Book Review: "Challenges" edited by David Weber, the latest "Honorverse" Anthology

"Challenges," edited by David Weber, is the 4sth and latest book in the Honor Harrington science fiction universe or "Honorverse and the eighth collection in the "Worlds of Honor" series of short stories and Novellas which join 32 full-length novels, in the main series and it's spin-offs and prequels, plus a companion volume.

Details of all the "Honorverse" books and how they fit together are given in the Series page which you can find by following this link

Book Series overview: David Weber's "Honor Harrington" universe book reviews.


The five novellas which make up "Challenges" have their main action in the early years of human development of Honor Harrington's original home system, on the three inhabited planets which comprise "The Star Kingdom of Manticore."

In Manticore's history as laid out in "House of Steel," the Honorverse companion, the original slower-than-light sleeper colony ship which founded Manticore left Old Earth 775 years after the human diaspora into space began, on 24th October 2877 CE, and arrived on 21st March 2518.

The stories in this book are set in the period of two centuries or so following on from the outbreak of a terrible plague which hit the colony 48 years later, The first and chronologically oldest in the book tells the story of a medical team from the planet Beowulf which came to help fight that plague. So in terms our our dating system, these stories are set between about 3566 AD and 3750.

The people of this series used a calendar dating from the start from the Diaspora: dates in PD can be converted to Anno Domini (or Common Era) by adding 2102; hence the one story in this collection which has precise dates has it's main action begin on May 12th 1496 PD or 2598 AD.

The five Novellas in this book are

1) "One Controllable Step" by Marisa Wolf which tells the story of the fight against the Plague.

2) "Deadly Delusions" by Jane Lindskold, set a few years after the discovery of the Treecat species by Stephanie Harrington in 1519 PD, which tells the story of another girl who was desperate to meet a treecat.

3) "The great condiment caper" by Jacob Holo and Thomas Pope tellls the story of the first tricky challenge faced by Edward Saganami, later one of the Manticoran navy's greatest heroes, when he first joined the fleet as a newly-commissioned Ensign.

4) "XO" by Daniel Allen Butler is another story from the early career of one of the figures who were legendary heroes of the past in Honor Harrington's time, in this case Ellen D'Orville, and it tells the story of Ellen's first command.

5) Finally "Crystal Singer's Song" by David Weber, which is bookended with opening and closing chapters set a few centuries later and featuring Honor Harrington herself, tells the story of a forest ranger who is stranded on a desolate island a few yeas after the plague.  

These five novellas vary significantly in tone and style, from the tragic to the comic, but all five are very well written and I can recommend this anthology.

Another recent book had given a strong hint that the line of descent from Stephanie Harrington who discovered treecats to Admiral Duchess Honor Harrington begins with Stephanie and her fellow ranger Karl Zivonik having at least one child together. In "Crystal Singer's Song" comments from both the treecat characters and Honor Harrington herself pretty well confirm it. Perhaps at some stage we will get the explanation of why Honor's surname is Harrington (later Alexander-Hamilton) and not Zivonik.

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