Jerry's Reviews > On Basilisk Station

So what if Fearless was twice her own age and little larger than a modern destroyer? She was still a cruiser, and cruisers were the Manticoran Navy's eyes and ears, its escorts and its raiders, the stuff of independent commands and opportunity.

Commander Honor Harrington is given command of an aging, underweight ship—that has been gutted of the few useful weapons it normally carries in favor of a pet project fo a well-connected politician.

From the importance of “making captain’s list” in order to ensure an eventual flag rank, to the open reading of her orders to formalize taking command, to the awarding of prize money for captured booty, this was very clearly written by a Master and Commander fan (or, depending on how closely Patrick O’Brian hews to the Hornblower series, it may be that they’re both C.S. Forester fans). On Basilisk Station is pretty much Master and Commander in space, something I didn’t realize when I chose this as my next ebook.

There are broadsides and sails and tacking with the waves. Not only is that not a bad thing, it’s brilliant. At turns a mystery, a thriller, a political intrigue, and an out-and-out bloody battle, it’s more than fun enough to justify a full series, which I now intend to read.

The notion of an alliance between the parliamentary advocates of increased welfare spending and the captains of industry seemed a bit bizarre to Honor, but something was certainly giving them an awful lot of clout with the Opposition, for Countess New Kiev had decided to turn the screws on Dame Estelle to propitiate them.