[Wobble73]

I can't think of many series of...well, anything...that have gone well past the third installment of a single story arc, though.

David Edding's the Belgariad has five books that dealt with the same story arc, well written too. (You could argue there are 8 books but "Belgarath the Sorcerer", "Polgara the Sorceress" and "The Rivan Codex" are more back stories)

Then there was the Malloreon, another five books.


I'm sure there are many other authors that have written story arcs that cover more than 5 books.


Back on topic - yeah FS3 aint gonna happen. (YET!!!!)  

[Colonol Dekker]

I do believe that sim-city has had a large number of sequels. As has mario

SOnic rules though.

[General Battuta]

I can't think of many series of...well, anything...that have gone well past the third installment of a single story arc, though.

David Edding's the Belgariad has five books that dealt with the same story arc, well written too. (You could argue there are 8 books but "Belgarath the Sorcerer", "Polgara the Sorceress" and "The Rivan Codex" are more back stories)

Then there was the Malloreon, another five books.


I'm sure there are many other authors that have written story arcs that cover more than 5 books.


Back on topic - yeah FS3 aint gonna happen. (YET!!!!) 

Fair enough, there have to be some exceptions.

[Scotty]

Honor Harrington.  Granted, the talk books aren't really my favorite, but they are still well written.

I don't really have anything to say on topic.

[General Battuta]

Oh, come on, those were all downhill after the excellent Book 2. 

[Scotty]

Bull****.  I think it dipped a bit, yes, but the fifth was even better than the second (IMHO).  The sixth is my least favorite, but is still written well and has a decent plot.  The seventh through ninth are good pieces of writing, and while I don't particularly like the tenth because of lack of combat, it's not a bad book.  The eleventh is epic, and the side books (bringing it to fourteen full length novels at present) are all wonderful stories. 

[NGTM-1R]

I don't think they were ever good to begin with.

The Jack Aubrey series, perhaps.

[General Battuta]

Bull****.  I think it dipped a bit, yes, but the fifth was even better than the second (IMHO).  The sixth is my least favorite, but is still written well and has a decent plot.  The seventh through ninth are good pieces of writing, and while I don't particularly like the tenth because of lack of combat, it's not a bad book.  The eleventh is epic, and the side books (bringing it to fourteen full length novels at present) are all wonderful stories.  

Bull****! The side books were all awful, and as the stories went on, they became increasingly turgid and bloated. The second one was the last one to offer a decent, well-paced, self-contained narrative.

Honor turned into a colossal Mary Sue. Seriously, look at this. She has:
-a telepathic cat
    -who is sentient
    -who now makes her ambassador to an entire alien species
    -who is an effective personal self-defense weapon
    -who allows her to acknowledge her feelings for her one true love
-a husband
-a wife
    -both of whom are married to each other
-royalty status on two planets
-massive wealth on two planets
-a personal kill count in the...'big' range
-an indirect kill count via fleet tactics in the millions
-intuitive talent at using multiple archaic weapons
    -like swords
    -and .45 handguns
-a constant feed of new technology that makes her totally invincible (Apollo missiles, pods, CLACs, Ghost Rider before that)
-been exiled, came back; been captured and 'executed, came back;
-a huge fan club, including subordinates who repeatedly sacrifice themselves for her
-tremendous beauty, but she's 'self-conscious and unaware of it'
-a gun in her finger (no really)
-and little children love to listen to her read stories.

And that's just getting started.

War of Honor was a huge book, and that huge end battle took up dozens (hundreds?) of pages. But it could have gone like this:

"Honor's fleet jumped in. A billion missiles flew everywhere. EVERYONE DIED."

It was kinda fun for all that, but man, those books are just SO bloated with infodumps...ugh.

[The E]

Indeed. Weber isn't such a bad writer, but he needs a good editor guiding him. Patrick Nielsen Hayden over on TOR seems to be able to do that just fine.....

[Scotty]

Bull****.  I think it dipped a bit, yes, but the fifth was even better than the second (IMHO).  The sixth is my least favorite, but is still written well and has a decent plot.  The seventh through ninth are good pieces of writing, and while I don't particularly like the tenth because of lack of combat, it's not a bad book.  The eleventh is epic, and the side books (bringing it to fourteen full length novels at present) are all wonderful stories. 

Bull****! The side books were all awful, and as the stories went on, they became increasingly turgid and bloated. The second one was the last one to offer a decent, well-paced, self-contained narrative.

Honor turned into a colossal Mary Sue. Seriously, look at this. She has:
-a telepathic cat
    -who is sentient
    -who now makes her ambassador to an entire alien species
    -who is an effective personal self-defense weapon
    -who allows her to acknowledge her feelings for her one true love
-a husband
-a wife
    -both of whom are married to each other
-royalty status on two planets
-massive wealth on two planets
-a personal kill count in the...'big' range
-an indirect kill count via fleet tactics in the millions
-intuitive talent at using multiple archaic weapons
    -like swords
    -and .45 handguns
-a constant feed of new technology that makes her totally invincible (Apollo missiles, pods, CLACs, Ghost Rider before that)
-been exiled, came back; been captured and 'executed, came back;
-a huge fan club, including subordinates who repeatedly sacrifice themselves for her
-tremendous beauty, but she's 'self-conscious and unaware of it'
-a gun in her finger (no really)
-and little children love to listen to her read stories.

And that's just getting started.

War of Honor was a huge book, and that huge end battle took up dozens (hundreds?) of pages. But it could have gone like this:

"Honor's fleet jumped in. A billion missiles flew everywhere. EVERYONE DIED."

It was kinda fun for all that, but man, those books are just SO bloated with infodumps...ugh.

And you would rather there be no character development?  That she be just Commander Harrington, with a medal for valor for a dozen novels? 

The second one was the last one to offer a decent, well-paced, self-contained narrative.

I suppose if you want every single part in a series to be self-contained, then by all means stop after the second book.  Should I assume that you dislike The Lord of the Rings because it isn't a single, self-contained book?

Besides, look at half of the stuff on that list:

Of your first subset, it would be kind of stupid if Nimitz was sentient and NOT able to effectively take care of himself, what with Sphinx's fauna.
Of the second two, that's the custom of her adopted planet.
# 6:  happens when people try to kill you
# 7:  happens in the engagements of those size.  Need I remind you of Lester Tourville?  His is only behind hers for lack of combat time.
# 8:  and a childhood spent using them.  At least the handgun.

I could go on, but this one really caught my eye:

-a constant feed of new technology that makes her totally invincible (Apollo missiles, pods, CLACs, Ghost Rider before that)

She has been wounded, in action, what, four times now?  Captured once, check.  Stranded on a planet aptly named "Hell" for the better part of two years.  During that time, lost an arm, an eye (again) and Nimitz's own empathic sense.  Let's not forget the duel with Young.  She got shot in the shoulder there.  Am I missing any of the obvious ones?

-a gun in her finger (no really)

Handy thing to put in the arm that she lost.

"Honor's fleet jumped in. A billion missiles flew everywhere. EVERYONE DIED."

Did not .  Tourville got at least a third of his fleet out.

Oh, and before I forget, Tropes Are Not Bad, Tropes Are Tools

[General Battuta]

That list is meant to illustrate a point which you apparently missed: she is a gigantic Mary Sue. The fawning adoration that the narrative places upon her, her family, her friends, her family and friends' love for her, her combat tactics, her ability to instantly and effortlessly excel at all that she attempts - not to mention the hilarious pratfalls of her enemies and rivals - just combine into a kind of sickening love for Honor. By 'At All Costs' I was praying she'd get her ass kicked, but no, the promising Republic of Haven development fell apart gloriously at her hands.

By about Book 4 it was clear that she was never going to be in real jeopardy, since any physical suffering she might receive (including all those wounds and lost limbs) would not lead to genuine handicap and whatever emotional pain she faced would be just massaged out through a few treacly scenes of bonding and lip service paid to psychological duress. It doesn't matter how much factual danger she's in; the narrative will never again be able to build up a convincing sense of menace without actually going and killing her off for good.

Look, a good series builds up its villains and takes the hero to darker and darker places. The Honorverse is essentially an enormous Manticore fan club, and more specifically, an enormous Honor fan club. Weber's taken a few stabs at correcting that, but he's old, he's ailing.

'Ashes of Victory' and 'War of Honor' were unreadable. 'At All Costs' was a slight recovery, but god, it needed an editor.

Oh! I forgot to mention in that Mary Sue list: she has a child and a clone!

Weber should've killed Harrington in At All Costs as he'd planned. Unfortunately the fanbase had its way, and, well...

[NGTM-1R]

She has been wounded, in action, what, four times now?  Captured once, check.  Stranded on a planet aptly named "Hell" for the better part of two years.  During that time, lost an arm, an eye (again) and Nimitz's own empathic sense.  Let's not forget the duel with Young.  She got shot in the shoulder there.  Am I missing any of the obvious ones?

Handy thing to put in the arm that she lost.

I'm not going to take Battuta's route because I think, honestly that the wrong tree is being barked up here. Most of that's not a problem.

Put bluntly, it's not enough to just beat your characters up. That is the mark of many an amateur writer running about ff.net. What is a problem is that the injuries serve no narrative purpose. (I believe the trope is called Law of Conservation of Detail.) None is permanent, okay, I'll bite on that one because of the setting. (I'll even buy pyschological recovery to a point, but I would expect them to actually remember it happened on occasion.) This is magical spacetech land, the concept of permanent injury is probably outmoded anyways. However they are also not important to the scene in which they occur. They just happen, for no narrative reason, and thus come across as a lame attempt to paint Honor as not invincible.

I could handle it if Honor was invincible, after all, I handled Thrawn (then again, Thrawn died; and supposedly, Honor was slated to die at some point too but didn't). The fun of the storytelling is mainly in the journey, not the end result. But this sort of author duplicity, both towards the readers and towards themselves, is not welcome. Neither is the implied sadism.

If you're going to hurt somebody, do it for a reason. I've inflicited major injury on a character I'm writing exactly once; that was specifically so another, much more powerful, character would react to them as not a threat, and get their collarbone and shoulderblade shattered for their assumption. It was a lesson that anyone who can still breathe and still hold a weapon is a threat, even if they're paralyzed at the waist.

[Scotty]

Hey, no clone exists.  Just a child.

And you apparently missed the page I referenced (hmm, which I now see that both link to the same page).  Not all Mary Sues are bad!

not to mention the hilarious pratfalls of her enemies and rivals - just combine into a kind of sickening love for Honor.

You seem to want to ignore everywhere that doesn't happen.  Like when she loses most of an entire ship out from under her, or when her enemies actually win.

It doesn't matter how much factual danger she's in; the narrative will never again be able to build up a convincing sense of menace without actually going and killing her off for good.

As if this didn't happen to every series, of any type, ever written that had even the possibility of death.  Especially if more books come out before one reads them.  The very fact that there are more precludes any mortality of the main character.

Weber should've killed Harrington in At All Costs as he'd planned. Unfortunately the fanbase had its way, and, well...

I suggest you blame Eric Flint for this part.

Look, a good series builds up its villains and takes the hero to darker and darker places.

My, you haven't read the latest, have you?

the promising Republic of Haven development fell apart gloriously at her hands.

Yeah, they got whipped.  Just like (if more severe) had happened to them a few dozen times now.

By about Book 4 it was clear that she was never going to be in real jeopardy

The one where she gets shot by Young on the dueling fields?  I fail to see how that can't be "real jeopardy," unless you are now using that term only to denote certainty of death.

Put bluntly, it's not enough to just beat your characters up. That is the mark of many an amateur writer running about ff.net. What is a problem is that the injuries serve no narrative purpose. (I believe the trope is called Law of Conservation of Detail.) None is permanent, okay, I'll bite on that one because of the setting. (I'll even buy pyschological recovery to a point, but I would expect them to actually remember it happened on occasion.) This is magical spacetech land, the concept of permanent injury is probably outmoded anyways. However they are also not important to the scene in which they occur. They just happen, for no narrative reason, and thus come across as a lame attempt to paint Honor as not invincible.

I can agree with this.  However, you don't necessarily have to read just about Honor anymore.  The stuff in bold really bugs me about the stories sometimes, but I'm inclined to look past those and enjoy the reading (to a point).

If you're going to hurt somebody, do it for a reason.

Like the plot?  Honestly, how much longer would battuta's Mary Sue list be if she was never injured?

[NGTM-1R]

True, but as I said, it's not being a Mary Sue I have a problem with, it's the duplicitious effort to convince the reader that the character isn't one...and considering the method and the manner chosen, it's also a duplicitious effort on the author's part to convince themselves most likely.

[General Battuta]

Look. Read an Honorverse book.

Go read a David Drake book.

Now go read an R. Scott Bakker book.

In all three cases we have extraordinarily powerful protagonists who, on a rational level, the reader knows probably won't die.

Yet in the latter two cases, the reader feels no particular urge to throw the book down in disgust every time a dignitary, family member, friend, or captured enemy captain (!) begins to fawn over the main character. Honor is treated as an extension of the author's ego; not as badly as the main character in another Weber book who spends most of the story in a lifeboat with a really hot female alien, but still very badly. She was supposed to be Horatio in space. She has nowhere near the historical depth nor grit to be this way.

I'm sorry if I'm trespassing into Honorverse fandom here, but from a writer's POV, the series is deeply flawed. The decisions made in the characterization of Honor destroyed the atmosphere of the series. As NGTM-1R points out, every setback she has ever faced - injury, bereavement, defeat - is purely cosmetic, as formulaic as the middle act of an A-Team episode, or the Dragonball character's initial defeat before the long power-up sequence.

And all this is aside from the fact that the books are now essentially unreadable due to pages of clotted infodump and exposition. Weber is just not a good writer any more.

[Thaeris]

Paul Atreides. The most awesome protagonist ever, bar none.

Miles Teg, however, is my personal favorite.

Despite his often strange topics/subject matter, Frank Herbert was undoubtably a tremendous writer. Thumbs up for Dune. 

[NGTM-1R]

Yet in the latter two cases, the reader feels no particular urge to throw the book down in disgust every time a dignitary, family member, friend, or captured enemy captain (!) begins to fawn over the main character.

Now this is a valid point.

Particularly when, in the context of the series, not many people should even really know her name.

[General Battuta]

I opened up War of Honor to a pseudorandom page. Flipped through two chapters of politics, vote-counting in parliament, and ships flying through a new wormhole terminus, all of which could have been worked into two pages of dialogue on another topic. Then hit this:

"I take your point—yours and Alistair's both," Honor said after a moment. "But I think this is probably something we shouldn't be discussing even 'in the family.' " She knew Yu and Caslet well enough to feel no discomfort at saying such a thing in front of them, and Grant, Yu's chief of staff, was an old-school Grayson; it was impossible to conceive of him ever telling tales out of school. Besides, the three of them were family themselves, by adoption, at least, and she gave the them a smile as she went on. "

This is what gets me. The...I don't know, the force-fed warm fuzzies or whatever.

Or this:

"They probably aren't making formal demands because they don't realize what gutless wonders are running the Star Kingdom," Honor said with a flash of sudden rage. "They think there may actually be someone in the High Ridge Government with a spine—someone who'd actually stand up to them! Someone—"

She chopped herself off abruptly as she realized just how much frustration she was revealing. And, for that matter, startled to realize how angry she actually was . . . and how clearly she was allowing it to show, despite the way she'd admonished McKeon, Orndorff, and Brigham in the lift car.

No one else said anything else for at least thirty seconds, but then McKeon cleared his throat and cocked an eyebrow at her.

"I take it," he said in a wry tone, "that your last comment indicates you haven't received any secret new orders from the Admiralty which we're not aware of?"

"No," Honor replied, then snorted. "Of course, if they were secret orders, I'd tell you I hadn't gotten any anyway, wouldn't I?"

"Sure," McKeon agreed. "But you're not a very good liar."

Honor chuckled, almost despite herself, and shook her head at him. But he'd succeeded in breaking her mood, exactly as he'd intended, and she gave him a smile of thanks, as well. Then she shook herself and turned resolutely back to the matter at hand.

Awww aren't they adorable.

And this was particularly annoying:

"You think they're being distracted by the Peeps? I mean, by the Republic, of course," McKeon said.

Neither Yu nor Caslet so much as blinked, but Honor felt both of them wince internally. Not in anger, and certainly not because either of them suffered from mixed loyalties at this late date. It was more of a sense of loss, a bittersweet regret for the changes in Haven which they would never be a part of.

And a smoldering anger, worse even than that of most Graysons, over the policies of the High Ridge Government which seemed to be fanning the tensions between Haven and the Star Kingdom once again.

That's right, because when you defect to a foreign power in order to join up with the captain who defeated you, then take up arms against your own homeland, you do it completely. No mixed loyalties! Just some bittersweet regret.

Because, after all, you're not defecting to Manticore. You're joining Honor's Party!

Grar.

I also really dislike Weber's use of a particular construction with 'and' to continue sentences: "But the Manticore ships had ten billion extra missiles in hiding, and Captain Bob Smith's face twisted into a fierce smile as his ships of the line opened fire." I noticed John Ringo picked this up too (back before he, too, disintegrated) and man does it wear at the reader.

[StarSlayer]

Defeat means Friendship!

ah TVTropes we can now have a common language for analyzing and ridiculing our media.

I liked the Harrington series, though to be honest I cycled into it after becoming so disgusted with the Star Wars EU I stopped reading them aside from occassionally popping out the olde favorites.  It was certainly refreshing at the time, and while I can sympathize with many of the General's points I think overall the experience has been positive for me at least.  I tend to think its just damn bloody difficult keep long running combat series with all cylinders running and a single character without a little Mary Sue creep.

Though Battuta if your interested in a long running series where side characters die in droves and and long standing friendships turn to ash I might direct your attention to Alexander Kent's Richard Bolitho series  Passage to Mutiny is a good place to start since while cronologically its probably four in it was the first published.  It's with the Napoleonic era Royal Navy instead of space but by and large its pretty strong across 26 something volumes.

That all said I tend to plow through a series with gusto if it hooks me in the beginning.  I find sometimes I tend to over look faults at the time that if I were reading at a more casual pace I might pick up on sooner.   I recently rambled through most of the Sword of Truth series a little while ago and my satisfaction with the first three meant the my dissatisfaction most of the following installments didn't really kick in until I was only three short of wrapping up the entire series.

[General Battuta]

My other big issue with the Honorverse is that it got less cool as it went.

Weber moved the series' combat from a series of tense, fairly-small scale duels at knife fight range, where each leaking missile and each turn meant something, to an abstract, impersonal, purely mathematical series of fleet duels that could only be narrated by the sheer number of missiles involved and the certain destruction of random ships.

We went from proud ships of the line to enormous missile buses in just a few years.