On Basilisk Station begins the story of Honor Harrington, whose tale can be traced through multiple books. Honor Harrington is a member of the Royal Manticoran Navy, the space navy that is. In fact, she is one of their best and brightest, although in this book she is a low ranking officer who has been exiled to an end-of-career station because she couldn’t make a new weapon work better than it was able to in exercises.

When she arrives, her whole crew is sulking and her immediate superior decides to hand her total responsibility for a situation that calls for five ships, while she only has one. Honor Harrington, however, does not know the meaning of the expression “can’t” and she insists on carrying out her orders. This must-be-done attitude whips her crew into shape and sends them scurrying all over the system to cover their responsibilities without a full complement of ships.

Despite the handicap, they do such a great job that they discover a problem no one knew about. A BIG problem. With one ship and more work than five ships could do, how will they solve the problem? Only Honor knows. And I’m not telling.

Note: This review was written in 1999 for a soon-to-be defunct website.