To reply as one of the younger people.... i DID read the Honorverse-novels but i stopped with the last "main"-Novel. Its just that i have the feeling that the series has two major Problems which just doesyn't make it interessting for me anymore:
1. Honor is perfect
She simply can't do anything wrong and doesn't seem to have any faults at all and to top it off she can read emotions......
Hmm when i think about it Honor could despite all that still be an interessting character or be used interesting story-arcs if it wasn't for her social and political position which simply makes almost every plot i could think of right now implausible (I think rfc said something to this effect somewhere in the forums).
Well if you can't use that character just use another , it isn't as if there aren't enought pov-charakters..... which ties in with my other problem:
2. A lack of progress:
The whole story kind of stagnates with only minor progress with every single novell and sometimes i have the impression as if there isn't any progress at all. I know that that isn't the case but its very close and one of the reasons is the rehashing of the contents of the former novel(s) - which i don't need. I've read those! Including
whole chapters that are identical!!! - and the many, many characters which are given screentime, and often not doing anything but explaining and expositioning what they will do, perhaps what they have done and why they do it and not in any short sentences or paragraphs but many pages and once i finish a chapter and think "What happend this chapter?" i have to come to the concluision: nothing at all or only a little bit.
Don't misunderstand me, it does give a new facet to the already existing story and thats important, of course, but its become way too much for to little actual action and or story-progression and the fact that there are so many pov-characters makes this an imho critical fault in the novels as there is almost no space left for actual story. The absolutley horrible rehashing of the events before the actual novels only makes it worse.
To give an example of what i mean:
I had the impression that the last two novells had the equivalent in story as the rescue of Iris and Davyn for one book and the movement off the troops from chisholm to and through ravensland (note WITHOUT the actuall transport to Sidarmark) for the other. And thats it. Way too little.
Well and thats the reason i'm no longer a fan of the Honorverse. Of course from around the books 5-7 it began to get strange as my point 1 was getting more and more prominent but at least the rest of the story was good.
Hmm that was more than i wantetd to say but thats my opinion.
KNick wrote:runsforcelery wrote:I'm flattered that you all took the time for this, but I suspect one reason for the skew "younger" towards Safehold is that the Honorverse has been along for so much longer. If you started reading those books with OBS in 1993 when you were 30, well . . . .
Perhaps. However, if the name on the cover had been other than David Weber, I would have passed on by. If I had not known the quality of the writer, it would not have appealed to me.
I had hoped that it would turn out that younger readers were also reading the Honorverse books, too.