On Basilisk Station

Starships, strategy, and intrigue...

A political mess leaves up and coming Captain Honor Harrington and the crew of her starship Fearless transferred to the fleets dumping ground--a sector including the terminus of a heavily used wormhole, a small planetary system, and Basilisk Station. But Honor will succeed wherever she’s assigned and proceeds to turn the formerly neglected sector into an efficient well-monitored one, upsetting the plans of her fellow Manitcorans and their deadliest enemies.

I never would have picked this up without the nudge from Downtown Lansing’s Speculative Fiction Book Discussion, but I really enjoyed this book and was totally pulled into the story. I actually listened to most of it on audio but found I couldn't wait and read the last few chapters to find out what happened quicker. Politics, strategy, and lots of action make this a great series starter. It’s science fiction but reads amazingly like C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower (of Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and Horatio Hornblower) and other military fiction. Honor herself is based on Hornblower and real British naval heroes Admiral Lord Nelson and Captain Thomas Cochrane. This is the start of a long ongoing series.