We are jumping right into the second book in the Star Kingdom series, this one titled Fire Season.  This one’s a joint venture between David Weber and the now-familiar Jane Lindskold.  Published by Baen, it came out at a comfortable 287 pages in October 2012.  In the previous Star Kingdom novel, we met an 11-year-old Stephanie Harrington in part 1, then moved forward in Stephanie’s life, approximately 16 months in Part 2.  Here in Fire Season, Stephanie is now 14, turning 15 years old.

While this is another “treecat novel” and the treecats are featured characters, the story really focuses on Stephanie, her schoolmates, her parents, and several other adults central to her life, and a team of scientists who arrive on Sphinx with a more official charter to study the treecats.  We learn a lot more about Stephanie and the changes she’s going through as she’s maturing from a child into a young adult.  Given she’s growing up on a frontier world, it’s exciting to see just how much she and some of her friends are trusted with and expected to do as they become contributors to the society around them.  Or perhaps “societies” would be more accurate since the events of the novel certainly include the treecats.  The combination of the impact of fire season along with the visiting scientists leads to an action-packed, dramatic story that adds some beautiful depth to several characters, as well as richness, history and complexity to the Honorverse.

One thing we reinforce in the podcast is that while this series is written for young adults, there are no punches pulled in terms of the story.  If you tend to shy away from “YA” novels, do yourself a favor and be sure to read all of them in the Star Kingdom series.  As you know from our second interview with David Weber, he doesn’t avoid complex, heavy or dark issues that need to be a part of the broader story just because some of his books are written for our young adult Honorverse family members.  These novels were written for the rest of the more “seasoned” adults out there, too.  We’re confident you won’t be disappointed.

We rated Fire Season with a 5, a 4.5 and a 5 (out of 5), for an overall rating of 4.83 from your hosts.

As always, thank you for listening and big thanks to those of you who also take the time to like and follow us on social media, to comment on our posts even reach out through a longer note.

Next time on the Honorverse Today podcast, we’re back into the main storyline, jumping into the novel A Rising Thunder.  As always, be sure to grab your copy, invite a friend, and join us!

And yes, the blooper reel this time is from a previous show. We'll let you figure out which one!

You can find us, and all our episodes at http://honorverse.net, and email us at honorverse@tpenetwork.com.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Now, let’s be about it!