Alternative to Honor Harrington Series

[OJsDad]

I like the Honor Harrington series, but the last few books have seemed to go in directions that seem to wonder.  I know David Weber had intended for Honor to die at the Battle of Manticore and for the time line to have jumped about couple of decades, but it just seems like it is refined. 


I was wondering what others like that are along the lines of the Honorverse series. 

[Con]

Sorry edited for smartphone and too many drinks

I am a big fan of Scalzis old mans war. Great premiss and excellent writing

Con

[GDS_Starfury]

the Lost Fleet series is ok.

[bayonetbrant]

David Drake's RCN series?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCN_Series

He also co-edited the Fleet anthology with Fawcett, and that might be worth checking out, but it's a bunch of different authors and might not be exactly what you're after.

[bbmike]

Haven't read the Harrington stuff yet but I did like the Seafort Saga by Feintuch.
Also Voyage of the Star Wolf by Gerrold was good. I didn't know there were more books in the series until just now!

[Shelldrake]

Evan Currie's Odyssey series is pretty good.

[OJsDad]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Last night I picked up Hidden Empire by Kevin Anderson.  It's the first book in a series called the The Saga of the Seven Suns.  There are currently seven books.  Don't know if there will be more or not.  I'm just getting started so we'll see.

[Airborne Rifles]

The Human Reach series is some good military Scifi, two books in the series so far, Through Struggle the Stars and Desert of Stars.

[Staggerwing]

The Human Reach series is some good military Scifi, two books in the series so far, Through Struggle the Stars and Desert of Stars.

Thanks! I was just thinking of those books but couldn't remember the titles.

There is also the 'In Her Name' series by Michael R. Hicks.

[OJsDad]

The Human Reach series is some good military Scifi, two books in the series so far, Through Struggle the Stars and Desert of Stars.

I've got them both and I'm waiting the next one.

I also picked up on earlier this year called A Sword Into Darkness.  Well written and I'm hoping for more.  Hmmm.  I got it on my Nook, but on B&N's web site now, it's only showing as paperback.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-sword-into-darkness-thomas-a-mays/1118421225?ean=9781939398086

[JasonPratt]

As a quite different (yet topically relevant) alternative, you could 'read' the Legend of the Galactic Heroes novels, which are available completely free (though also quite illegally, so I'm not giving specific directions) at various safe internet video sites, with professional quality fansubs.

You would certainly be 'reading' the novels a lot, with the subtitles! -- and all nine have been animated (plus all the short stories and novellas), so the story is complete. Modern readers may be able to play the videos as mp4 downloads, and modern pad/phone browsers can certainly play them directly off the video sites, although unless you have an awesome download plan you'd be better off using a video downloader on your main computer and then transferring the files to your phone/pad. (Maybe not all at once, but in batches; there are 160+ eps.)

The series is known for its character studies, political plots, and grand strategic, operational, and tactical fighting (and for its 600 named characters). The main TVTropes page (which is more entertaining than the official Wiki page) can be found here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/LegendOfGalacticHeroes

My review/recap page for the series as I'm going along can be found here at Grogheads.

Since the narrative order for the prequel stories (to the main series) isn't abundantly clear, but they work well watching in narrative order, I'll list the order here for ease of reference:

SPIRAL LABYRINTH (though you could probably skip this, as it's a leisurely 5-hour stroll through the origin story of one of the two chief protagonists, as well as giving some background history to the story -- but it's paced sooooo eyeglazingly that it will tax any viewer. You could come back and try this later, too, once he starts showing up obviously enough in the plot to care. All the other prequel stories center on the other chief protagonists, who by their nature are more exciting.)

SILVER-WHITE VALLEY
THE MUTINEER
THE DUELIST
GOLDEN WINGS (a theatrical film with a drastically different art style, but fits into the plot progression correctly, though you could easily skip the first 18 minutes or so which recaps the early history of the protagonists)
THE RETRIEVER
DREAMS OF THE MORNING, SONGS OF THE NIGHT
ONE HUNDRED BILLION STARS, ONE HUNDRED BILLION LIGHTS (a 12 part epic but not nearly so badly paced as Spiral Lab)
THE THIRD BATTLE OF TIAMAT
MY CONQUEST IS THE SEA OF STARS (another theatrical feature)
DISHONOR (the final prequel story, which can be safely skipped but serves as a nice bit of downtime in the middle of three rather similar story arcs)
OVERTURE TO A NEW WAR (upgraded theatrical version of the first three eps of the main story)

And then go with Episode 4 from there on out.

The story is like Star Wars, but taken much more seriously (in strategic and political senses -- somewhat like Zahn's epic Thrawn sequel trilogy novels) and without magical Force users; also without many fighter ships but with massively huge capital ship battles instead. There's an Empire which rose out of a loose Old Republic, constantly facing many rebellions the largest of which is a new democratic republic Alliance with whom they've been at war now for centuries.

That's where most of the similarities end. The Empire is loosely based on pre-WW1 Prussia (the author is clearly an early-modern German fanboy.) So compared to the Alliance they have lots of bling.  :D But while they have a despotic Emperor (who is very much more like a real-life despot than a dramatic one), and they often trample on the rights of their citizens, it's more like, you know, Prussia rather than the Nazis; and the Alliance has been around long enough and grown large enough to have its own leadership and bureaucratic problems and abuses.

In fact, at the start of the series (whether in chronological narrative or in production order) the two sides have settled into just living their lives on each side of the loose battle lines with a sort of institutional hobby of fighting one another at the borders -- which is great for the economy on each side, so their citizens all live pretty well according to their opportunities and abilities, and if anyone wants to join the military for any reason, well there's a nice big but not overly threatening 'war' going on all the time to provide jobs and entertainment for people (usually men) so inclined. The upper leaders on each side have tacitly agreed to keep the situation a zero-sum game, not only for personal political reasons of various sorts but because that way the citizens of each side can live and grow in as much peace as possible. One consequence of this is that each side has a vested interest in not letting any major military talents on their own sides get too powerful, since (aside from being an internal political threat) that would threaten the leisurely zero-sum.

This is the situation the two main characters of the story are growing into: the laid-back, philosophical history buff Yang Wen-Li (for the Alliance) and the ambitiously active Baron Reinhard von Müsel (known later as Reinhard von Lohengramm) for the Empire. Both are moral heroes in an often morally compromised world, but their attitudes and abilities are quite different in a soft/hard way. The Baron is a proactive go-get-em optimist without much of a sense of humor, who along with his childhood BFF Kircheis acts as a team with the long-term goal of rescuing the Baron's older sister (whom Kircheis wants to marry) from her captivity as the Emperor's favorite concubine. In order to do that the Baron has reasonably decided he needs to rise through the military ranks (because his family though noble was poor, which is why he grew up next to the poor Kircheis family and why his dad pimped his sister to the Emperor for cash to pay family debts) until he can overthrow the Emperor, bringing new life to the stale military Empire along the way (and renewed honor and glory to his family).

Yang comes from a poor family, too, who has left him in debts, but otherwise he's quite different: unlike the militant Baron he just wants to be a history professor, and only joined the military because that was the only place available to get a history degree for free! He's an easy-going somewhat cynical kind-hearted guy who prefers to stay away from fighting because he doesn't want to die or kill other people, but he's good at judging character and making friends (rather like the Baron in that regard, too, come to think of it), and has a knack for putting his historical analysis to strategic use.

One consequence is that the prequel stories focus entirely on Team Baron (with only rare cameos from Yang), except for Spiral Lab (since Yang is older than Rein by several years) which matches Yang's personality with its terrible pacing. ;)


Anyway! I'm enjoying "reading" this series at night, a chapter or two at a time, before going to sleep; and it's the sort of story you're looking for, except it's a visual novel with lots of animation, so it'll be different in that regard. :)

[chrisweuve]

I would suggest...
SERIES
C.J. Cherryh: Downbelow Station and Hellburner (and the rest of the Alliance/Union series). A sui generis space force, with politics affecting force structure.
Scott Gier: Genellan series. Science fiction fleet operations through the eyes of a former naval aviator.
Peter Hamilton: The Night's Dawn Trilogy. A very interesting universe with interesting technology (military & otherwise).
Tom Harlan: The Sixth Sun series. Very well developed technology, ship design and tactics.
Walter Hunt: Dark Wing series. Great tactics & alien psychology.
Dave Trowbridge and Sherwood Smith: The Exordium series. Tactical FTL combat with speed-of-light weapons and sensors. Newly revised ebook editions at www.bookviewcafe.com/.


INDIVIDUAL NOVELS
Kevin O'Donnell: Fire on the Border. Tactical FTL combat with speed-of-light limited weapons and sensors.
Scott Westerfeld: Succession (The Risen Empire & The Killing of Worlds). Very thoughtful technology and ship design.

[MetalDog]

Thanks for chiming in, chris!  And welcome to Grogheads :)

[OJsDad]

I would suggest...
SERIES
Walter Hunt: Dark Wing series. Great tactics & alien psychology.

Welcome Chris

I think I have the first book, but just couldn't get into it.  I think I only got a couple of chapters into.

[bayonetbrant]

for those not in the know, Chris is one of the BuNine guys that helps steer the Honorverse.