This note contains spoilers for the book.

 

Collection of historical Honor Harrington universe stories by various authors (including two by Weber). (Library book).

By the Book

By Charles E. Gannon.

Politics and skulduggery in the early days of the human Diaspora. Quite a bad story, and I found it very annoying to be constantly told that Green politics was highly authoritarian. Doesn't seem to connect at all obviously to later stuff in the universe.

A Call to Arms

By Timothy Zahn.

Set in the early days of the Royal Manticoran Navy, before it became a top-flight professional force. The Navy saves Manticore from being captured by mercenaries in the pay of a Solarian multi-stellar company, thus presaging after the fact the new direction of the mainline series.

Beauty and the Beast

By David Weber.

Origin story for Honor's parents. They meet at medical school on Beowulf, and have an instant psychic connection powerful enough to let them locate each other in meatspace. This proves key to Alfred rescuing Allison when she's been kidnapped and is being tortured to make her brother divulge military secrets.

There's never any explanation of the psychic connection, just a vague waving of hands in the direction of the Harringtons having been adopted by treecats a lot. This doesn't do anything to explain Allison.

Best Laid Plans

By David Weber.

An adolescent Honor rescues two treecats from peak bears and gets adopted by one of them. She has more connection to the treecats than she should (earlier works say she developed it later in life). There's a slight twist in that she had not expected and had not wanted to be adopted because it would interfere with the Naval career she envisaged. Doesn't actually seem to have interfered at all, though.

Obligated Service

By Joelle Presby.

A Grayson woman from Burdette Steading has graduated from Saganami Island and is just finishing her first shipboard deployment in the GSN. It's not going well—and she hasn't figured out what being an officer really entails yet, either.

This is the only story in the book that really gave me much.