This collection of short stories/novelettes was very uneven.

"A Beautiful Friendship" by David Weber was excellent. It tells the story of the first encounter between treecats and humans. I fell in love with the characters and want to read more.

"A Grand Tour" by David Drake was just horrid. It really had nothing to do with the "Honorverse" other than a few trappings. He could have used "Federation," "warp drive," and "impulse engines" just as easily and it would have had as much to do with the Star Trek universe. Furthermore, I was taught that "Melungeons" was a less-than-polite word. To have all the stereotypes present for those people (and they straightened up and did well under the supervision of the superior Manticoreans) was offensive.

"A Whiff of Grapeshot" by S. M. Stirling told the story behind the Leveler Uprising. I'm not much for the Havenites, but this did fill in plenty of background and was well-written.

"The Universe of Honor Harrington" by David Weber was at times more technical than I liked and my eyes glazed over. However, I am glad I stuck with it as I learned more about the political background of the worlds.

This collection is for fans of the series. ( )

As is often the case with collections of short fiction, I enjoyed some parts of this book better than others.

A Beautiful Friendship (David Weber)
I really liked this story, which chronicles the first meeting between humans and treecats. David Weber later expanded this story into a YA novel with the same title, and as soon as I finished reading this version I went onto the Baen website to purchase and download the novel so I could read it too. I liked seeing more of the treecats as full-fledged characters.

A Grand Tour (David Drake)
This was my least favourite portion of the anthology. It wasn't badly written, but it seemed only tangentially connected to the rest of the Honor Harrington universe. It really seemed like it could have easily been dropped into another science fiction universe simply by changing the names of a few places and groups of people.

A Whiff of Grapeshot (S.M. Stirling)
This short story fills in background for an event that was mentioned more or less in passing in the book [b:In Enemy Hands|77740|In Enemy Hands (Honor Harrington, #7)|David Weber|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1321561738s/77740.jpg|2684782]. I liked this one a lot, and the events it covered really work best in short story format rather than as part of a novel as a whole.

The Universe of Honor Harrington (David Weber)
And this one read like a history book. Which, to be fair, is more or less what it is, so it fulfils its purpose in that regard. I enjoyed it for the background information it provides, but it isn't really a story. It was a slow read, and probably not strictly necessary, but for people who will read through all the appendix information and footnotes in various books because they find them fascinating this is an excellent addition. I do like how well everything hangs together.


Out of the collection as a whole, my favourite part was definitely A Beautiful Friendship. ( )

The two good Honorverse stories are good ones . The Drake work is a good Leary story dressed in Honorverse characters. The Universe Section provides a users manual for entering the Worlds of Honor. ( )

Since this is the first anthology, why is the anthology series called Worlds of Honor? Oh well, it sounds better, I guess. Anyway. I just felt like rereading Weber's story, how Stephanie and Climbs Quickly met. Drake's story is good but it feels more like a Lieutenant Leary story than anything in Weber's universe (and I didn't feel like reading that), and I dislike McQueen enough that I don't want to reread Stirling's story. And it's very annoying that Weber accepted that story directly as canon - not because I don't like McQueen, but because he uses it as background for the next book without recapping it or giving flashbacks or anything. There are several mentions of the events, but a retelling (maybe from a different POV?) would have incorporated it more smoothly. Oh well. ( )

Sample Chapters: http://webscriptions.net/chapters/0671878573/0671878573.htm