I’ve just started War of Honor, and I was a little confused by references to some rather pivotal-sounding events regarding the suppression of a slavery cartel. Some checking shows that these events are covered in other novels and stories not in the original main series- but published after War of Honor. So would you recommend I first read Crown of Slaves- and maybe even the two Eric Flint novellas introducing CoS’s main characters first? Or simply take all that as incidental to the events in War of Honor and come back to it later?
I wouldn’t say it was NECESSARY, exactly, but I did enjoy reading Crown of Slaves and the shorts: I like Eric’s slightly snappier and somewhat subversive political style, and by that point the main Weberverse novels had really degenerated into chapters upon chapters of characters sitting in rooms or emailing (vidmailing?) each other these huge “As you know, Bob” info-dumps. So it was nice to read it “live” and then be able to just skip past the recaps in the main books.
I also tend to like reading things in strict chronological order, so there’s that aspect of it also. Specifically to this series, things start to get really overlappy around here-ish, and some of the fun of the Crown of Slaves (…and sequel, and novellas…) might get lost if you know how everything turns out at the end.
Flint’s stories and novels in the Honorverse are better than the contemporary stories by Weber. So yes, I would recommend that you read them.
The short stories are very useful for introducing the main characters, but if you opt not to read them, they’re easy characters to sum up:
Anton Zilwiki (I might have misspelled that) and Victor Cachat are both highly-skilled intelligence operatives, highly patriotic and loyal to their respective nations (Manticore and Haven, respectively). Zilwiki is very big on honor, justice, that sort of thing. Cachat is an evil sumbitch who just happens to be fighting on the side of good. Both of them (and their governments) really, really hate slavery, and so are willing to put their differences aside to go kick slaver butt whenever the opportunity arises.
Don’t forget, there’s another “spin-off” series-within-a-series dealing with Michelle Henke (Honor’s best friend and the Queen’s first-cousin) and the political turmoil over in the “Talbot Cluster,” the remote-ish region of space that the last Wormhole Junction opened up.
It sits right smack-dab in the path of Solarian League’s expansion ambitions. Hilarity ensues.
I don’t recollect where all that falls, chronologically speaking, with War of Honor.
The proper order, I believe, would be to read “From the Highlands”, a short story found in the book “Changer of Worlds”, which is an anthology of Honorverse stories. It was written by Eric Flint, and details the way in which Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat meet, and how they end up involved with the efforts of Lady Catherine Montaigne (at the time, Countess of the Tor).
You should then read Crown of Slaves, which, while published after War of Honor, actually precedes much of the action in that Weber novel. Of course, it should be noted that from that point forward, the three inter-related sets of novels (the main HH novels, the side-branch Saganami Island novels, and the related by universe only Crown of Slaves series) get so convoluted as to timeline that it’s simply impossible to keep everything straight, and frankly, sooner or later, you just have to get used to reading three versions of the same incident. Which is why I stopped purchasing the Honorverse novels. Indeed, I didn’t bother with the most recent novel (part of the Saganami Island chain of books), published last fall. And since he hasn’t advanced the main story line since 2012, and has since spent what time he has committed to the Honorverse working on the side lines and the back story (Manticore Ascendant), I don’t think he ever really intends to finish up his main story line. 
Yes, if you’re still into the series you should read the short stories and side novel, they’re good and they help the main story make more sense. My recommendation for the series as a whole is that you keep reading until you find that the main sequence book you’re in starts to become boring to you, then call it the end of the series. I liked the early books a lot and gave up around where you are now in the series, if you don’t like what Weber’s writing changes to then it keeps getting progressively worse as time goes on. (Also the latest books do some pretty radical retcons, like changing Manticore’s merchant shipping radically and altering the basic nature of the Solarian navy).
Now I’m more confused than ever. Having put War of Honor aside to read Crown of Slaves first, now CoS seems to be referencing events that apparently take place in WoH, even though WoH seemed to be past-referencing the trip to Erewhon that’s the main setting of CoS. Can someone sort this out?
Some of the events occur at about the same time (as I recall), and so some information is repeated in several books, I think.
Where I’m hung up is that in the early part of War of Honor, Captain Anton Zilwicki and Catherine Montaigne seem to be talking about the trip to Erewhon in the past tense, even though in Crown of Slaves they’re just setting out for the trip despite several events in WoH having already concluded.
According to the timeline at Honorverse (the Honor Harrington universe wiki), the events of Crown of Slaves happen in simultaneously with the events in War of Honor. What may cause issues is, of course, the fact that events in one timeline might not get reported to people in the other timeline until much later, due to the travel time of the news via FTL ships.
I’m not at home, so I cannot dredge out the books to make a more comprehensive timeline.
It’s worse than simply having interspersed events, there seems to be a direct contradiction of their order. I would have to reread the beginning of War of Honor to be certain now and I’d borrowed it from the library.
IIRC CoS takes place inside the time of WoH, and they cross reference each other in a kind of confusing way since the trip wraps up inside of that time. This is around the time that Honorverse books stop being ‘main sequence’ and ‘unconnected side stories’ that maybe get referenced, and instead start spreading plot points across multiple serieses of books.
This timeline might help Timeline | Honorverse | Fandom (or it could be that you’ve noticed a legitimate continuity error - I’ve seen some doozies in less complicated plots).
If you’re still enjoying them, then by all means carry on reading them.
If not however. I have an alternative option.
It’s a novel-sized wrap-up of the series.
Yep, it’s literally fan fiction on fanfiction.net, but it’s pretty good. It takes over from War of Honor and concludes the series in a entertaining fashion.
Amazing. Too bad nobody linked that timeline before. :rolleyes:
Oops… Somehow I missed your mention of the timeline. Sorry about that.
The state of Weber’s writing lately is making me miss he and Flint finishing the *Empire of Man *series a little less.
Especially since it was John Ringo, not Eric Flint, who cowrote the first four?
OK, I’m reading War of Honor, so far so good. I will say that one really needs to read the following short stories before you’ve gotten this far:
“Queen’s Gambit” in Worlds of Honor.
“Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington”, and “From the Highlands” in Changer of Worlds.
“Promised Land”, “Fanatic”, and “The Service of the Sword” in The Service of the Sword.
Thanks to Honorverse.wikia I feel less like I missed a couple of novellas somewhere. I still have a question though: (spoilers)
Does the attempted assassination of Catherine Montaigne by mercenaries hired by Manpower take place in any story I’m unaware of? It’s past tense in Crown of Slaves, which begins before the renewal of war with Haven and the Erewhon split with the Alliance.
OK; I had to sit down and read War of Honor and Crown of Slaves concurrently to sort this out, but here’s how the continuity shakes out:
In chapter 8 of War of Honor, Anton Zilwicki advises Lady Catherine Montaigne to renounce her now-politically useless noble title of Countess so that she can run for election to the Commons. By the beginning of Crown of Slaves, this has been accomplished. And in chapter 40 of Crown of Slaves, Honor Harrington is preparing to depart for Silesia, which takes place in Chapter 22 of War of Honor,
So chronologically, Crown of Slaves is sandwiched in the middle of War of Honor.