 20: January, 1922, Post Diaspora
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . . .”
– Admiral Patricia Givens, RMN, CO, Office of Naval, Intelligence.
Chapter Five
An officer we know from previous books report for duty and there is a ominous discussion about evacuation drills not being up to par.

MoH-snippet 22: Captain Ansten FitzGerald and Commander Amal Nagchaudhuri have a friendly talk about Hexpuma’s repairs being almost finished and the crews upcoming R&R on the station.

MoH-snippet 23 President Eloise Pritchart and the leadership around her isn’t very surprised when eight fleet shows up at the edge of the Haven system, they have dreaded this moment for six months. They however are surprised!

MoH-snippet 24: President Eloise Pritchart and the Salamander is about to meet …

MoH-snippet 25: President Pritchart and Admiral Thomas Theisman chat while they wait on Honor to leave the shuttle. When Honor steps out they have a little chat before moving to the President’s office.

MoH-snippet 26: Chapter 7: Admiral Alexander-Harrington and the President measure each other up before sitting down.

MoH-snippet 27: The negotiations begin in earnest.

MoH-snippet 28: The Salamander’s opening statement is frank to say the least.

MoH-snippet 29: Honor finalizes her offer.

MoH-snippet 30: Chapter 8: The Haven leadership discuss Honor.

MoH-snippet 31: The cabinet continues to talk about how to set up the negotiations and make some great comments about Elizabeth and Honor.

MoH-snippet 32: Chapter 9: Mesa Alignment Navy units is carrying out their part of Oyster Bay at the outskirts of the system when they brush up against a GSN task force.

MoH-snippet 33: Chapter 10: They finally sit down to negotiating after some sidetrack thoughts about the hotel they are staying in.

MoH-Snippet 34: Honor is introduced to Haven’s negotiation team.

MoH-snippet 35: Honor presents her negotiation team

MoH-snippet 36: Honor starts to give her opening statement.

Source: www.ericflint.net

Mission of Honor will be available in June 29 2010

Description: The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington’s entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she’s achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She’s prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor’s worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore’s enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won’t be going alone.

Mission of Honor is a long awaited Honor Harrington novel the 12th in an extremely popular series. This is one of my absolute favorite series, I love everything by David Weber [profile], he is the master of military science fiction in my humble opinion.

MoH-snippet One Chapter 1:

December, 1921, Post Diaspora

“To understand Solly foreign policy, we’d have to be Sollies
. . . and nothing would be worth that!”
– Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

Arsenovich Kolokoltsov, the Solarian League’s Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs is struck speechless by disbelief and shock by the report from New Tuscany. Then he calls a conference with Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Wodoslawski, Abruzzi, MacArtney, , Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce Quartermain and Fleet Admiral Rajampet Kaushal Rajan and start to raise hell.

MoH-snippet Two: The Solies start to realize how far behind they are on the technology curb.

MoH-snippet three- The byrocrates are shocked by the Solarian League Navy utter defeat and the following surrender. They worry about the consecuences.

MoH-snippet four – they continue to talk about the battle at New Tuscany. Hot heads want to retaliate at any cost, cooler heads try to reason that it would be suicide to go up against the Manticorian navy at this time.

MoH-snippet five - they discuss declaring war on the Star Empire

MoH-snippet six: – they continue to discuss a war with the Manties and comes to a conclusion.

MoH-snippet Seven Chapter 2: Fleet Admiral Winston Kingsford, CO, Battle Fleet and Fleet Admiral Rajampet continue discussing the Mantis in private. Especially putting some analysts on the data right away, then they continue talking about fleet deployment, mantis missiles and when they will go after the Mantis home system. Winston is having an intresting inner dialogue about Sandra Cranell and her task force being deployed in the Madras sector.

MoH-snippet Eight: – Rajampet finish his meeting before we switch over to Queen Elizabeth III for a chat with Admira l Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington. They start out talking about Stacy Hauptman and her father before they switch over to Manpower and the Talbot Cluster.

MoH-snippet Nine Honor and Elizabeth continue to speculate on the Solarian response. It’s four days to Christmas. Honor will be leaving on an unspecified mission (Haven?) after celebrating Christmas with her family.
Honor meets with Admiral Tourville afterwards

MoH-snippet ten Honor, Nimitz and Tourville remembers previous meetings and do social niceties before coming to the point in the next snippet.

Snippet 11 Honor want to know about the political leadership in Haven but they end up talking about the surrender demands.

MoH-snippet 12 Chapter 3: Benjamin IX, Protector of Grayson talk with the commander in chief of the Grayson Space Navy Wesley Matthews about their security situation.

MoH-snippet 13 Mathew and Benjamin continue to discuss the political and military situation especially considering the Mantis, the Sollis and the Havenite.

MoH-snippet 14 They confirm Lady Harringtons mission.
The Royal Manticoran Navy’s Destroyer Division 265.2, known as “the Silver Cepheids,” prepare to go home from their position a light-month from Manticore-A

MoH-snippet 15 The Silver Cepheids prepare to leave while the officers involve them selfs in cheerful banter about SCA. Then we switch over to Commodore Karol Østby of the Mesa Alignment Navy and his task force that quietly have been scouting the Mantis system in preparation for Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 16: Chapter 4 Some officers of the Solarian Office of Operational Analysis discuss a memo before switching over to Mesa and Aldona Anisimovna on her way to meet with Albrecht Detweiler.

MoH-snippet 17 Detweiler and his two sons meets with Aldona and the Streak drive is clarified in her internal dialog before they continue to discuss the recent ballroom activities

MoH-snippet 18 the Mesans continue to talk about Manticore.

MoH-snippet 19 The Mesans continue to talk about how to spin the Talbot story and it ends with them going to talk about Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 21: With such bad results from the evacuation exercise the new commander of the station sets out to make it better.

MoH-snippet 20: January, 1922, Post Diaspora
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . . .”
– Admiral Patricia Givens, RMN, CO, Office of Naval, Intelligence.
Chapter Five
An officer we know from previous books report for duty and there is a ominous discussion about evacuation drills not being up to par.

MoH-snippet 22: Captain Ansten FitzGerald and Commander Amal Nagchaudhuri have a friendly talk about Hexpuma’s repairs being almost finished and the crews upcoming R&R on the station.

MoH-snippet 23 President Eloise Pritchart and the leadership around her isn’t very surprised when eight fleet shows up at the edge of the Haven system, they have dreaded this moment for six months. They however are surprised!

MoH-snippet 24: President Eloise Pritchart and the Salamander is about to meet …

MoH-snippet 25: President Pritchart and Admiral Thomas Theisman chat while they wait on Honor to leave the shuttle. When Honor steps out they have a little chat before moving to the President’s office.

MoH-snippet 26: Chapter 7: Admiral Alexander-Harrington and the President measure each other up before sitting down.

MoH-snippet 27: The negotiations begin in earnest.

MoH-snippet 28: The Salamander’s opening statement is frank to say the least.

MoH-snippet 29: Honor finalizes her offer.

MoH-snippet 30: Chapter 8: The Haven leadership discuss Honor.

MoH-snippet 31: The cabinet continues to talk about how to set up the negotiations and make some great comments about Elizabeth and Honor.

MoH-snippet 32: Chapter 9: Mesa Alignment Navy units is carrying out their part of Oyster Bay at the outskirts of the system when they brush up against a GSN task force.

MoH-snippet 33: Chapter 10: They finally sit down to negotiating after some sidetrack thoughts about the hotel they are staying in.

MoH-Snippet 34: Honor is introduced to Haven’s negotiation team.

Source: www.ericflint.net

Mission of Honor will be available in June 29 2010

Description: The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington’s entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she’s achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She’s prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor’s worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore’s enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won’t be going alone.

Mission of Honor is a long awaited Honor Harrington novel the 12th in an extremely popular series. This is one of my absolute favorite series, I love everything by David Weber [profile], he is the master of military science fiction in my humble opinion.

MoH-snippet One Chapter 1:

December, 1921, Post Diaspora

“To understand Solly foreign policy, we’d have to be Sollies
. . . and nothing would be worth that!”
– Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

Arsenovich Kolokoltsov, the Solarian League’s Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs is struck speechless by disbelief and shock by the report from New Tuscany. Then he calls a conference with Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Wodoslawski, Abruzzi, MacArtney, , Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce Quartermain and Fleet Admiral Rajampet Kaushal Rajan and start to raise hell.

MoH-snippet Two: The Solies start to realize how far behind they are on the technology curb.

MoH-snippet three- The byrocrates are shocked by the Solarian League Navy utter defeat and the following surrender. They worry about the consecuences.

MoH-snippet four – they continue to talk about the battle at New Tuscany. Hot heads want to retaliate at any cost, cooler heads try to reason that it would be suicide to go up against the Manticorian navy at this time.

MoH-snippet five - they discuss declaring war on the Star Empire

MoH-snippet six: – they continue to discuss a war with the Manties and comes to a conclusion.

MoH-snippet Seven Chapter 2: Fleet Admiral Winston Kingsford, CO, Battle Fleet and Fleet Admiral Rajampet continue discussing the Mantis in private. Especially putting some analysts on the data right away, then they continue talking about fleet deployment, mantis missiles and when they will go after the Mantis home system. Winston is having an intresting inner dialogue about Sandra Cranell and her task force being deployed in the Madras sector.

MoH-snippet Eight: – Rajampet finish his meeting before we switch over to Queen Elizabeth III for a chat with Admira l Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington. They start out talking about Stacy Hauptman and her father before they switch over to Manpower and the Talbot Cluster.

MoH-snippet Nine Honor and Elizabeth continue to speculate on the Solarian response. It’s four days to Christmas. Honor will be leaving on an unspecified mission (Haven?) after celebrating Christmas with her family.
Honor meets with Admiral Tourville afterwards

MoH-snippet ten Honor, Nimitz and Tourville remembers previous meetings and do social niceties before coming to the point in the next snippet.

Snippet 11 Honor want to know about the political leadership in Haven but they end up talking about the surrender demands.

MoH-snippet 12 Chapter 3: Benjamin IX, Protector of Grayson talk with the commander in chief of the Grayson Space Navy Wesley Matthews about their security situation.

MoH-snippet 13 Mathew and Benjamin continue to discuss the political and military situation especially considering the Mantis, the Sollis and the Havenite.

MoH-snippet 14 They confirm Lady Harringtons mission.
The Royal Manticoran Navy’s Destroyer Division 265.2, known as “the Silver Cepheids,” prepare to go home from their position a light-month from Manticore-A

MoH-snippet 15 The Silver Cepheids prepare to leave while the officers involve them selfs in cheerful banter about SCA. Then we switch over to Commodore Karol Østby of the Mesa Alignment Navy and his task force that quietly have been scouting the Mantis system in preparation for Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 16: Chapter 4 Some officers of the Solarian Office of Operational Analysis discuss a memo before switching over to Mesa and Aldona Anisimovna on her way to meet with Albrecht Detweiler.

MoH-snippet 17 Detweiler and his two sons meets with Aldona and the Streak drive is clarified in her internal dialog before they continue to discuss the recent ballroom activities

MoH-snippet 18 the Mesans continue to talk about Manticore.

MoH-snippet 19 The Mesans continue to talk about how to spin the Talbot story and it ends with them going to talk about Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 21: With such bad results from the evacuation exercise the new commander of the station sets out to make it better.

MoH-snippet 20: January, 1922, Post Diaspora
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . . .”
– Admiral Patricia Givens, RMN, CO, Office of Naval, Intelligence.
Chapter Five
An officer we know from previous books report for duty and there is a ominous discussion about evacuation drills not being up to par.

MoH-snippet 22: Captain Ansten FitzGerald and Commander Amal Nagchaudhuri have a friendly talk about Hexpuma’s repairs being almost finished and the crews upcoming R&R on the station.

MoH-snippet 23 President Eloise Pritchart and the leadership around her isn’t very surprised when eight fleet shows up at the edge of the Haven system, they have dreaded this moment for six months. They however are surprised!

MoH-snippet 24: President Eloise Pritchart and the Salamander is about to meet …

MoH-snippet 25: President Pritchart and Admiral Thomas Theisman chat while they wait on Honor to leave the shuttle. When Honor steps out they have a little chat before moving to the President’s office.

MoH-snippet 26: Chapter 7: Admiral Alexander-Harrington and the President measure each other up before sitting down.

MoH-snippet 27: The negotiations begin in earnest.

MoH-snippet 28: The Salamander’s opening statement is frank to say the least.

MoH-snippet 29: Honor finalizes her offer.

MoH-snippet 30: Chapter 8: The Haven leadership discuss Honor.

MoH-snippet 31: The cabinet continues to talk about how to set up the negotiations and make some great comments about Elizabeth and Honor.

MoH-snippet 32: Chapter 9: Mesa Alignment Navy units is carrying out their part of Oyster Bay at the outskirts of the system when they brush up against a GSN task force.

MoH-snippet 33: Chapter 10: They finally sit down to negotiating after some sidetrack thoughts about the hotel they are staying in.

Source: www.ericflint.net

Mission of Honor will be available in June 29 2010

Description: The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington’s entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she’s achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She’s prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor’s worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore’s enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won’t be going alone.

Mission of Honor is a long awaited Honor Harrington novel the 12th in an extremely popular series. This is one of my absolute favorite series, I love everything by David Weber [profile], he is the master of military science fiction in my humble opinion.

MoH-snippet One Chapter 1:

December, 1921, Post Diaspora

“To understand Solly foreign policy, we’d have to be Sollies
. . . and nothing would be worth that!”
– Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

Arsenovich Kolokoltsov, the Solarian League’s Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs is struck speechless by disbelief and shock by the report from New Tuscany. Then he calls a conference with Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Wodoslawski, Abruzzi, MacArtney, , Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce Quartermain and Fleet Admiral Rajampet Kaushal Rajan and start to raise hell.

MoH-snippet Two: The Solies start to realize how far behind they are on the technology curb.

MoH-snippet three- The byrocrates are shocked by the Solarian League Navy utter defeat and the following surrender. They worry about the consecuences.

MoH-snippet four – they continue to talk about the battle at New Tuscany. Hot heads want to retaliate at any cost, cooler heads try to reason that it would be suicide to go up against the Manticorian navy at this time.

MoH-snippet five - they discuss declaring war on the Star Empire

MoH-snippet six: – they continue to discuss a war with the Manties and comes to a conclusion.

MoH-snippet Seven Chapter 2: Fleet Admiral Winston Kingsford, CO, Battle Fleet and Fleet Admiral Rajampet continue discussing the Mantis in private. Especially putting some analysts on the data right away, then they continue talking about fleet deployment, mantis missiles and when they will go after the Mantis home system. Winston is having an intresting inner dialogue about Sandra Cranell and her task force being deployed in the Madras sector.

MoH-snippet Eight: – Rajampet finish his meeting before we switch over to Queen Elizabeth III for a chat with Admira l Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington. They start out talking about Stacy Hauptman and her father before they switch over to Manpower and the Talbot Cluster.

MoH-snippet Nine Honor and Elizabeth continue to speculate on the Solarian response. It’s four days to Christmas. Honor will be leaving on an unspecified mission (Haven?) after celebrating Christmas with her family.
Honor meets with Admiral Tourville afterwards

MoH-snippet ten Honor, Nimitz and Tourville remembers previous meetings and do social niceties before coming to the point in the next snippet.

Snippet 11 Honor want to know about the political leadership in Haven but they end up talking about the surrender demands.

MoH-snippet 12 Chapter 3: Benjamin IX, Protector of Grayson talk with the commander in chief of the Grayson Space Navy Wesley Matthews about their security situation.

MoH-snippet 13 Mathew and Benjamin continue to discuss the political and military situation especially considering the Mantis, the Sollis and the Havenite.

MoH-snippet 14 They confirm Lady Harringtons mission.
The Royal Manticoran Navy’s Destroyer Division 265.2, known as “the Silver Cepheids,” prepare to go home from their position a light-month from Manticore-A

MoH-snippet 15 The Silver Cepheids prepare to leave while the officers involve them selfs in cheerful banter about SCA. Then we switch over to Commodore Karol Østby of the Mesa Alignment Navy and his task force that quietly have been scouting the Mantis system in preparation for Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 16: Chapter 4 Some officers of the Solarian Office of Operational Analysis discuss a memo before switching over to Mesa and Aldona Anisimovna on her way to meet with Albrecht Detweiler.

MoH-snippet 17 Detweiler and his two sons meets with Aldona and the Streak drive is clarified in her internal dialog before they continue to discuss the recent ballroom activities

MoH-snippet 18 the Mesans continue to talk about Manticore.

MoH-snippet 19 The Mesans continue to talk about how to spin the Talbot story and it ends with them going to talk about Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 21: With such bad results from the evacuation exercise the new commander of the station sets out to make it better.

MoH-snippet 20: January, 1922, Post Diaspora
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . . .”
– Admiral Patricia Givens, RMN, CO, Office of Naval, Intelligence.
Chapter Five
An officer we know from previous books report for duty and there is a ominous discussion about evacuation drills not being up to par.

MoH-snippet 22: Captain Ansten FitzGerald and Commander Amal Nagchaudhuri have a friendly talk about Hexpuma’s repairs being almost finished and the crews upcoming R&R on the station.

MoH-snippet 23 President Eloise Pritchart and the leadership around her isn’t very surprised when eight fleet shows up at the edge of the Haven system, they have dreaded this moment for six months. They however are surprised!

MoH-snippet 24: President Eloise Pritchart and the Salamander is about to meet …

MoH-snippet 25: President Pritchart and Admiral Thomas Theisman chat while they wait on Honor to leave the shuttle. When Honor steps out they have a little chat before moving to the President’s office.

MoH-snippet 26: Chapter 7: Admiral Alexander-Harrington and the President measure each other up before sitting down.

MoH-snippet 27: The negotiations begin in earnest.

MoH-snippet 28: The Salamander’s opening statement is frank to say the least.

MoH-snippet 29: Honor finalizes her offer.

MoH-snippet 30: Chapter 8: The Haven leadership discuss Honor.

MoH-snippet 31: The cabinet continues to talk about how to set up the negotiations and make some great comments about Elizabeth and Honor.

MoH-snippet 32: Chapter 9: Mesa Alignment Navy units is carrying out their part of Oyster Bay at the outskirts of the system when they brush up against a GSN task force.

Source: www.ericflint.net

Mission of Honor will be available in June 29 2010

Description: The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington’s entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she’s achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She’s prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor’s worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore’s enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won’t be going alone.

End of Line for robot Zoe when Daniel decides that he will wipe the chip of the anomalies. When Lacy fails to deliver she turns to Philemon and tells him the truth only to be betrayed as he sends out an alarm, in desperation she kills him and hijack a minivan and takes to the roads with the military in hot pursuit. End of the Line at the roadblock she deciedes to ram.

End of the Line for Joseph Adama when he finally meet Tamara in V-world and she tells him he has to stop taking AMP and stop living his life looking for her. End of the Line as she shoots herself and then her father so that he can never return to V-world.

End of the Line for Amanda when she confronts Daniel about the accusations and he fails to answer. When her ‘friend’ Clairice brushes her off in her desperation Amanda looses contact with reality and eventually end up jumping from a bridge.

Clarice comes to End of the Line with Barnabas and in a final confrontation decides to go to Gemini to get sanction to remove him. End of the Line when she sees Amanda preparing to jump on that bridge and leave her car just before a bomb goes off destroying it.

End of the Line for innocent Lacy as she joins STO to help Zoe and her first mission is to put a ‘tracing device’ on Clariece’s key ring for Barnabas. End of the Line when she finaly relizes Barnabas and her boyfriend just used her to put a relay for a bomb on Clarice. End of the Line when Barnabas forces her at gun point to press the button and forever say bye, bye to innocence.

End of the Line for Daniel Graystone as he is forced to sell his beloved Pyramid team. End of the Line as the military move up his deadline to deliver 100.000 robot soldiers to a week from now! End of the Line when the military procurement officer tells Vergis “If you get the company, you’ll get the contract”. End of the Line as the phone rings in the closing scene.

It all ends in an enormous cliffhanger, what happened to robot Zoe, Amanda, the defence contract and what telephone call did Daniel received in the closing scene?

Caprica started up slow but has been picking up speed in the last few episodes which I think is essential for the show, unfortunately quite a few viewers might have abandoned the show before the tempo picked up and this hiatus thing will not help. I am afraid the network’s handling of the showings might wound the numbers unnecessary for an otherwise promising show.

I have been postponing to watch the last episode for a long time, there must be a reason for that. I want to like this show, I really do. I have tried and tried to convince myself it’s good.

I like to be able to love and root for the characters in a show and in Caprica they are hard to find and hold on to. As soon as I start to root for a characters the writers find a way to make me dislike or mistrusts that character. Zoe is one such character, in the beginning she behaved like brat, then I could feel sympathy for her trapped in the robot and now again she becomes more and more sinister. Daniel is another with bad parenting, stealing the chip, then we are supposed to feel sympathy for him when he is about to loose his company, the man treats his employees like shit. The only one i have some empathy left for is Lacy and I am not sure it’s enough to get me back to watching Caprica when it returns in six months.

I am afraid this could also be the End of the Line for me and Caprica, I will make an effort to watch the first 2-3 episodes but if I am not sold by then I am gone.

Title: Full Share
Author: Nathan Lowell
Voices: Nathan Lowell
Series: Golden Age of the Solar Clipper 3
Genre: Mercantile Science Fiction
Publisher: Podiobooks.com
Audiobook: Free Online | iTunes
Homepage: Trader’s Diary
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 3.0 United States License

The Lois McKendrick runs headlong into trouble when a routine in-system transit goes bad. Ishmael and the rest of the crew must scramble to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it in order to keep the ship alive. Learn more about the officers and crew as they struggle to keep their ship and discover how Ishmael finds out how wrong he’s been about what it means to be a spacer in this latest Trader’s Tale.

As you might remember Ishmael loves the Deep Dark and he decided to learn all four spacer specialties so that he always would be able to take a new job offer in case he got stranded. That never happened so far as the Mack crew have become more like his extended family, and you don’t fire family. In this installment he continues to learn, taking more exams.

When the ship run into a energy field on a routine jump to Betrus something unexpected happens with the ships system and most of the book is about finding out why it happened and prevent it from ever happing again. Ish saves the ship in a rather spectacular way but it is downplayed so he doesn’t notice it himself until much later in the novel. Charmingly done by Nathan.

Corporate assigns an environment tech with seniority to environmental leaving Ish without a job, but don’t worry the Mack takes care of its own. The new tech is sloppy and act as if he is entitled, this is dealt with as a workplace problem in a rather mature way. But when CC the new guy doesn’t listen to reason Ish finds another way. That is one amusing story.

From the first chapters people tell Ishmael that he should apply to the Academy to become an officer, because he obviously have a knack for it. It is all a bit bitter sweet, because Ishmael would have to leave the Mack to go and probably never come back.

As with any young man, a fair bit of the book is about his relations with girls. Full Share is PG-13 at least towards the end.

The world outside trade never felt important and are not explained much. We get to know more about the independent traders though. Life in a Free Trader Family opens Ishmael’s eyes. One thing I like about the share books is how natural the narration feels, its like the characters live in the world and they don’t think so much about everyday knowledge that doesn’t concern them, the focus lies on their everyday problems and how they deal with them.

Full Share ends the Lois McKendrick Trilogy part of the story, it is bittersweet and empowering. Young man finds a new family, grows up and leaves family, family is proud to see him grow. It is the natural order of things. All the Share books have a message about non-violent solutions that is a fresh contrast to most science fiction. Everyone interested in science fiction should listen to the Share books because it’s a different perspective, the working stiff’s SF.

Mission of Honor is a long awaited Honor Harrington novel the 12th in an extremely popular series. This is one of my absolute favorite series, I love everything by David Weber [profile], he is the master of military science fiction in my humble opinion.

MoH-snippet One Chapter 1:

December, 1921, Post Diaspora

“To understand Solly foreign policy, we’d have to be Sollies
. . . and nothing would be worth that!”
– Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

Arsenovich Kolokoltsov, the Solarian League’s Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs is struck speechless by disbelief and shock by the report from New Tuscany. Then he calls a conference with Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Wodoslawski, Abruzzi, MacArtney, , Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce Quartermain and Fleet Admiral Rajampet Kaushal Rajan and start to raise hell.

MoH-snippet Two: The Solies start to realize how far behind they are on the technology curb.

MoH-snippet three- The byrocrates are shocked by the Solarian League Navy utter defeat and the following surrender. They worry about the consecuences.

MoH-snippet four – they continue to talk about the battle at New Tuscany. Hot heads want to retaliate at any cost, cooler heads try to reason that it would be suicide to go up against the Manticorian navy at this time.

MoH-snippet five - they discuss declaring war on the Star Empire

MoH-snippet six: – they continue to discuss a war with the Manties and comes to a conclusion.

MoH-snippet Seven Chapter 2: Fleet Admiral Winston Kingsford, CO, Battle Fleet and Fleet Admiral Rajampet continue discussing the Mantis in private. Especially putting some analysts on the data right away, then they continue talking about fleet deployment, mantis missiles and when they will go after the Mantis home system. Winston is having an intresting inner dialogue about Sandra Cranell and her task force being deployed in the Madras sector.

MoH-snippet Eight: – Rajampet finish his meeting before we switch over to Queen Elizabeth III for a chat with Admira l Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington. They start out talking about Stacy Hauptman and her father before they switch over to Manpower and the Talbot Cluster.

MoH-snippet Nine Honor and Elizabeth continue to speculate on the Solarian response. It’s four days to Christmas. Honor will be leaving on an unspecified mission (Haven?) after celebrating Christmas with her family.
Honor meets with Admiral Tourville afterwards

MoH-snippet ten Honor, Nimitz and Tourville remembers previous meetings and do social niceties before coming to the point in the next snippet.

Snippet 11 Honor want to know about the political leadership in Haven but they end up talking about the surrender demands.

MoH-snippet 12 Chapter 3: Benjamin IX, Protector of Grayson talk with the commander in chief of the Grayson Space Navy Wesley Matthews about their security situation.

MoH-snippet 13 Mathew and Benjamin continue to discuss the political and military situation especially considering the Mantis, the Sollis and the Havenite.

MoH-snippet 14 They confirm Lady Harringtons mission.
The Royal Manticoran Navy’s Destroyer Division 265.2, known as “the Silver Cepheids,” prepare to go home from their position a light-month from Manticore-A

MoH-snippet 15 The Silver Cepheids prepare to leave while the officers involve them selfs in cheerful banter about SCA. Then we switch over to Commodore Karol Østby of the Mesa Alignment Navy and his task force that quietly have been scouting the Mantis system in preparation for Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 16: Chapter 4 Some officers of the Solarian Office of Operational Analysis discuss a memo before switching over to Mesa and Aldona Anisimovna on her way to meet with Albrecht Detweiler.

MoH-snippet 17 Detweiler and his two sons meets with Aldona and the Streak drive is clarified in her internal dialog before they continue to discuss the recent ballroom activities

MoH-snippet 18 the Mesans continue to talk about Manticore.

MoH-snippet 19 The Mesans continue to talk about how to spin the Talbot story and it ends with them going to talk about Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 21: With such bad results from the evacuation exercise the new commander of the station sets out to make it better.

MoH-snippet 20: January, 1922, Post Diaspora
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . . .”
– Admiral Patricia Givens, RMN, CO, Office of Naval, Intelligence.
Chapter Five
An officer we know from previous books report for duty and there is a ominous discussion about evacuation drills not being up to par.

MoH-snippet 22: Captain Ansten FitzGerald and Commander Amal Nagchaudhuri have a friendly talk about Hexpuma’s repairs being almost finished and the crews upcoming R&R on the station.

MoH-snippet 23 President Eloise Pritchart and the leadership around her isn’t very surprised when eight fleet shows up at the edge of the Haven system, they have dreaded this moment for six months. They however are surprised!

MoH-snippet 24: President Eloise Pritchart and the Salamander is about to meet …

MoH-snippet 25: President Pritchart and Admiral Thomas Theisman chat while they wait on Honor to leave the shuttle. When Honor steps out they have a little chat before moving to the President’s office.

MoH-snippet 26: Chapter 7: Admiral Alexander-Harrington and the President measure each other up before sitting down.

MoH-snippet 27: The negotiations begin in earnest.

MoH-snippet 28: The Salamander’s opening statement is frank to say the least.

MoH-snippet 29: Honor finalizes her offer.

MoH-snippet 30: Chapter 8: The Haven leadership discuss Honor.

MoH-snippet 31: The cabinet continues to talk about how to set up the negotiations and make some great comments about Elizabeth and Honor.

Source: www.ericflint.net

Mission of Honor will be available in June 29 2010

Description: The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington’s entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she’s achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She’s prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor’s worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore’s enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won’t be going alone.

THE RAVEN – 720 HD from THE RAVEN FILM on Vimeo.

I found this beauty on one of my Google Blog Alerts. I want the full movie, now, please!

New science fiction short film which was created for $5000 by Ricardo de Montreuil. Stunning visual effects and professional quality is getting this film a lot of buzz on the internet to be made into a full feature.

Chris Black possesses a power that could lead to the destruction of the current regime, and they will stop at nothing to destroy him. The chase is on as Chris runs for his life in this sci-fi thriller set in an alternate and futuristic Los Angeles.

Mission of Honor is a long awaited Honor Harrington novel the 12th in an extremely popular series. This is one of my absolute favorite series, I love everything by David Weber [profile], he is the master of military science fiction in my humble opinion.

MoH-snippet One Chapter 1:

December, 1921, Post Diaspora

“To understand Solly foreign policy, we’d have to be Sollies
. . . and nothing would be worth that!”
– Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

Arsenovich Kolokoltsov, the Solarian League’s Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs is struck speechless by disbelief and shock by the report from New Tuscany. Then he calls a conference with Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Wodoslawski, Abruzzi, MacArtney, , Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce Quartermain and Fleet Admiral Rajampet Kaushal Rajan and start to raise hell.

MoH-snippet Two: The Solies start to realize how far behind they are on the technology curb.

MoH-snippet three- The byrocrates are shocked by the Solarian League Navy utter defeat and the following surrender. They worry about the consecuences.

MoH-snippet four – they continue to talk about the battle at New Tuscany. Hot heads want to retaliate at any cost, cooler heads try to reason that it would be suicide to go up against the Manticorian navy at this time.

MoH-snippet five - they discuss declaring war on the Star Empire

MoH-snippet six: – they continue to discuss a war with the Manties and comes to a conclusion.

MoH-snippet Seven Chapter 2: Fleet Admiral Winston Kingsford, CO, Battle Fleet and Fleet Admiral Rajampet continue discussing the Mantis in private. Especially putting some analysts on the data right away, then they continue talking about fleet deployment, mantis missiles and when they will go after the Mantis home system. Winston is having an intresting inner dialogue about Sandra Cranell and her task force being deployed in the Madras sector.

MoH-snippet Eight: – Rajampet finish his meeting before we switch over to Queen Elizabeth III for a chat with Admira l Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington. They start out talking about Stacy Hauptman and her father before they switch over to Manpower and the Talbot Cluster.

MoH-snippet Nine Honor and Elizabeth continue to speculate on the Solarian response. It’s four days to Christmas. Honor will be leaving on an unspecified mission (Haven?) after celebrating Christmas with her family.
Honor meets with Admiral Tourville afterwards

MoH-snippet ten Honor, Nimitz and Tourville remembers previous meetings and do social niceties before coming to the point in the next snippet.

Snippet 11 Honor want to know about the political leadership in Haven but they end up talking about the surrender demands.

MoH-snippet 12 Chapter 3: Benjamin IX, Protector of Grayson talk with the commander in chief of the Grayson Space Navy Wesley Matthews about their security situation.

MoH-snippet 13 Mathew and Benjamin continue to discuss the political and military situation especially considering the Mantis, the Sollis and the Havenite.

MoH-snippet 14 They confirm Lady Harringtons mission.
The Royal Manticoran Navy’s Destroyer Division 265.2, known as “the Silver Cepheids,” prepare to go home from their position a light-month from Manticore-A

MoH-snippet 15 The Silver Cepheids prepare to leave while the officers involve them selfs in cheerful banter about SCA. Then we switch over to Commodore Karol Østby of the Mesa Alignment Navy and his task force that quietly have been scouting the Mantis system in preparation for Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 16: Chapter 4 Some officers of the Solarian Office of Operational Analysis discuss a memo before switching over to Mesa and Aldona Anisimovna on her way to meet with Albrecht Detweiler.

MoH-snippet 17 Detweiler and his two sons meets with Aldona and the Streak drive is clarified in her internal dialog before they continue to discuss the recent ballroom activities

MoH-snippet 18 the Mesans continue to talk about Manticore.

MoH-snippet 19 The Mesans continue to talk about how to spin the Talbot story and it ends with them going to talk about Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 21: With such bad results from the evacuation exercise the new commander of the station sets out to make it better.

MoH-snippet 20: January, 1922, Post Diaspora
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . . .”
– Admiral Patricia Givens, RMN, CO, Office of Naval, Intelligence.
Chapter Five
An officer we know from previous books report for duty and there is a ominous discussion about evacuation drills not being up to par.

MoH-snippet 22: Captain Ansten FitzGerald and Commander Amal Nagchaudhuri have a friendly talk about Hexpuma’s repairs being almost finished and the crews upcoming R&R on the station.

MoH-snippet 23 President Eloise Pritchart and the leadership around her isn’t very surprised when eight fleet shows up at the edge of the Haven system, they have dreaded this moment for six months. They however are surprised!

MoH-snippet 24: President Eloise Pritchart and the Salamander is about to meet …

MoH-snippet 25: President Pritchart and Admiral Thomas Theisman chat while they wait on Honor to leave the shuttle. When Honor steps out they have a little chat before moving to the President’s office.

MoH-snippet 26: Chapter 7: Admiral Alexander-Harrington and the President measure each other up before sitting down.

MoH-snippet 27: The negotiations begin in earnest.

MoH-snippet 28: The Salamander’s opening statement is frank to say the least.

MoH-snippet 29: Honor finalizes her offer.

MoH-snippet 30: Chapter 8: The Haven leadership discuss Honor.

Source: www.ericflint.net

Mission of Honor will be available in June 29 2010

Description: The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington’s entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she’s achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She’s prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor’s worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore’s enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won’t be going alone.

Title: Half Share
Author: Nathan Lowell
Series: Golden Age of the Solar Clipper 2
Audiobook: iTunes | podiobooks.com
Order: Free Online Audio Book
Homepage: Trader’s Diary

In this podiobook: A Trader’s Tale from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper : Book 2 After Ishmael Wang is promoted to the environmental section, he’s caught in a swirl of mystery, doubt, belief, lust and a really nice fitting pair of jeans. He has to come to grips with what it means to be a spacer while he’s still trying to figure out what it means to be a man. Join Ishmael, Brillo, Pip, and the rest of the crew of the Lois McKendrick as they help the newest member of the crew adjust to life in the Deep Dark. Half Share is the sequel to Quarter Share, also available at Podiobooks.com.Note: Some scenes in Half Share involve adult themes, nudity, sex and references to religions not based on Judeo-Christian traditions. Read at your own risk.

Ishmael Wong is orphaned when his mother, an Ancient Literature Professor is killed in an accident. Without any fortune or income he enlists in the Mercantile Marine as a quarter share mess boy. The SC McKendrick becomes his new home and the crew his new family. He is still learning the ropes but he is a very talented young man, open and he has easy to learn.

His ability to plan ahead and quickly integrate in any new group helps when he starts working in environment. Most of this book is about work place problems and how to solve them. I suspect Nathan Lowell worked with human resources at some stage. There is Ishmael’s replacement Sarah Kroog that hides a mystery, his friend Pip with his hidden talents but over all Ish ability to integrate people into his new extended family.

Ishmael is still a naive young man but the females of the crew adopt him and even bring him shopping, it helps that he gets an introduction to the top designer of the station. At times this comes very close to an adolescent boy’s dream world even if there is no sex involved.

The power of Nathan Lowell’s narration is that even if there isn’t much happening in this novel you are still mesmerized by it, it is brilliant. I enjoyed the change from my beloved space operas, count this book also as a strong recommendation and know that the next book Full Share is even better.

It would be wrong to call the people on the Destiny it’s crew, they are a too divided for that. The coup the Civilians tried in the last episode Divided becomes more believable as we understand their concerns over Colonel Young’s decision to abandon Rush on that alien planet back in episode ten. He is deeply distraught by it himself and try to go the extra mile to make everything work. The resentment and mistrust between the two groups are there all the time.

Maybe it is best exemplified with Lt Matthew Scott and Chloe Armstrong. He can barely look at her and goes out of his way to avoid her since she took the other side. And I can understand him, they where in a relation and she knew and didn’t say anything. I would have felt betrayed also.

The food is bad, their tools are bad, living on the Destiny is not so great. It is almost like a wish come true when the Destiny unexpectedly drops out of FLT. There seems to be an unexpected star in the way, one that appeared here after the seed ships passed by (Destiny is preceded by automated ships that plant Stargates on the worlds ahead). To everyones surprise the sun is orbited by a single life bearing planet. That planet has no affair being there, it takes millions of years for a planet to form. Rush theorizes that it is an artificial planet, but there is no signs of intelligent life. Eli suggests some kind of Genesis device (From Star Trek).

They send the one working shuttle down to check out the planet. It has a remarkable resemblance to the lakes and woodlands of Canada and the previous installments of Stargate. The world is hospitable and the fruits edible which a foolish Greer proves with a bite. That is the single most unbelievable part of this episode. Ronald Greer is supposed to be a Master Sergeant. The backbone of any army is it’s NCO:s. With their Master Sergeants on top. They are supposed to be the ones making people jump when an officer orders it. Or the morale is so low that even he succumbs. They also discover a gigantic obelisk, over 2 km high in a valley on the planet as they leave.

The ship lays out a course around the obstacle that will take it around the sun in a bit over a month. Most of that time will be out of shuttle range of the planet. They decide to send down the people that want to go, to explore the planet and the obelisk during the month Destiny will be out of range.

From the beginning i noticed that the crew all seemed to be suffering from bad health, TJ looks like she is about to throw up,  Scott is suffering from bad skin or bad tools and Rush is having stomach pains, probably from the operation when they removed the alien transmitter.

At the beginning down on the planet the tension is bad between the civilians and the military personnel, but Scott steps forward and try to mend fences. It soon becomes like one of those team building exercises, they build together, play together, and explore together. Even Scott and Chloe seems to reconcile a bit after he walks in on her taking a nude dip in the lake. A very short Kodak moment there, I wonder if the water in that lake was cold? TJ become more and more peculiar down there, showing signs of throwing up, walking away to be with herself and such. Just when you start to think that it is something wrong with the planet she reveals to Chloe that she is pregnant and has been pregnant since she came aboard the Destiny. And that morning sickness is a good sign. Chloe has to promise not to tell anyone.

The ground team doesn’t learn anything about the Obelisk beside that one night it shoots a great beam of light up in the sky probably to the creators of the planet. Some start to think about staying on the planet, there is one guy that becomes almost religious and tells everyone to trust the aliens to come and help them.

Meanwhile on Destiny they decide to repair and explore the ship, FINALLY! As the main engines is down they can now use the surplus energy to extend the shield and start to repair damage to the ship and the second shuttle. They find what appears to be some kind of warehouse. When they open a box they find what appears to be a shut down robot. Rush decides that they should leave it for later. That is something I am looking forward to see more of in future episodes.

When destiny once again comes into range they are faced with a dilemma. Some of the ground team wants to stay. TJ is one of them that wants to stay. She tells TJ and Chloe she is pregnant and she doesn’t want to raise a child on the ship. Lt Scott seems taken by TJ’s state. He deduces that Colonel Young is the father but he still wants to stay behind and help TJ. For me it seems like he has feelings for TJ, and Chloe is not to happy about it.

The discussions rage back and forth. Rush wants Young to order a military detail down and force them to return at gunpoint, which is relatively ironic considering they rebelled against that last episode. In the end Young takes the second shuttle down and offer them it to have as protection if they surrender their military personnel. There is a tense scene where Tamara has the opportunity to tell Everett she is pregnant but she decides to return to the ship instead taking most of the group with her. Chloe and Scott also return.

I got the feeling all of the people returned, but I am not sure. We will see if we have two working shuttles, then they all went back.

Interesting that Destiny leaves the system without finding out who the aliens where. There is a good chance we will find out down the way.

What I like best with this episode was at the end. The crew of Destiny sitting down and eating together, showing joyful signs of camaraderie. They had hell of a team building down there. The one thing that has bugged me most with the show before has been the overblown dramas they have had, that reminded me of shows like Big Brother and Survivor where you put people together with the sole purpose of creating conflicts as entertainment.  I have hope we have left that behind now. I like drama it’s the fire that keeps the engine going, but it should be believable drama.

Wow, it was a great episode even Rush and Young seemed to become more friendly at the end. Wonder what next week brings?

Title: The Sagittarius Command
Author: R. M. Meluch
Series: Tour of the Merrimack 3
Genre: Military Science Fiction | Alternative Reality
Cover art: Stephan Martiniere
Publisher: DAW, October 2008
Order: DAW | Amazon US | UK | B&N

After the finest battleship-class spaceship in Earth’s fleet, the U.S.S. Merrimack, rescues a near-space Roman world besieged by a destructive alien life-form known as the Hive, the Romans’ leader, Caesar Magnus, insists on honoring the ship’s captain, John Farragut. But when Caesar is assassinated, Farragut must lead a mission into the heart of Hive territory in search of a Roman who has been presumed “dead” for decades.

The Hive is back with a vengeance and human forces are hard pressed. They thought they had a good hold on the time table but the Hive learn. When the Hive attacks a Roman world near Earth without any warning the Roman defenders have to make what they think is a last stand in a recreated old fortress only to be rescued by the arrival of the U.S.S. Merrimack. The ability of large groups of Hive to take control of advanced electronics makes it plausible to use low techs like swords to fight them. This is one of the charming aspects of the Mack series, I always have been weak for science fiction with medieval tech and here it is pre medieval. Rebeca M. Meluch show genuine expertise in the details.

The Romans are a proud folk and the Subjugation doesn’t sit well with them. There is lots of resentment around. Further fueled when Ceasar Magnus, the Emperor decide to honor Farragut. The Emperor is assassinated before the cermony can complete and his son Romulus take charge. The relations between Romans and Americans tense further.

If you read my review of the previous books you know the Roman Empire never died back in the eight hundreds, they went into hiding. Ever wondered why lawyers, scientists and doctors talk Latin? They are in secret societies biding their time to the return of the Roman Empire. At some stage they broke away the colony world Palantir and formed the New Roman Empire. Members of secret societies revealed themselves and joined, splitting families and breaking loyalties. Resentment was great at both sides. It was only a matter of time before a war between America and Palantir broke out.  Rebeca crafts an interesting background, it is definitely one of the wow points in this series. I have always been suspicious of lawyers and now I know. :)

The return of Augustus, the patterner puts U.S.S. Merrimack on the trace of an even bigger mystery. The founder of Roman displacement and automation technology was believed to have been killed decades ago when he started to become a threat to the throne. Augustus deduce that he is still alive, living on a planet inside Hive controlled space. He might hold the secret to defeat the hive or might be the one responsible for it’s attack. Farragut’s task force is sent to investigate.

I am not sure but I sense that the Hive here might be a force of nature corrupted or striking back at humanity much like mother nature might do if we don’t stop polluting her. They do react to resonance signals used in faster than light communication. Maybe I am seeing environmental issues where there is none? The answer might be in the next book.

What really made book one and two is Rebeca’s fantastic characters and their interaction. That continues here but on a somewhat less intensity. For the characters there is not as much resolution in this book. There is some new ones Constantine the missing inventor and Herius Asinius a disgruntled Roman legate. Steele and Kerry impeded love affair continues to amuse. Augustus features more in this book and his relation with Captain Ferragut is going towards new places. I am not sure where the author is going with Augustus, he could be a brewing villain or Ferragut’s next best friend. I am looking forward to more resolve on that issue in the next book.

I prefer to read a book in one go and due to reasons not connected to the this book I wasn’t able to do that even if I wanted to. It is captivating to read and you feel that it brings us closer to a resolution, but I should also be honest and tell you I didn’t have that many wow moments in this book as in the previous.

The Sagittarius Command is another great swashbuckling space opera from Rebeca M. Meluch. Tour of the Merrimack is one of the best and most entertaining military science fiction series I have found in recent years. I recommend it to all secret swashbucklers and readers of military scifi, ahoy mates!

Mission of Honor is a long awaited Honor Harrington novel the 12th in an extremely popular series. This is one of my absolute favorite series, I love everything by David Weber [profile], he is the master of military science fiction in my humble opinion.

MoH-snippet One Chapter 1:

December, 1921, Post Diaspora

“To understand Solly foreign policy, we’d have to be Sollies
. . . and nothing would be worth that!”
– Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

Arsenovich Kolokoltsov, the Solarian League’s Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs is struck speechless by disbelief and shock by the report from New Tuscany. Then he calls a conference with Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Wodoslawski, Abruzzi, MacArtney, , Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce Quartermain and Fleet Admiral Rajampet Kaushal Rajan and start to raise hell.

MoH-snippet Two: The Solies start to realize how far behind they are on the technology curb.

MoH-snippet three- The byrocrates are shocked by the Solarian League Navy utter defeat and the following surrender. They worry about the consecuences.

MoH-snippet four – they continue to talk about the battle at New Tuscany. Hot heads want to retaliate at any cost, cooler heads try to reason that it would be suicide to go up against the Manticorian navy at this time.

MoH-snippet five - they discuss declaring war on the Star Empire

MoH-snippet six: – they continue to discuss a war with the Manties and comes to a conclusion.

MoH-snippet Seven Chapter 2: Fleet Admiral Winston Kingsford, CO, Battle Fleet and Fleet Admiral Rajampet continue discussing the Mantis in private. Especially putting some analysts on the data right away, then they continue talking about fleet deployment, mantis missiles and when they will go after the Mantis home system. Winston is having an intresting inner dialogue about Sandra Cranell and her task force being deployed in the Madras sector.

MoH-snippet Eight: – Rajampet finish his meeting before we switch over to Queen Elizabeth III for a chat with Admira l Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington. They start out talking about Stacy Hauptman and her father before they switch over to Manpower and the Talbot Cluster.

MoH-snippet Nine Honor and Elizabeth continue to speculate on the Solarian response. It’s four days to Christmas. Honor will be leaving on an unspecified mission (Haven?) after celebrating Christmas with her family.
Honor meets with Admiral Tourville afterwards

MoH-snippet ten Honor, Nimitz and Tourville remembers previous meetings and do social niceties before coming to the point in the next snippet.

Snippet 11 Honor want to know about the political leadership in Haven but they end up talking about the surrender demands.

MoH-snippet 12 Chapter 3: Benjamin IX, Protector of Grayson talk with the commander in chief of the Grayson Space Navy Wesley Matthews about their security situation.

MoH-snippet 13 Mathew and Benjamin continue to discuss the political and military situation especially considering the Mantis, the Sollis and the Havenite.

MoH-snippet 14 They confirm Lady Harringtons mission.
The Royal Manticoran Navy’s Destroyer Division 265.2, known as “the Silver Cepheids,” prepare to go home from their position a light-month from Manticore-A

MoH-snippet 15 The Silver Cepheids prepare to leave while the officers involve them selfs in cheerful banter about SCA. Then we switch over to Commodore Karol Østby of the Mesa Alignment Navy and his task force that quietly have been scouting the Mantis system in preparation for Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 16: Chapter 4 Some officers of the Solarian Office of Operational Analysis discuss a memo before switching over to Mesa and Aldona Anisimovna on her way to meet with Albrecht Detweiler.

MoH-snippet 17 Detweiler and his two sons meets with Aldona and the Streak drive is clarified in her internal dialog before they continue to discuss the recent ballroom activities

MoH-snippet 18 the Mesans continue to talk about Manticore.

MoH-snippet 19 The Mesans continue to talk about how to spin the Talbot story and it ends with them going to talk about Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 21: With such bad results from the evacuation exercise the new commander of the station sets out to make it better.

MoH-snippet 20: January, 1922, Post Diaspora
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . . .”
– Admiral Patricia Givens, RMN, CO, Office of Naval, Intelligence.
Chapter Five
An officer we know from previous books report for duty and there is a ominous discussion about evacuation drills not being up to par.

MoH-snippet 22: Captain Ansten FitzGerald and Commander Amal Nagchaudhuri have a friendly talk about Hexpuma’s repairs being almost finished and the crews upcoming R&R on the station.

MoH-snippet 23 President Eloise Pritchart and the leadership around her isn’t very surprised when eight fleet shows up at the edge of the Haven system, they have dreaded this moment for six months. They however are surprised!

MoH-snippet 24: President Eloise Pritchart and the Salamander is about to meet …

MoH-snippet 25: President Pritchart and Admiral Thomas Theisman chat while they wait on Honor to leave the shuttle. When Honor steps out they have a little chat before moving to the President’s office.

MoH-snippet 26: Chapter 7: Admiral Alexander-Harrington and the President measure each other up before sitting down.

MoH-snippet 27: The negotiations begin in earnest.

MoH-snippet 28: The Salamander’s opening statement is frank to say the least.

Source: www.ericflint.net

Mission of Honor will be available in June 29 2010

Description: The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington’s entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she’s achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She’s prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor’s worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore’s enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won’t be going alone.

Mission of Honor is a long awaited Honor Harrington novel the 12th in an extremely popular series. This is one of my absolute favorite series, I love everything by David Weber [profile], he is the master of military science fiction in my humble opinion.

MoH-snippet One Chapter 1:

December, 1921, Post Diaspora

“To understand Solly foreign policy, we’d have to be Sollies
. . . and nothing would be worth that!”
– Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

Arsenovich Kolokoltsov, the Solarian League’s Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs is struck speechless by disbelief and shock by the report from New Tuscany. Then he calls a conference with Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Wodoslawski, Abruzzi, MacArtney, , Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce Quartermain and Fleet Admiral Rajampet Kaushal Rajan and start to raise hell.

MoH-snippet Two: The Solies start to realize how far behind they are on the technology curb.

MoH-snippet three- The byrocrates are shocked by the Solarian League Navy utter defeat and the following surrender. They worry about the consecuences.

MoH-snippet four – they continue to talk about the battle at New Tuscany. Hot heads want to retaliate at any cost, cooler heads try to reason that it would be suicide to go up against the Manticorian navy at this time.

MoH-snippet five - they discuss declaring war on the Star Empire

MoH-snippet six: – they continue to discuss a war with the Manties and comes to a conclusion.

MoH-snippet Seven Chapter 2: Fleet Admiral Winston Kingsford, CO, Battle Fleet and Fleet Admiral Rajampet continue discussing the Mantis in private. Especially putting some analysts on the data right away, then they continue talking about fleet deployment, mantis missiles and when they will go after the Mantis home system. Winston is having an intresting inner dialogue about Sandra Cranell and her task force being deployed in the Madras sector.

MoH-snippet Eight: – Rajampet finish his meeting before we switch over to Queen Elizabeth III for a chat with Admira l Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington. They start out talking about Stacy Hauptman and her father before they switch over to Manpower and the Talbot Cluster.

MoH-snippet Nine Honor and Elizabeth continue to speculate on the Solarian response. It’s four days to Christmas. Honor will be leaving on an unspecified mission (Haven?) after celebrating Christmas with her family.
Honor meets with Admiral Tourville afterwards

MoH-snippet ten Honor, Nimitz and Tourville remembers previous meetings and do social niceties before coming to the point in the next snippet.

Snippet 11 Honor want to know about the political leadership in Haven but they end up talking about the surrender demands.

MoH-snippet 12 Chapter 3: Benjamin IX, Protector of Grayson talk with the commander in chief of the Grayson Space Navy Wesley Matthews about their security situation.

MoH-snippet 13 Mathew and Benjamin continue to discuss the political and military situation especially considering the Mantis, the Sollis and the Havenite.

MoH-snippet 14 They confirm Lady Harringtons mission.
The Royal Manticoran Navy’s Destroyer Division 265.2, known as “the Silver Cepheids,” prepare to go home from their position a light-month from Manticore-A

MoH-snippet 15 The Silver Cepheids prepare to leave while the officers involve them selfs in cheerful banter about SCA. Then we switch over to Commodore Karol Østby of the Mesa Alignment Navy and his task force that quietly have been scouting the Mantis system in preparation for Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 16: Chapter 4 Some officers of the Solarian Office of Operational Analysis discuss a memo before switching over to Mesa and Aldona Anisimovna on her way to meet with Albrecht Detweiler.

MoH-snippet 17 Detweiler and his two sons meets with Aldona and the Streak drive is clarified in her internal dialog before they continue to discuss the recent ballroom activities

MoH-snippet 18 the Mesans continue to talk about Manticore.

MoH-snippet 19 The Mesans continue to talk about how to spin the Talbot story and it ends with them going to talk about Oyster Bay.

MoH-snippet 21: With such bad results from the evacuation exercise the new commander of the station sets out to make it better.

MoH-snippet 20: January, 1922, Post Diaspora
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . . .”
– Admiral Patricia Givens, RMN, CO, Office of Naval, Intelligence.
Chapter Five
An officer we know from previous books report for duty and there is a ominous discussion about evacuation drills not being up to par.

MoH-snippet 22: Captain Ansten FitzGerald and Commander Amal Nagchaudhuri have a friendly talk about Hexpuma’s repairs being almost finished and the crews upcoming R&R on the station.

MoH-snippet 23 President Eloise Pritchart and the leadership around her isn’t very surprised when eight fleet shows up at the edge of the Haven system, they have dreaded this moment for six months. They however are surprised!

MoH-snippet 24: President Eloise Pritchart and the Salamander is about to meet …

MoH-snippet 25: President Pritchart and Admiral Thomas Theisman chat while they wait on Honor to leave the shuttle. When Honor steps out they have a little chat before moving to the President’s office.

MoH-snippet 26: Chapter 7: Admiral Alexander-Harrington and the President measure each other up before sitting down.

MoH-snippet 27: The negotiations begin in earnest.
Source: www.ericflint.net

Mission of Honor will be available in June 29 2010

Description: The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington’s entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she’s achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming.

She’s prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor’s worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality.

But Manticore’s enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won’t be going alone.

From eight hundred years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity and those coming through it have been sent specially to take the alien maker back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut downbecause something alien is pursuing them. The gate is then dumped into a nearby sun. From those refugees who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by pernicious virus known as the Jain technology. This, of course, raises questions: why was Dragon, a massive biocontruct of the Makers, really sent to the Polity; why did a Jain node suddenly end up in the hands of someone who could do the most damage with it? Meanwhile an entity called the Legate is distributing pernicious Jain nodes and a renegade attack ship, The King of Hearts, has encountered something very nasty outside the Polity itself.

source: @julieacrisp