I was thinking recently of some of the comments made about the more recent HH books; there's a lot of comments about the books feeling like they are more (or at least significantly) setting a big scene rather than being a complete story. And I wondered whether Weber hasn't painted himself into a bit of a corner writing-wise, and not of his own choosing at that. Now I've not read the last one yet so I may be completely off the mark, but here's what I was thinking:
As I understand it Weber originally intended Honor to be killed off and her daughter to continue the overall story, but ultimately, whether due to timescale changes coming from the Honorverse series or pressure from fans (or both), he ended up keeping her alive. It seems to me that this has forced a complete change in the story telling. Had he kept his original plan the focus of each story would have been around a relatively junior naval officer, as in the early HH books. This offers a lot of scope for the action writing he is so good at, with tight, complete adventures, whilst still keeping the overall bigger story rolling along.
However, by keeping Honor alive, she inevitably rises steadily higher in rank and assumes importance on a much bigger scale, one in which there is never really one complete story, in which all the stories merge into the much bigger story. So, in the earlier books the stories of Honor are set against the backdrop of the bigger political scene, whilst in the later books the backdrop has become the main story, and a much harder one to 'serialise' into idividual novels.
Any comments? As he frantically powers up his wedges.
An afterthought: I wonder if Weber felt a bit cheated of a good Saganami Island story...
As I understand it Weber originally intended Honor to be killed off and her daughter to continue the overall story, but ultimately, whether due to timescale changes coming from the Honorverse series or pressure from fans (or both), he ended up keeping her alive. It seems to me that this has forced a complete change in the story telling. Had he kept his original plan the focus of each story would have been around a relatively junior naval officer, as in the early HH books. This offers a lot of scope for the action writing he is so good at, with tight, complete adventures, whilst still keeping the overall bigger story rolling along.
However, by keeping Honor alive, she inevitably rises steadily higher in rank and assumes importance on a much bigger scale, one in which there is never really one complete story, in which all the stories merge into the much bigger story. So, in the earlier books the stories of Honor are set against the backdrop of the bigger political scene, whilst in the later books the backdrop has become the main story, and a much harder one to 'serialise' into idividual novels.
Any comments? As he frantically powers up his wedges.
An afterthought: I wonder if Weber felt a bit cheated of a good Saganami Island story...