A beautiful friendship

This novel tells the story of Stephanie Harrington, Honor Harrington's ancestor and the first person to form a bond with a treecat. Stephanie is a precocious 14 year old, so this is Weber's first YA novel.
A Beautiful Friendship is an expansion of a short story of the same name that was earlier published in the anthology More than Honor. I suppose you could say that Weber is recycling his earlier work, but the expanded story made it work for me. I do wonder if this is the start of a new series. If so, my emotions are mixed. (Doesn't the man have enough on his plate already? !!)