For a long time, the Honor Harrington series by David Weber has been one of Baen's flagship (pardon the pun) titles. The Harrington books are naval science fiction in the tradition of Horatio Hornblower—except that the setting is outer space of the distant future instead of the oceans of the past.
War of Honor, the latest Honor Harrington book, features a slightly unusual change for the title character. Politics, interpersonal relationships, and scandal cause Harrington's naval career to have to take a back seat for a while. Steered by corrupt and/or incompetent politicians, the Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven move ever closer to war, while a new scientific discovery holds the potential to cause even more interstellar strife. And what are those pesky Andermani up to?
War of Honor is a very good book in a great series. About the most one can say against it is that it could perhaps have used a little bit of editing. War of Honor is the longest book in the series to date, and much of it serves as setup for the novels that are still to come. Needless to say, someone who tried to start reading with War of Honor would probably end up badly confused.
However, this is not likely to be a problem for anybody who buys the hardcover—because the most remarkable thing about War of Honor is not actually a part of the book itself.
Baen has bundled an amazing CD-ROM with the hardcover edition of this book. In addition to all 10 Honor Harrington novels and three Honor Harrington universe story collections, this disk contains 25 other complete books. That's right...for the price of one single hardcover, you receive 38 e-books! Books including 1632 by Eric Flint, 1633 by Flint & Weber, Retief! by Keith Laumer, several James Schmitz anthologies, and Fallen Angels by Niven, Pournelle, and Flynn. The disk also contains an art gallery of Honor Harrington covers, Harrington-based filk music MP3s by the group Echo's Children, MP3 audiobook samples, and web-links to Baen sites.
The books are each provided in multiple formats: HTML, RocketBook, MobiBook, Microsoft Reader, Rich Text, and Microsoft Word (though closer examination reveals that the RTF and Word versions are actually the exact same file with different names). There is no Digital Rights Management (DRM) or copy protection of any kind. The disk uses ordinary directory structure and file types so that it can be navigated with or without the included HTML menus, and is compatible with almost any operating system.
The CD label contains a notice explicitly granting permission to copy and share the contents of the disk, but not to sell it, and the contents of this CD are also available on-line with the publisher's express approval. According to Baen author John Ringo (whose books are also included on this CD), "This is part of Jim Baen's insidious plot to get them distributed to every human on Earth without having to pay for the actual CDs or the people to burn them. I suggested as he got more and more excited that maybe he should go the AOL route and his answer was 'don't place temptation in my path.'"
Baen plans to add to the content of this disk and rerelease it with subsequent hardcovers in Baen series. The next book to come with a disk will be John Ringo's Hell's Faire, whose disk will also include a D20-based role-playing game.
War of Honor's $26 purchase price works out to about 68 cents per book when split among the 38 e-books bundled on the CD-ROM. Including the hardcover book in the price as well makes everything even more of a great value. Even if you've never read a Honor Harrington novel before, don't miss this book!
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