On Basilisk Station by David Weber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
While I did see a few phrases (mostly about Honor’s eye color) repeated to the point of wanting to hand the author a thesaurus, I found that by the end of the book I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Themes of honor and betrayal are something that are as old as time, and you would think with this being inspired so fully by another series, that might get old….? But the author really does breathe new life into this and makes it his own. Like Elizabeth Moon, Weber doesn’t write “just men” or “just women” characters; he writes people. I appreciate that.
And the people are complicated. Honor is thrust into leadership of a crew that doesn’t trust or really want her. She has to learn to lead, and lead them; or rather, subtly inspire them to want her to lead them. At the same time, she has to do more with less, solve a mystery, and stop a potential war… one that beats our heroes down badly but doesn’t stop them. Which is good, because I’ve already downloaded the second book to my Nook, with eyes on the whole series!