In the sequel, Lifebinder, our heroine is still moving, even though she’s technically … a little dead.

Unfortunately, there are forces out there that want to see her entirely dead.

Buy Lifebinder

The Story

After defeating Yenda Avard and reclaiming the spellsword Deathbringer, Inga Alenir has still lost everything else—her family, her fiancé, her home. Since she was stabbed through the heart, even her heart isn’t beating; Deathbringer can only control death, not create life. She has spend months as a drunken guest in the home of the Isrodel family, and her hosts are almost tired of her.

When she goes out for the first time in months, Inga is attacked by an entire gang of assassins. It seems the person who tired to wipe out her family line generations ago is trying to finish the job. Inga can only think of one place to go: her ancestral home.

But there are many pieces in motion, with various and sundry players along the way.

Inga may have problems, but her very reemergence and quest for survival have set off a chain of events that are about to shake the empire.

Lifebinder was a joy to read, with an action-packed opening, superb world building, and a large cast of characters.

The only thing I didn’t like was that we had a buildup that is almost entirely going to be settled in book three.

The Characters

I think this might be an eight sided chess game, where everyone has their own agenda.

One party wants to kick over the chess board and reassign the players so it fits her sense of order.

Another wants to rebel against the empire just to hold control over his own lousy city.

Our villain wants to kill our heroine just to thoroughly annihilate her bloodline once and for all.

The Empress is trying to hold the empire together and perhaps heal her sickly daughter.

Inga’s friend from book one is about to get sucked into this whether she likes it or not.

There’s at least one other player who’s just trying to keep things quiet before everything blows up.

This isn’t even counting the people waiting in the wings because they’re just waiting for a turn to be the villain.

Don’t worry, there are more. But the main ones here include:

Inga: Is literally just trying to get through the day.

Ruslan: the brother of our villain from book one. He’s trying to keep his city under his control, but he’s a man in a woman’s world. And yes, matriarchal societies are as vicious as everyone says they are.

Matriarch Fraiser. There’s only one thing worse than a psychopath, and it’s a smart one.

Some of these people are sympathetic and understandable as opposed to “are we going to support the incest gang, the traitor gang, or the noble idiot gang?” Yes, this book makes me seriously angry that George Martin couldn’t write a series with a single character I care about. What? You mean we can have an epic fantasy setting with high stakes, political machinations and scheming, but we don’t have a single case where it looks like a Lord of the Rings snuff porn parody with an extra order of rape? Yes, we can have nice things.

The World

By my guess, this is 1920s technology with magic thrown in for fun. Since it seems to be based around a Russian settling, we have everything from peasant farmers to big city technology and aristocrats. It has a history that goes back at least a hundred years, a religion, a Templar order … it’s very thorough.

How detailed is the backstory on this world? Lifebinder even has an appendix. Because of course it does.

Politics

In-world politics only, really.

Content Warning

None, really.

Who is it for?

If the idea of Game of Thrones, but with likeable characters, and actual sides you might want to root for sounds appealing, you might want to try it.

Why buy it

It’s a fun, complex, epic fantasy.

Buy Lifebinder

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And now, one our our veterans have a turn. His list is … long. ~Declan Finn.

First, like the title says, this list is incomplete because my memory is flawed. Even better, there are more amazing books than any one person can read in a single lifetime. Because of that, I’m treating this as a living, breathing document rather than a rigid text from the Church of the Sci-Fi Pew Pews.

This is the third part in this list; you can read the first part here and the second part here. Feel free to jump into the comments with anything I’ve missed or whatever you think I should add to my impossibly long TBR list. Seriously, I promise to add it! If I can’t get to it in this lifetime, I’ll catch up in the next!

Moving on, it’s important to note that these books aren’t listed in any order of merit or worth. Their only sorting algorithm was the random order they popped into my brain during a late-night mind dump onto the page. If you want to rank them or assign your own value system, have at it! Just be sure to let us know in the comments!

Rather than making a list of book titles and links, I aim to write a quick synopsis of the book, linking to those Upstream has reviewed already and showing you where you can buy the various works.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in!

So begins the list…

1-800-Starship Series by J.N. Chaney

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! J.N. Chaney’s 1-800-Starship is the first book in a series of the same name. It lovingly blends retro 1980s pop-culture nostalgia with the fast-paced military space opera that I love. Before we go any further, let me show my bias. I loved J.N. Chaney’s Renegade Star Series and his Last Hunter Series that he co-wrote with Terry Mixon. I was already a fan of his work when I started this novel. I went in expecting to like this new book. It’s written like many of Chaney’s solo books, in the 1^st person POV with a somewhat snarky character. If you don’t love that, this novel isn’t the book for you. However, this is my jam, and I wasn’t disappointed.

This story follows Mark Allen, an ordinary small-town guy who calls a hotline advertised in an old arcade comic book. Whatever he expected, it wasn’t to be whisked away by an alien “Recruiter.” This book, which starts series thrusts a regular a human from Earth into training as a “Nova Slinger.” He’s being trained to fight in an ancient interstellar conflict he barely understands. The series expertly balances fun portal-fantasy dynamics with high-stakes space warfare as Mark discovers a galaxy strangely steeped in Earth’s late-80s pop culture.

What sets the series apart for me was the fast-paced blend of small-unit squad tactics, fighter-style dogfighting, and asymmetric warfare against a hive-mind alien threat. The combat style focuses on rapid team coordination, pilot maneuvers, and boarding ops as raw recruits are quickly forced to learn squad integration while under enemy fire. This book balances the gritty mechanics of weapon loads and ship damage control with an upbeat, high-tempo retro adventure that you’ll love if you give it a chance.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, J.N. Chaney (Jeff Chaney), served four years on active duty in the United States Air Force before earning a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. He was able to combine his firsthand experience with military service and formal training in creative writing, to build a massive indie publishing imprint. That awesome nerdy outlet specialized in fast-paced military science fiction, space opera, and LitRPG. His background allows him to seamlessly blend military authenticity with accessible, high-concept fiction. He addresses larger ideas of what it means to be human in a world with alien life, machine integration and how the individual fits into the larger galactic cosmos. I’ve read many of his series and I think he continually delivers.

The Lost Fleet Series by John Hemry

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

First, I want to address an issue that might cause some confusion. These books were originally published by Jack Campbell, which is a pseudonym of John G. Hemry. Now the author is moving his books into his own name, so you’ll see versions with two different author names or with both of the names on them. Whichever you see, they’re good, be the name Jack or John be on the cover!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet series has six books in it, each one named after one of the ships in the fleet that the series centers around. The books in the series had names like Dauntless, Fearless, Courageous, Valiant, Relentless and Victorious. These books are widely regarded as a masterclass in hard naval military science fiction. Widely regarded by whom? In my purely subjected opinion, his books came recommended to me via my veteran support network that I formed through my local VA PTSD group. Take that for what it’s worth, and that includes with a lot of salt or whatever the saying is!

Now let’s talk about the book itself. Waking from a century of survival-pod cryo-sleep, legendary Alliance commander John “Black Jack” Geary finds his fleet trapped deep inside enemy Syndicate territory. The fleet’s officer corps was decimated, and their naval traditions degraded by decades of attrition. This was part of the story that made it hit so hard for me. It showed what happens to a nation at war for too long, long enough that it caused the nation to metastases itself and things began to decay. This book came out in 2006, but I found it years later on the same day I realized that the war had lasted long enough to enlist in its own right. Maybe it was nostalgia, but that made the effect of the story feel real in ways that are hard to quantify.

Because he’s the main character in this Master and Commander story through the voids of space, off course Geary becomes the new head mother freaker in charge. Taking command, Geary is forced to navigate a vast, battered armada home against the odds. He sails through hostile space, all while restoring discipline, honor, and actual military doctrine to his officers. Officers who’d institutionally forgotten their roots and their responsibility to the spacers/sailors under their command.

Another thing that makes The Lost Fleet stand out is its relentless commitment to realistic orbital mechanics, light-speed lag, and relativistic fleet tactics. I don’t have the brainiac knowledge that would tell me if the science were real. It felt real, which is what mattered to me. However, my more nerdy friends tell me that the naval combat was spot on. It was conducted at fractional speed-of-light velocities, where engagements are won or lost in seconds-long firing passes planned hours in advance to account for visual delay and sensor latency. This sounds like it would be boring, but Hemry kept it exciting and kept me engaged. In other books that lean too hard into the hard science, I skim those scenes. With these books, I read every word.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, John G. Hemry, is a U.S. Navy veteran. He’s a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and was a line officer, who retired as a Lieutenant Commander. In his writing, he draws directly from his active-duty naval service. His experience in the surface warfare community allowed him to craft the series’ authentic shipboard culture. It allowed him to describe believable fleet tactics and create realistic chain-of-command dynamics amongst the crew in his books.

On Basilisk Station by David Weber

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! David Weber’s On Basilisk Station is the groundbreaking opening novel of the long-running Honor Harrington Saga, often celebrated as C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower transposed into deep space. Honestly, I didn’t see that because the Weber universe opens while the main character, Honor, is already an older woman established in her career. The similarities are that they are both naval officers, driven by duty and their responsibilities to their nation. I recognize that Weber has said that he was inspired by these works, among other things. But I didn’t personally see the parallel.

With that out of the way, let’s dive deeper into the book itself. The main character, Honor Harrington, is a member of the Royal Manticoran Navy. She was banished to the backwater Basilisk system as political punishment for embarrassing her superiors during a weapons test. Her experimental armament underperforms in fleet exercises, and she was the scapegoat for the bloated naval bureaucracy. As a result, she was assigned to the poorly regarded Basilisk Station. Truly, this is the metaphorically Siberian duty station where they count mess kits.

She’s a naval commander and sails with her crew aboard the aging light cruiser HMS Fearless. The lot of them are expected to quietly rot away as punishment. Instead of wallowing, Honor turns a demoralized posting into a high-stakes confrontation involving smuggling, indigenous unrest on the planet Medusa, and a covert Havenite plot that threatens the entire system. Instead of a quiet obsolescence, she shows the world what she’s made of.

What makes On Basilisk Station stand out is its meticulous and detailed space-naval combat rooted in Age-of-Sail tactics adapted to futuristic physics. They fight with broadside capital-ship tactics, missile telemetry, and energy-shield geometry. So, mix the old and the new… what comes out of is something amazing. Ships rely on impeller wedges that create nearly impenetrable “up/down” defenses, forcing engagements into broadside exchanges of missiles, lasers, and energy weapons. This fighting tactic is why the comparison to sailing ships of the line fought lands for so many readers.

What I liked was that there was no magic tech that solved all of the problems. There were light-speed delays, sensor limitations, and the need to close range for decisive weapons. One of those weapons was the experimental grav lance that I thought was creative and shaped the genre books that came after it. But more than that, in this novel, Weber masterfully scales the tension around the asymmetric space naval warfare. This will always speak to me, but this is likely a bias because this was my experience in the Global War on Terror.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, David Weber, is not a military veteran. According to my online sleuthing, some sights have said that he attempted to enlist in the U.S. Navy but was rejected for medical reasons. According to a talk that he gave at a NavyCon that was hosted by the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, he holds the record for the most failed attempts to enlist in South Carolina. Despite his lack of service, his background as a military history enthusiast and former wargame designer. All of this informs the tactical and institutional details that he writes about in his novels.

The Cyborg Option Series by Scott Moon

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Scott Moon’s The Cyborg Option Series is an intense, action-heavy military science fiction saga. The first book in this series is where the series gets its name. It’s set against a desperate galactic struggle for survival, like all of the best military science fiction. And it’s about one of my favorite science fiction tropes… cyborgs. I mean, what’s cooler than the merger of man and machine?

This series follows elite ground forces, cyborg augmentees, and frontline commanders pushed to their absolute physical and mental limits. This happens as humanity faces overwhelming cybernetic and alien threats, an enemy that works in science fiction. One of the best enemies, really, in a world where transhumanism is looking more and more possible. Against these building blocks, Moon crafts a fast-paced narrative that blends the scale of classic space opera with the brutal realities of augmented infantry warfare.

What sets The Cyborg Option apart is its visceral focus on cybernetically enhanced ground combat, mechanical integration, and fireteam tactics where every side actually bleeds. Too often military science fiction combat is written as bloodless and deathless, by people who don’t bother to understand the realities of war. The combat style delivers kinetic, small-unit to company-level firefights where soldiers are forced to balance heavy power-armor capabilities, targeting HUD telemetry, and cybernetic reflexes against the extreme realities of war. They deal with the frenetic nature of war, ammo depletion, and armor degradation. I especially appreciate this, seeing the realities of combat logistics. Too often ammunition runs out, equipment wears out and bodies fight through exhaustion. And too often, authors ignore those realities. Moon does not. He caught those realities and made them part of the plot.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the author himself. Unlike many authors in the military science fiction subgenre, Scott Moon isn’t a military veteran. Instead, he’s a former law enforcement officer. He was a former detective, turned police lieutenant and SWAT officer. His real-world background in law enforcement and tactical training gave his work the same realism you’ll find from any former service member. I’ve noticed that he thinks about tactics differently than someone trained to fight counter insurgency in the GWOT (Global War on Terror). That is because his training emphasized saving lives and minimizing casualties. My training emphasized ending enemy lives, shooting until the threat is eliminated. To kill the enemy with extreme prejudice. I like Moon’s approach, his experience is so counter to mine that his works feels different because his writing informs his realistic handling of firearms, room-clearing mechanics, and squad-level stress under fire. The same, but different.

The Theogony Trilogy by Chris Kennedy

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Chris Kennedy’s The Theogony Trilogy, which starts with the book Janissaries, is an inventive military science fiction series that bridges realistic modern naval aviation with ancient mythological sci-fi. This franchise is the best thing that came out of Chris Kennedy Publishing. While I enjoyed the Four Horseman Universe, I found this to be more my style. I loved the mix of realism, snark and military science fiction where the main characters are fighting for causes larger than themselves. I grew up in a generational military family, so the space mercenary trope never truly spoke to me. Those books were good, but these had everything I like about the genre.

The story follows Lieutenant Commander Shawn “Calvin” Hobbs after the events of the Occupied Seattle Duology. Those books were military thrillers, so they didn’t fit the genre, but they pivoted into this follow-on series. But while the duology doesn’t fit into the genre for this list, it does lead into this series and the books are amazing. I highly recommend them, if you love reading military action-adventure stories.

Back to this series! The main character is a former Navy fighter pilot who is recruited into a covert military program. He was sought out after discovering that the ancient Greek gods were actually powerful alien races. This is an old trope, but one that I love reading. It is why I love Stargate and why I loved this series. After finding that aliens were real, the next shoe dropped. They learned that humanity was caught right in the middle of the proxy war of these ‘Greek gods.’

What makes The Theogony Trilogy stand out is its seamless blend of carrier-based fighter pilot tactics, space-naval combat, and ancient alien mythology. The combat style delivers air-to-air dogfighting and carrier strike mechanics translated into orbital and void engagements. In this series, flight leadership, energy management, and missile loadouts dictate survival… just like in real world combat. I love that Chris Kennedy balances company-level boarding actions with grand fleet engagements, bringing realism to how military pilots adapt top-tier naval doctrine into deep-space combat.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Chris Kennedy, is a veteran of the US Navy. He served for twenty years as a naval officer and aviator. He spent his time in the Navy flying carrier-based missions and then serving as an instructor. Then he became an elementary school principal and finally he became a full-time author and publisher. His time in the cockpits made his writing in this series even better. His experience here makes me wish Chris would write a series written in the vein of the old X-Wing books I grew up reading. I think, if you read his books, you’re going to love this series too.

Blood, Sweat, and Steel Tales of Future Combat and Mechanized Warfare

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! This is a military science fiction anthology built entirely around the visceral, industrial, and heavy-metal realities of mechanized battlefield operations. There is an introductory essay from genre legend David Drake of Hammer’s Slammers fame and a bunch of awesome authors. This collection tackles Sun Tzu’s core axiom; while men fight for beliefs, the outcome of battle is overwhelmingly decided by who fields the superior machinery. And in that space, you see the fight of metal titans who keep going against all odds in an ever-changing world.

Now, unlike most of the list, this isn’t a novel or series but a collections of short stories. As such, there are many authors whose short stories have been included in this anthology; William Joseph Roberts, David Drake, Kevin Ikenberry, Liska McCabe, Morgan Chalfant, Casey Moores, J.F. Holmes, Sergio Palumbo, Rick Partlow and yours truly. Some of these authors were new to me, but some of them were authors whose books I already read. In fact, some of them already have books that made it onto my lists. Some of them are veterans, some are not, but all of them are skilled wordsmiths. I think you’re going to enjoy this collection, so give it a chance, you won’t regret it!

Wraithkin by Jason Cordova

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Jason Cordova’s Wraithkin is the first book in The Kin Wars Saga. I am focusing on the first book, because I don’t remember reading the later books. Blame my TBI or being older than dirt, but it wouldn’t be fair to write about books that I don’t remember. This is a fast-paced, high-stakes military sci-fi space opera. The story follows Gabriel Espinoza, whose life is upended by a failed genetic compliance test, forcing him to join the mysterious, high-mortality Wraith Corps to protect the woman he loves. Thrust into the frontlines of a devastating galactic conflict against a brutal alien invasion, Gabriel must adapt to survive alongside the elite strike force.

The novel stands out for its high-tempo, squad-level infantry engagements, black-ops insertions, and hard-hitting orbital drop tactics. The combat style emphasizes rapid fireteam coordination, harsh environment survival, counter-insurgency ops, and the heavy physical toll of fighting through entrenched alien positions. Córdova balances kinetic firefights with the psychological pressure of recruits forced into a high-attrition unit where survival depends strictly on squad discipline and adaptability under fire.

This was an action-packed novel; it never really lagged for me. I read it from start to finish in one setting because I couldn’t put it down. I believed that the tactics worked for the novel, the action was believable, and the story flowed seamlessly from one plot point to another. Wraithkin was easy to follow, and I was never confused by what was going on. In a nutshell, go buy this book and give it a read! And I’ll be going back to finish this series, re-starting from the first book.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Jason Cordova, is US Navy veteran. His active-duty military service brings authentic operational discipline, an understanding of the chain-of-command, and genuine squad banter to his military science fiction writing. He’s also an accomplished sci-fi author, editor, and educator. He’s done extensive work co-founding and contributing to shared-world universes. He’s a 2015 John W. Campbell Award finalist. He understands the written word and his connections and live experience allow him to make his squad dynamics and tactical worldbuilding extremely believable.

Strange Company by Nick Cole

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Nick Cole’s Strange Company is a dark, atmospheric military science fiction novel heavily inspired by The Black Company and classic Vietnam-era combat narratives. The story is set in a decaying galactic empire on the brink of collapse. Right from the beginning, the stakes were clear and intense. The story follows a ragtag group of misfits, mercenaries, and warrant officers in a shadowy, high-mortality unit deployed to execute dirty, unsanctioned missions.

The novel stands out for its surreal blend of gritty, real-world operational realism and dark, atmospheric combat. This truly felt like a psychedelic acid trip through the combat zone, written in the iconic Cole style that brought us books like The Old Man and the Wasteland and CTRL ALT Revolt!. He has a unique writing voice when writing solo books, and it was never more evident than when he wrote this book. It was classic Cole and will have you hooked from the first chapter!

The combat style focuses on small-unit infantry tactics, close-quarters counterinsurgency, and fire-team survival. The soldiers rely on smoke, claymores, suppressive fire, and brutal improvisation in chaotic, fog-of-war firefights. And the entire time, you could envision yourself in the shit amongst the men of Strange Company, in their life-or-death struggle against the odds. In these books, Cole balances company-level ground assaults with an oppressive, psychological weight, capturing the exhaustion, fatalistic humor, and tight-knit brotherhood of men fighting a hopeless war for a galaxy that doesn’t care if they survive.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Nick Cole, is a former US Army soldier who went from enlistment to an officer’s commission. He was never that specific about what he did while in uniform, but he often credits his basic military experience with helping him in his writing. It helped to ground the operational culture, jargon, and mindset in his science fiction books. To bring gritty realism to the combat scenes in his military sci-fi works, Cole frequently collaborates with combat veterans who bring direct frontline experience to the writing and co-authoring process. But more than that, he works in his time spent working as an actor living in Southern California. This experience gives Nick a deep understanding of human nature that shows in everything he writes.

Spacers Series by Scott Bartlett

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Scott Bartlett’s Spacers series begins with a book of the same name. This is a fast-paced military sci-fi and space opera adventure. This falls squarely in the space fleet subgenre of the military science fiction genre, and it was expertly done by an author who shines in this literary space. This series pits a desperate group of human starship crews against overwhelming alien threats and corporate tyranny. The story follows hardened void-farers and fleet officers thrust into the frontlines of deep-space combat, where survival requires cunning, resourcefulness, and absolute trust in your crew.

What sets Spacers apart is its high-tempo blend of ship-to-ship naval tactics, boarding actions, and asymmetric space combat. The combat style emphasizes sub-light maneuvers, kinetic point-defense interception, energy shield management, and high-risk boarding breaches executed under zero-gravity conditions. Bartlett balances the desperation of the individual crew members with small-scale fleet engagements.

Since this is a space fleet novel, let’s talk about the void combat we experienced. When combat begins, Bartlett describes the 3D space battles with remarkable clarity. I could picture the scene like I was looking at the battle space like I was looking at a three-dimensional sand table mapping out the battlefield. Because of his skill at these descriptions, Scott made sure that the reader understood the geometry of the fight without getting lost in the math.

This book is for fans of military science fiction (Mil-SciFi) and space opera, especially those who enjoy fast-paced stories blending starship battles, tactical command decisions, interstellar politics, alien threats, and character-driven growth within a military framework. This is for readers who like action-heavy narratives with detailed space combat, fleet maneuvers, and high-stakes conflicts are going to love this book. Seeing humanity facing the returning of alien invaders in a colonized galaxy connected by wormholes and grit will hook you just like it did me.

Moving on, the pacing of this book was well done and kept me reading. There were plenty of lulls in the action, so you’re never stressed out or fatigued from the adrenaline rush. The slow parts were descriptive and evocative, painting a picture in my mind. However, the action scenes moved at a breakneck pace that kept me on the edge of my seat and happy that I picked up this book. I really think that anyone who likes Mil SciFi, space opera and science fiction in general will really enjoy this novel.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Scott Bartlett, isn’t a military veteran but he writes it believably enough that you’d never know that. He’s a Canadian, one of my favorite Maples, and comes from a civilian writing background. He holds degrees in English and law, which is evident in his ability to write beautifully compelling stories that could almost be called works of art. When preparing for this post, I looked him up and didn’t realize his academic training. However, having read his books I am not surprised that he focused on law because it shows in many of the scenes and arguments expressed in his novels.

The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed them yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Eric Nylund’s Halo: The Fall of Reach is one of the best tie-in novels that I’ve ever read. It set the standard for every video game adaptation and expanded universe lore addition that followed it. Rather than relying on simple action tropes, Eric builds a deeply grounded, high-stakes military science fiction adventure. This world serves as a deep prequel to the original Halo videogame. This story details the origin of the SPARTAN-II program, the horrific reality of the Covenant war, and the tragic destruction of one humanity’s major military stronghold.

What makes The Fall of Reach stand out is its dual-tiered approach to illustrate the grand scale of the universe. He seamlessly balances kinetic, squad-level infantry engagements with hard-edged fleet naval tactics. Ground operations highlight the brutal physical realities of powered-armor warfare and small-unit tactics, treating Master Chief and his Spartans as elite, disciplined assets bound by strict military protocols. High up in orbit, Nylund brings an unusually perceptive operational realism to void combat, treating space battles with calculated physics, fleet maneuvers, MAC (Magnetic Accelerator Cannon) recharge cycles, and the cold, asymmetric math of UNSC ship casualties against superior Covenant energy weapons.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the author himself. Unlike many authors in the military science fiction subgenre, Eric Nylund isn’t a military veteran. However, he does hold degrees in chemistry and chemical physics that add to his depth of knowledge. He built his career as a professional technical writer and narrative designer. His scientific rigor allowed Eric to inject an extraordinary level of technical legitimacy into the UNSC’s military operations. This made the world feel more vivid and the story feels like it was grounded in reality. This realism created a trust between the author and the reader that allowed you to give him the rope to hang this amazingly brilliant military action upon.

The Human Legion Series by Tim C. Taylor

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

Now, I’ll address the elephant in the room for this one and discuss my bias. This series is one of the first ones that I read when I got a Kindle. I’d thought that I’d never be able to read again after my head injury. Then I found the eBook and suddenly I could enlarge the print and compensate for my traumatic brain injury that I was gifted by Mesopotamia. I was so hooked I started a now defunct Wikipedia for the world and pestered Tim to close some of the open-ended questions in this world.

After a few months of pestering him, he finally told me to write the answer to these questions and we signed a contract. So, my first literary contract and series was signed with Tim. I wrote The Sleeping Legion Series to address those questions. I said that, to say that I obviously love these novels. Enough that I wrote four books, two novellas and a few short stories inside this universe.

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Tim C. Taylor’s The Human Legion series starts with the novel Marine Cadet and was good enough that I’ve read it a few times. It is an expansive military science fiction space opera centering on slave-soldiers who decide to rebel. Four centuries after Earth was sold to alien conquerors, human children are raised in brutal orbital academies as disposable conscripts for the alien White Ops legions. The story follows young Marine Cadet Marine Sergeant Arden Jarrev and his squad as they spark a desperate, galaxy-spanning revolt to break human servitude and reclaim their freedom.

Something about this rebellion by men trying to fight back against oppressive, distant overlords speaks to my American soul. I get it, that this world came from a British subject is ironic, but that doesn’t stop the story from going to amazing places and dragging you along for the ride. The adventure was one that speaks to me because it was the first book I was able to read after my head injury. But this series also speaks to the part of me fresh home from Mesopotamia. As Arden suffered, he helped me process my own suffering. All while he reminded me who I used to be.

What makes The Human Legion stand out is its progression from small-unit infantry tactics to full-scale combined-arms space warfare. The combat style in this series emphasizes squad-level boarding actions, urban breeching ops, and mechanized infantry drop landings. This action happens where low-tier, heavily worn gear must be pushed to its absolute limit against superior alien weaponry. This is what really sold the space marine angle for me, since the modern US Marine Corps is often forced to use outdated equipment when compared to the rest of the armed services. In this series, Taylor balances those logistics with the tight, fireteam-level room clearing. That is balanced with the grand operational scale of their slave army learning to run naval fleet maneuvers and coordinate multi-system uprisings on the fly.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Tim C. Taylor, isn’t a military veteran but he writes it believably enough that you’d never know that. He’s a former commercial software engineer and IT consultant whose technical background informs his detailed approach to military systems, logistics, and structured tactical plotting. It also allowed him to world build in a way that was believable and allowed you to picture yourself in the middle of the action of this story.

Backyard Starship by Terry Maggert & JN Chaney

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Terry Maggert and J.N. Chaney’s Backyard Starship is the first book in the sprawling Backyard Starship Universe. This is a hit space opera adventure that blends the classic portal-fantasy discovery trope with the high-stakes galactic law enforcement. This series fits squarely in the space marine category, though the action is part soldier, part law enforcement.

Upon inheriting his late grandfather’s secret barn-bound starship, Van Tudor discovers that his grandfather was a Peacemaker. That’s an elite, interstellar law enforcement agent, which gives us the vector for the action-oriented angle of the story. The main character, Van, inherits the badge, the ship, and an AI companion. This unexpected gift thrusts him into a dangerous galaxy filled with space pirates, alien cartels, and corporate conspiracies.

I’ll be honest, I almost didn’t include the series since it didn’t focus on a single or group of military characters, not in the traditional sense. However, it is classified in the space marine subgenre of the military science fiction genre over on Amazon. Given how good the books were, I decided to count it here. Why? Because the authors and the publisher called it as such. Also, because there was one more slot on this post! This is the third and final part of my incomplete list of amazing military science fiction and each post had 12 books on it. This finishes the list with a consistent number, which pleases the part of me that likes uniformity.

What sets Backyard Starship apart is its intimate, bounty-hunter-style engagement scale and small-vessel combat tactics. The combat style balances tight dog fighting in light starships with close-quarters firefights, personal energy shielding, and tactical breaching operations. Instead of massed fleet engagements, the narrative highlights asymmetric law enforcement tactics, target acquisition, urban tracking, and small-team coordination in hostile alien environments.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the authors themselves. We’ll take them one at a time, so this section is coherent. One of the co-authors, Terry Maggert, isn’t a veteran. However, he’s a seasoned author with a background in history and martial arts. Those life experiences give his action scenes the gravitas that are in the best action stories.

The other co-author also brought military service to the table. That author, J.N. Chaney (Jeff Chaney), served four years on active duty in the United States Air Force before earning a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. He was able to combine his firsthand experience with military service and formal training in creative writing, to build a massive indie publishing imprint. That awesome nerdy outlet specialized in fast-paced military science fiction, space opera, and LitRPG. His background allows him to seamlessly blend military authenticity with accessible, high-concept fiction. He addresses larger ideas of what it means to be human in a world with alien life, machine integration and how the individual fits into the larger galactic cosmos. I’ve read many of his series and I think he continually delivers.

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And now, one our our veterans have a turn. His list is … long. ~Declan Finn.

First, like the title says, this list is incomplete because my memory is flawed. Even better, there are more amazing books than any one person can read in a single lifetime. Because of that, I’m treating this as a living, breathing document rather than a rigid text from the Church of the Sci-Fi Pew Pews.

This is the second part in this list; you can read the first part here. Feel free to jump into the comments with anything I’ve missed or whatever you think I should add to my impossibly long TBR list. Seriously, I promise to add it! If I can’t get to it in this lifetime, I’ll catch up in the next!

Moving on, it’s important to note that these books aren’t listed in any order of merit or worth. Their only sorting algorithm was the random order they popped into my brain during a late-night mind dump onto the page. If you want to rank them or assign your own value system, have at it! Just be sure to let us know in the comments!

Rather than making a list of book titles and links, I aim to write a quick synopsis of the book, linking to those Upstream has reviewed already and showing you where you can buy the various works.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in!

So begins the list…

Rogue Squadron: Star Wars Legends Series by Michael Stackpole

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Michael A. Stackpole’s Star Wars: Rogue Squadron Series stands as one of the most beloved entries in the Star Wars Legends expanded universe. It’s tied with the Wraith Squadron books for me in the space fighter side of the space fleet subgenre of military science fiction. These books were the foundational cornerstone of the Legends universe, pioneering a military-focused perspective that moved away from Jedi Knights and Force philosophy. I can’t tell you if these were the first ones to do this, but they were the first books I found and made the 90s amazing for me as I read these books.

In this series, we follow the iconic Wedge Antilles as he rebuilds the legendary Rogue Squadron from scratch. This character was a Corellian human male starfighter pilot and one of the Rebel Alliance’s most skilled and combat ace. He flew in the Red Squadron during the Battle of Yavin in the 1977 movie A New Hope. We see Wedge throughout the other movies in the original trilogy, and he appears in many of the extended lore books.

During this series, we’re immersed in the high-stakes campaign to liberate the galactic capital of Coruscant from the remnant forces of Imperial Director Ysanne Isard. This was expertly executed, and all these years later these books still hold a soft spot in my heart. What truly makes Rogue Squadron stand out was its authentic gritty realism applied to fighter-pilot combat and small-unit cohesion. The combat style delivers kinetic, dogfight-heavy space and atmospheric engagements. Most military science fiction focuses on the massive ship battles or the space marine fire fights. It was awesome to get to experience the genre from the cockpit of a void fighter cockpit.

I’m not a pilot and I’ve never played one on television. However, as I got to see the space dogfights, it felt real. The pilots had to worry about energy management, as they balanced their laser power, engine throttle, and shields in a desperate bid to survive. They fought through swarming TIE interceptors and their support craft in scenes that played out like movies in my head. Stackpole focused heavily on flight-element tactics where there were three flights of four. He also took into play the unique wingman dynamics amongst pilots and showed the briefing-rooms where battles were planned. He made sure that we knew that the harsh attrition of frontline starfighter combat. He took off the kid gloves and honored the warfighters with the respect he showed those in his novels.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Michael A. Stackpole, isn’t a military veteran but he writes it believably enough that you’d never know that. I had to look into him by scrying through the Oracles of Google, but I found a phantom willing to spill Stackpole’s deepest, darkest secrets. He’s an accomplished game designer and speculative fiction author, writing both science fiction and fantasy adventures to enthrall and entertain. His experience designing tabletop wargames and flight simulators in the early days of computers allowed him to create highly structured and tactical military engagements that felt authentic. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you understand sports plays, you can generally understand small unit tactics. Most of our most beloved games started as training grounds for young warriors. This rang true as the author is a sports fan. His official publisher biographies, including Penguin Random House, note that when he’s not writing, “he plays indoor soccer, rides a mountain bike, and reads, but not all at the same time.” Older profiles list indoor soccer and arena football among his hobbies and interests. This grounding in game plays gave him the core insight to write believable military engagements that had me gripping the edge of my paperback with white knuckles!

Shorty by Scott Moon

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Scott Moon’s Shorty is the first book in the Shortyverse, A Mech Warrior’s Tale Series. This is a fast-paced, underdog story set on a brutal world gripped by perpetual mechanized war. This is the book I recommend anyone who wants mech combat badassery in digestible format. If Rudy was written with a mech on another planet, it would be this book. This was every dream of massive metal machine combat I’ve ever had written into one underdog story.

Okay, back to the story. It’s set in a world where the battlefields are dominated by massive, city-leveling war machines. A world where the governing rule is “be bigger or get destroyed.” The narrative of this adventure saga centers on an underpowered, 17-ton scrapheap mech named Shorty and his pilot. Together, they must fight against far larger, heavily armored opponents. Against enemies who had every reason to win… but didn’t.

What sets Shorty apart from other mech stories was its gritty, close quarters mech combat that focused heavily on mechanical physics, weight differentials, and improvised field engineering. This is right up there with Mech Wars for the best robot monster romps in print! It’s good because the combat style emphasizes asymmetric armored maneuvering where a smaller, lighter mech can rely on high mobility, terrain exploitation and heat management. The pilot targets the weak joints to dismantle massive, superior enemy rigs. And it does it with a cinematic elegance that shows the wordsmithing skill of the author. He skilled the grand fleet operations for an intimate, industrial ground-level perspective. He illustrates how grit, tactical improvisation, and machine maintenance can overcome overwhelming firepower. And does so in a way that will keep you reading, page after page.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the author himself. Unlike many authors in the military science fiction subgenre, Scott Moon isn’t a military veteran. Instead, he’s a former law enforcement officer. He was a former detective, turned police lieutenant and SWAT officer. His real-world background in law enforcement and tactical training gave his work the same realism you’ll find from any former service member. I’ve noticed that he thinks about tactics differently than someone trained to fight counter insurgency in the GWOT (Global War on Terror). That is because his training emphasized saving lives and minimizing casualties. My training emphasized ending enemy lives, shooting until the threat is eliminated. To kill the enemy with extreme prejudice. I like Moon’s approach, his experience is so counter to mine that his works feels different because his writing informs his realistic handling of firearms, room-clearing mechanics, and squad-level stress under fire. The same, but different.

The Galaxy’s Edge Series by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed them yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. Luckily, I’ve reviewed it on my personal website which you can read here. It is on my list of books to convert into the Upstream Review format to share it here with you find folks. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Jason Anspach and Nick Cole’s Galaxy’s Edge series, which begins with Legionnaire. This series is a powerhouse of modern military science fiction, and two of the spin-off series have won awards. The Savage Wars Series in the Galaxy’s Edge universe won the 2020 Dragon Award for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel. And the first book in the Order of the Centurion Series won the 2019 Dragon Award. But none of those awards could’ve happened without this main series, the one that started it all. The first novel in this world dives seamlessly into the action and brings you kicking and screaming into this military science fiction adventure!

This series fuses the pulse-pounding space opera that I love with raw, authentic military grit. In the beginning, when this series was being built from the ground up, they advertised this as Star Wars but not Star Wars. It was based on the raw premise about what that iconic franchise could’ve been if the Storm Troopers were actually elite warriors. The authors did this well, making the readers want to suit up and grab a blaster to get into the fight with them. It felt real and believable and spawned a thriving fan club with thousands of members. Those fans even host a yearly gathering, though its less of a convention and more a get together with guns and grills… and I’m told the meats at the cookouts are top notch.

Now let’s look more at the nitty gritty of this series. This series is set in a galaxy decaying under corruption and bureaucratic decay. This series weaves together multiple threads that give you a little bit of everything. There is something here for everything, from elite shock-troopers on brutal frontier deployments to cynical scoundrels. There are ancient warlords, space magic and political intrigue. Together, the authors deliver a deeply immersive universe that breathes new life into space adventure.

What sets Galaxy’s Edge apart for me was its uncompromising real-world operational realism. By ‘operational realism,’ I mean that the authors don’t shy away from the issues that come from the “fog of war.” During the action scenes, the war fighters are forced to engage even when the information provided by higher command is incomplete. During the action, radios cut out at the worst possible time which is how things work outside of fiction. But radios aren’t the only thing that goes belly up. The leejes, in universe words for legionnaires, deal with wrong map data and orders that were garbled in transit. All of this shows how chaotic things are at the ground level.

Another thing that Anspach and Cole got right about the military they created was the role that standard operating procedures, or SOPs, play in daily life. Many see those procedures as detrimental for those involved and uninteresting for those watching. The procedures save lives and the authors show that it can be entertaining. We get to see characters relying on muscle memory to engage the enemy when tension and fear would otherwise cloud the mind. These allow seamless tactical communication amongst the bad asses we know and love in this immersive universe. In a nutshell, through this we get to see realistic tactics rather than cinematic heroics that cheapen brave warfighters.

I also love that this universe addresses issues like fire discipline and ammo management. In this world, ammunition is finite, and weapons overheat, jam, and require barrel changes. Even worse for the characters and better for the readers; magazines run dry at critical moments. Murphy’s Law runs amuck, and the soldiers sometimes suffer because of it. With skillful wordsmithing, Anspach and Cole brought this futuristic infantry warfare to science fiction. They treated space marine operations as grueling instead of clean fantasy. In a way, by doing this they honor the veterans who they write about and for.

The combat style they wrote about spoke to many GWOT (Global War on Terror) veterans like me. The authors emphasized small-unit tactics, realistic fireteam and squad level communications. Readers get to experience fire-and-maneuver dynamics that most civilians never see, which made the story even more compelling. But more than the tactical, the authors didn’t ignore the grim psychological weight borne by boots-on-the-ground Legionnaires. From messy planetary drops and atmospheric skirmishes to room-clearing urban breaches, the series captures the visceral, chaotic friction of battle. This leads to creating the most compelling piece of military science fiction in the current reading space.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the authors themselves. We’ll take them one at a time, so this section is coherent. One of the co-authors, Jason Anspach, didn’t serve in the military, but he grew up as a military brat. Or, in civilian speak, his parent was a US Army service member. His work is known for fast-paced action, space opera adventure, tactical military elements, and sharp humor. You can see all of that snark in any of his publicly available interviews online. They’re worth watching and only a quick Google away!

The other co-author brought his military service to the table. That author, Nick Cole, is a former US Army soldier who went from enlistment to an officer’s commission. He often credits his basic military experience with helping him ground the operational culture, jargon, and mindset in his science fiction books. To bring gritty realism to the combat scenes in his military sci-fi works, Cole frequently collaborates with combat veterans who bring direct frontline experience to the writing and co-authoring process. But more than that, he works in his time spent working as an actor living in Southern California. This experience gives Nick a deep understanding of human nature that shows in everything he writes.

Wraith Squadron: Star Wars Legends Series by Aaron Allston

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Aaron Allston’s Star Wars: Wraith Squadron Series stands as one of the most beloved entries in the Star Wars Legends expanded universe. It was one of the two X-Wing series that made the late 90s worth living! This series took over the X-Wing umbrella, following Michael A. Stackpole’s Rogue Squadron arc. In this series, Allston shifts from the viewpoint of elite starfighter pilots to that of a hybrid unit composed of washouts, misfits, and trauma survivors. I really loved the ‘every man’ feel that this change gave us. As a young teen, this change really allowed me to picture myself sitting in the cockpit flying through the voids.

In this series, the squadron is tasked with operating as a joint space-and-ground commando team. This combined arms command was well done, and I loved the tie with some of the characters I know and love. This squadron was under the command of Wedge Antilles. This character was a Corellian human male starfighter pilot and one of the Rebel Alliance’s most skilled and combat ace. He flew in the Red Squadron during the Battle of Yavin in the 1977 movie A New Hope. We see Wedge throughout the other movies in the original trilogy, and he appears in many of the extended lore books.

In this series, Wraith Squadron is forced to balance the heavy emotional depth of modern combat with sharp gallows humor. This unit does all of this while engaging in high-stakes unconventional warfare against Zsinj, the Imperial warlord. His forces used creative and deceptive tactics that caused the creation of the unconventional Wraith Squadron as a flexible commando-fighter unit.

In my not so humble opinion, what makes Wraith Squadron stand out was its emphasis on the combined-arms commando operations. The scenes where we got to experience the exciting covert infiltration and psychological warfare kept me reading late into the night, when I should’ve been sleeping. In this series, the author gave us two amazing varieties of combat scenes: dog fights and ground action. While I am not normally a zoomie fan, I really loved the intense, dogfighting air and space engagements. We got to see the pilots controlling their fighters, shooting their proton torpedoes as they manage the engine of their ships.

But wait, there’s more! Just to keep it interesting, the fighter action was intermixed with gritty, boots-on-the-ground infantry action. In this series, the author kept the narrative authentic, focusing on scenes with mission planning and all of the thinking that grunts need to consider before ever engaging the enemy. And because we’ve got cloak and dagger fun, the reader gets to see the good guys worry about managing their undercover identities. And because combat doesn’t happen to soldiers with no consequences, we saw Allston exploring the severe psychological strain of casualties and operational friction. For those of you that don’t speak military jargon, the term ‘operational friction’ refers to what happens when the pressure from the compounding weight of reality barrels through the plan once the execution begins. Sometimes we call it Murphy’s Law, but that term isn’t pretentious enough for power point projections from the GWOT era.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Aaron Allston, isn’t a military veteran but he writes it believably enough that you’d never know that. However, I did some checking on his background. I think this was what made his writing so believable. He was a veteran game designer and technical editor, whose meticulous background in tabletop RPG mechanics and systems engineering gave his military science fiction its grounded tactical authenticity.

Star Wars: Republic Commando Series by Karen Traviss

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Karen Traviss’ Star Wars: Republic Commando series is widely celebrated for drastically shifting the tone of the Star Wars Expanded Universe toward a hyper-realist, boots-on-the-ground military focus. I really loved seeing the shift from the space wizard jedi towards the ‘every man’ fighters who make the galaxy go round. But I think those who suggest this forget the X-Wing books, especially the Wraith Squadron series. However, that doesn’t take away from how awesome these books are. They started coming out while I was in college and the last of them came out while I was recovering from my last deployment. I say that, to say that my love of these novels might be colored by the bias from the time in my life when I read them.

Moving right along! This series centered around an elite group of special operators known as Delta Squad and Omega Squad. What made this series stand out to me, as I read the books post-Iraq, was how it stripped away the romanticized space-fantasy veneer of the Clone Wars books. Instead, Traviss examined the grim ethics of using a genetically modified and artificially aged slaves to build an army. Worse, these warriors were specifically created to fight a galaxy-spanning war. They were literally born to be killed in war. Living machines, considered as nothing more than cattle by the government that made them.

What makes the Republic Commando series stand out was its intense focus on room-clearing urban breaches, special reconnaissance, hit-and-run sabotage, and the visceral realities of CQB (Close-Quarters Battle). Again, I read these books as I was coming off of my second deployment to Iraq as an infantryman, so these books really spoke to me. The combat style Traviss wrote emphasized a depth of realism that was what I needed when I read it. The author showed this realism through the strict trigger discipline shown by the troops. We saw this realism through the way the characters focused on ammo conservation and small-unit tactics. Finally, the severe psychological impact of losing brothers-in-arms added even more layers to the suck that the commandos experienced.

Instead of the massive action often seen in space opera books, this series scaled down the action from massive fleet battles to the gritty infantry slog of urban war. With that backdrop, Traviss’ explored the friction between the soldiers and the spooks. The series explored the intensity of clandestine wet-work and the counterinsurgency that dominated my combat experience. Against that, the action is set against the backdrop of the deep cultural and philosophical bond formed between the clone commandos and their Mandalorian instructors.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author herself. The author, Karen Traviss, was a military veteran. She was a former military reservist who served in both the United Kingdom’s Territorial Army and the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service. She’s notably modest about her time in uniform and goes out of her way to avoid framing herself as a combat veteran. On her official website, she describes her reserve service with characteristic dry humor:

“I spent time in the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service (now disbanded, alas) and the Territorial Army. But bear in mind that the most hazardous thing I’ve ever faced was a Royal Navy meat pie. (No discernible lumps: slurry en croûte. As with most animals, my hunger overcame my fear of the unknown.) So I’m not GI Jane. Don’t include me with the fine men and women who do a truly dangerous job in our armed forces, both as regulars and reservists, because I have the privilege of knowing many of them, and they’re the real deal. I am not..”

After that, she worked as a defense correspondent, exposing her to the vast width and depth of the military experience. Together, this allowed her to add authentic military slang, administrative friction, and unit cohesion into her work.

The Union Series Phillip Richards

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While I’ve read these books, I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Phillip Richards’s The Union Series, which starts with the first book titled C.R.O.W.. This was a gritty, straightforward entry into the world of British military science fiction. This was a no-holds-barred combat story that trades the epic space opera tropes for the raw, visceral reality of the common grunt. This series is what the space marine genre should be, honoring the warfighter as Richards entertains his audience.

This series follows the protagonist, Andy Moralee, as he transforms from a wide-eyed boot, who they call a “Crow,” into a salty combat veteran. The term “Crow” is what they call a new replacement recruit and stands for “Combat Replacement Of War.” More than just a veteran of visceral action, Moralee is a battle-hardened section leader. This series offers an uncompromising look at future planetary warfare and doesn’t shy away from the brutality involved in galactic pacification.

The adventure is set against the backdrop of colonial conflicts and insurgencies on hazardous alien worlds. The books zero in on the brutal action, dark humor, and trauma experienced by frontline dropship infantry. But this wasn’t a cartoonish look, instead it felt like it was real. This is one of the things that I love about Richards writing was how the author’s combat and training experiences heavily inform the realism in his fiction. Sure, he uses British Army doctrine, but it still rang true, and his characters felt real. His books draw directly on real infantry life rather than pure speculation, which I appreciated. Further, his use of small-unit tactics was spot on, and how he handled the way soldiers interact with each other under stress mirrored my own combat experiences. Even better for the reader, and worse for my nightmares, Richards showed the reality of what counter-insurgency activities look like. He showed those believable details throughout the Union Series.

What makes The Union Series stand out is its relentless focus on squad-level tactical movement, and real-world infantry combat mechanics. The combat style emphasizes low-level, small-unit tactics. In this setting, the individual riflemen must manage their ammunition because rounds aren’t infinite. They have to handle their weapon jamming mid-firefight and navigate basic fire-and-maneuver as they cover their brothers under fire. Instead of heroic invincibility, the series highlights depicting the chaos of dropship inserts, institutional hazing, and the grim attrition of close-quarters planetary engagements.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Phillip Richards, is a military veteran. He was born in Chichester, which a map tells me is in southern England. Shortly after his 17th birthday he enlisted in the British Army and chose the infantry. Why? Because God loves the infantry! He served his crown for over seventeen years, including operational deployments to Kosovo as a peacekeeper, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and multiple tours in Afghanistan. During his service, he reached the rank of Sergeant and spent some time serving as an infantry instructor. Other sources state that he later made it to the rank of Colour Sergeant. Brits, am I right?

Star Wars: 501^st, An Imperial Commando Novel by Karen Traviss

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While I’ve read this book, I haven’t reviewed this yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Karen Traviss’ Star Wars: Imperial Commando: 501st novel is the continuation and tragic final chapter of her Republic Commando Series. This story delivered an extremely dark and grounded exploration of the immediate aftermath of Order 66. This novel is set in the early days of the Galactic Empire when the situation was tense, and peace was fragile. With a truly commendable skill, Traviss crafted the scene and made you feel the sheer terror from this time in Star Wars canon.

This novel followed former Clone Commandos and ARC troopers who’re navigating a fractured reality. Some of them are serving as the Emperor’s elite hunting force. They were assigned with tracking down the surviving Jedi and clone deserters. Others had gone rogue to protect their families on Mandalore, layering depth to the action of this book. This chaos forced the surviving clones to decide where their loyalties remained.

What distinguishes Imperial Commando for me was how it shifted towards insurgency warfare and clandestine tracking. Through Traviss’ prose, we see the grim reality of a military transitioning into an occupying force. We see that through the use of a combat style focused on small-unit urban breaching, close-quarters counterinsurgency, and precision tracking ops where rules of engagement are rewritten overnight. In this novel the focus remains laser focused on squad-level optics, highlighting the reality of war. The characters deal with logistics chains and how that complicates battlefield engagements. They fight through squad loyalties that break under new commands that test their loyalties. And, lest the characters be portrayed as unfeeling sociopaths, the psychological angle isn’t forgotten. They deal with the emotional weight of veterans forced to turn their weapons against former allies. The old brother against brother trope, written compellingly, in such a way that tugs at your heartstrings.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the author herself. The author, Karen Traviss, was a military veteran. She was a former military reservist who served in both the United Kingdom’s Territorial Army and the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service. She’s notably modest about her time in uniform and goes out of her way to avoid framing herself as a combat veteran. On her official website, she describes her reserve service with characteristic dry humor:

“I spent time in the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service (now disbanded, alas) and the Territorial Army. But bear in mind that the most hazardous thing I’ve ever faced was a Royal Navy meat pie. (No discernible lumps: slurry en croûte. As with most animals, my hunger overcame my fear of the unknown.) So, I’m not GI Jane. Don’t include me with the fine men and women who do a truly dangerous job in our armed forces, both as regulars and reservists, because I have the privilege of knowing many of them, and they’re the real deal. I am not.”

After that, she worked as a defense correspondent, exposing her to the vast width and depth of the military experience. Together, this allowed her to add authentic military slang, administrative friction, and unit cohesion into her work.

Baneblade by Guy Haley

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While I’ve read this book, I haven’t reviewed this yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Guy Haley’s Baneblade is an Imperial Guard novel in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It’s loosely part of the Imperial Battle Tank Series, though I’ve only read this book so it’s all that I am going to address. This book swaps the iconic space marine heroics of the genre for the claustrophobic, but explosive warfare of super-heavy armor operations. This story follows the character of Commander Bannick and the ten-man crew of the Mars Triumphant. This is a massive, 300-ton super-heavy tank that is almost a character in its own right. I thoroughly loved the adventure, including the scenes of treaded combat.

This novel follows a brutal campaign against an Orkish horde on the desert world of Kalidar IV. Throughout this book, Haley balances the grand-scale industrial carnage of the Warhammer 40K universe with the tense human dynamics inside a steel fortress on tracks. I’m normally a fan of the stories of average grunts, but I’m not above a good tread-head adventure. This novel delivers that in spades, and I think you’ll love it too!

What makes Baneblade stand out for me was its intense focus on armored combat mechanics. The author described the way the crew coordinated with each other and other tanks. He let us experience the claustrophobic reality of operating a rolling warship dressed up as a tank. My first car was considered a land yacht by my friends, but I had nothing on the Mars Triumphant. That was one of the things that stood out for me, the gargantuan tank felt like a ship at sea, at least from the inside. Not quite Master and Commander, but there were enough similarities that readers and reviewers saw the comparison.

But now let’s dive into the nuts and bolts of the action in this book. The combat style that Haley wrote emphasized heavy mechanized tactics that felt real. You could almost smell the grease and gun powder. In this massive tank, survival depends on ammo loadouts and target prioritization across multiple weapon stations. The commander is forced to deal with engine heat management as they maintain the infantry screens to prevent swarming close assaults. It hurt my infantry soul to see a franchise that used the grunts as nothing more than meat shields, but this is the Warhammer way.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Guy Haley, isn’t a military veteran. Instead, he’s a veteran games journalist, magazine editor, and prolific Black Library author. He has a background in tabletop gaming, which, when paired with his meticulous mechanical research, made his writing practically sing. These allow Guy to give his stories detailed depictions of the armored warfare systems in this book.

The Last Hunter Series by Terry Mixon & JN Chaney

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Terry Mixon and J.N. Chaney’s The Last Hunter Series, which starts with the book of the same name, The Last Hunter. Not to be too cliché, but this is a high-octane space opera and naval military sci-fi saga that I loved. Just don’t talk price, because the 16 book long series, when read with your ears over on Audible, hurt. What’s the old meme, “I’ll never financially recover from this?” Anyway, this was an amazing series, and I loved every minute of it. Not that I’m shocked, I’ve loved every book that I’ve read from Terry Mixon and Variant Publishing.

This series is built around a classic genre trope that I love, the story of a forgotten museum ship pressed back into frontline service. Well, maybe forgotten is too strong of a word? The ship was there, in orbit and probably visible from the planet below. It hosted tours for school kids and had a crew who gave guided tours of the historic warship. However, what made it work was how well the authors executed this epic romp through space with extreme lethality.

This series follows Commodore Jack Romanoff as he takes command of the Delta Orionis, which was a massive ancient battleship. Sure, maybe the bloom was off the rose, but when the authors described the ship as decaying, maybe that was a bridge too far. In this series, the authors pit a crew of trainees, naval rejects, and green recruits against the overwhelming return of a hive-mind alien armada. None other than the swarm of enemies known only as ‘the Locusts.’ Never fear, there were plenty of secondary characters to fall in love with, as well as a universe set up for a spin-off series that I have on good authority is in the works.

The series stands out for its high-stakes, asymmetric naval fleet combat that is Terry Mixon’s signature style. The action is centered on all of the things that are fluid when in the heat of battle; damage control operations, power management, operational rehabilitation under fire and conserving limited munitions. Rather than flying a pristine, state-of-the-art flagship, the crew operates an under-gunned, jury-rigged dreadnought where every engagement is a tactical puzzle. The only thing missing from the crew was an officially sanctioned and unofficial E4 Mafia, because the series certainly had enough shenanigans for it.

Throughout the series, the authors scale the combat seamlessly from grand, sector-wide capital ship broadsides to planetary drop operations where Marine contingents fight brutal surface skirmishes. Where Marines die to secure strategic assets like nuclear stockpiles and the food needed to feed the massive ship’s crew. If drones count as void fighters, then this series hits the trifecta of epic military science fiction. While I haven’t seen many readers make the comparison, I won’t let it stop me from doing so. I truly think this series has shades of this iconic work of naval fiction know as Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian.

What are those similarities you didn’t ask me? As the series launches, we see an under-equipped warship sailing against the tides and fighting in hostile territory. Even the shared first name feels like an intentional homage. The main character in The Last Hunter is Jack Romanoff, instead of Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander. Instead of treating interstellar starships like magic flying cars, Mixon and Chaney treat the Delta Orionis like a giant industrial vessel. As part of that, both series spend time detailing the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of shipboard operations, and I loved it in both sets of books.

Finally, I saw a similarity in the culture of the warships in both books. Ships in O’Brian’s Master and Commander world are isolated floating villages with strict hierarchies, traditional routines, distinct jargon, and a shared bond forged by hardship. The Last Hunter mirrors this exact institutional feel. You see the distinction between the bridge officers, the Marine contingents, and the grimy engineering crews down below decks. In my not so humble opinion, The Last Hunter is fundamentally an Age of Sail naval campaign set in deep space with shiny set dressing.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the authors themselves. We’ll take them one at a time, so this section is coherent. One of the co-authors, Terry Mixon, served as a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Then he went on to spend nearly two decades working alongside flight controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center on human spaceflight programs. If you ask him, he’ll tell you that he was part of the department that faked the moon landing. But would they really trust an Army sergeant for that level of shenanigans?

The other co-author also brought military service to the table. That author, J.N. Chaney (Jeff Chaney), served four years on active duty in the United States Air Force before earning a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. He was able to combine his firsthand experience with military service and formal training in creative writing, to build a massive indie publishing imprint. That awesome nerdy outlet specialized in fast-paced military science fiction, space opera, and LitRPG. His background allows him to seamlessly blend military authenticity with accessible, high-concept fiction. He addresses larger ideas of what it means to be human in a world with alien life, machine integration and how the individual fits into the larger galactic cosmos. I’ve read many of his series and I think he continually delivers.

The Conscript Series by Scott Bartlett

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Scott Bartlett’s The Conscript Series, which starts with the book of the same name, Conscript, is a lot of fun. This series was a hard-hitting, fast-paced military science fiction saga written by one of my favorite authors. The start of this book was a bit grimdark, which almost had me stop reading it. However, because I trusted the author I kept reading. Boy, I was glad that it did! This was engaging from the minute the main character hit the Marine Corps.

This series centers around Po Abbato, a petty criminal forced into a high-stakes penal enlistment to save his younger siblings from corporate debt slavery. This is a normal trope for Bartlett, the main character working to care for a sick sister. I love that the author centers family in his series. This decision sent the main character into military service just as a devastating alien threat re-emerges in the solar system. From that point, Po transforms from a reluctant and cynical conscript into a warrior. He becomes a front-line squad leader fighting against overwhelming odds. And, because the risks were great, the payouts for the audience were enough to hook me into the series.

What makes The Conscript Series stand out for me was the intense focus on high-attrition powered-armor infantry engagements. How it focused on how penal military service created a constant, systemic resistance that Po Abbato and his fellow Marine recruits faced inside their own military apparatus long before they ever traded fire with an alien enemy. Sure, it was a training thing at first, but it seemed like higher command didn’t value their lives. But being expendable is just part of the job, something every veteran understands at their core.

In this series, the author serves us combat that’s written viscerally. It focused on all of the senses, allowing you to be there in the shit with Po. The story focuses on small-unit fire-and-maneuver tactics. Throughout this story, the infantry grunts battle harsh orbital drops, unforgiving atmospheric hazards, supply shortages, and heavy close-quarters alien insurgencies without air support. Having once called for air support that didn’t come, that one part hit harder than the others. Throughout this series, Bartlett balances the gritty physical mechanics of mechanized armor, breaching ops, and ammunition management with the psychological strain of squad-level survival under draconian military oversight. And, yes, I pulled my old NCO notebook for the PowerPoint approved verbiage!

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Scott Bartlett, isn’t a military veteran but he writes it believably enough that you’d never know that. He’s a Canadian, one of my favorite Maples, and comes from a civilian writing background. He holds degrees in English and law, which is evident in his ability to write beautifully compelling stories that could almost be called works of art. When preparing for this post, I looked him up and didn’t realize his academic training. However, having read his books I am not surprised that he focused on law because it shows in many of the scenes and arguments expressed in his novels.

Never Again by Bill Fawcett

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I have reviewed this book over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Bill Fawcett’s Never Again is the first book in the Blood and Armor Series. The rest of the series was handed over to other authors, and I haven’t read them yet, so I will focus on this novel. This is a near-future, techno-thriller and military science fiction story that was more gripping than it had any right to be.

This story is set in a high-stakes geopolitical climate where the newly established Kurdish Republic finds itself under immediate, overwhelming siege by surrounding hostile dictatorships. The novel explores what this under-strength nation will do to survive. The desperate measures this young nation takes to survive against massive, armored columns of the enemies were extremely well written. The prose set a scene that painted vivid pictures in my head.

What made this novel better was how Fawcett described the terrain in a way that felt like I was there. I don’t say that lightly, because I’ve been to some of these places. Obviously, I’ve never been to Iran, but the parts of the Kurdish nation in Iraq are places well known to me. I said that, to say this. Fawcett set a scene that was extremely believable. It felt like I was there again, which was both horrific and wonderful at the same time.

Another thing that makes Never Again stand out was its intense focus on prototype powered-armor ground combat. Well, that and its focus on force multiplication, and asymmetrical mechanized warfare. This was a genius look at what modern warfare looks like. The combat style highlights a high-intensity, small-unit infantry defense by overwhelmed Kurdish fighters. Except, they have an ace up their sleeves which they leverage in their fight. What was it? The experimental DARPA powered combat suits, which were called “GOG” suits. They used this near future tech to equalize the battlefield against swarming enemy tanks and armored columns.

In this series, Bill Fawcett emphasized the tactical considerations and practical applications of fielding untested prototype technology. They’re forced to deal with the real-world operational logistics of this new tech. They use it creatively by factoring in the terrain as they ambush the enemy forces. But it isn’t all super trooper powered armor. We see the raw mechanics of front-line infantry forces forced to hold the line against the superior firepower of their enemy. This tension made the final battle that much more satisfying. I think, when you read this book, you’ll agree with it too.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Bill Fawcett, isn’t a military veteran. Instead, he’s an accomplished historian and a fun podcast guest whom I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with on many occasions. According to his publicly available biography, he’s a former college professor, prolific anthologist, and co-founder of Mayfair Games. He has an extensive background in military history research and game design, which informs his ability to write detailed tactical plotting that felt real. Why? Because he was able to pull from real world parallels that gave the book more weight than if he’d gone into the writing blind.

The Order of the Centurion by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole

The OG Cover

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I have reviewed this book over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

Now, I’ll address the elephant in the room for this one and discuss my bias. This book is now slotted into the main Galaxy’s Edge Series timeline, as book 10 of 25 in the main series. However, this book was originally the inaugural novel launching the side-story series set in the Galaxy’s Edge universe. That spin-off series is the Order of the Centurion Series. They’ve since written a new book for the first book slot in the series. Why does that matter? Because I wrote one of the books in this series, The Reservist. I want to be transparent about my bias and let you decide from there.

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Jason Anspach and Nick Cole’s The Order of the Centurion was the 2019 Dragon Award Finalist for Best Military Science Fiction of Fantasy Novel. Like I said, this is the first novel in an all-new series of stand-alone military science fiction thrillers set in the Galaxy’s Edge Universe, and featured a legendary hero of the Legion who forgot nothing in their earning of the Legion’s highest honor.

This book focuses on the origin story of Lieutenant Washam. He’s been relegated to a backwater supply hab on the swampy, hostile jungle world of Psydon. Because of his status as a political ‘point’ officer, Washam isn’t well respected by the leejes he serves. Wanting to test himself, to experience more, Washam abandons his safe desk assignment to join Major Berlin and a team of Republic Recon Marines on an unsanctioned, covert insertion deep behind enemy lines.

The story stands out for its brutal, small-unit jungle warfare dynamics. This book was basically Vietnam in space, but without the cringy cliches. It delivers an intimate, tragic character study of one of the iconic characters within the Galaxy’s Edge universe and shed him in an entirely new light. But none of that matters if you haven’t read the main series. The good news, this story stands alone as a novel in its own right and could be enjoyed absent any of the other books in this franchise.

What I liked about The Order of the Centurion was how the combat was portrayed. The combat style emphasized gritty ground maneuvers through dense jungle terrain. I could almost hear ‘Fortunate Son’ in the background as I read this book. It was eerie how well they nailed the ‘Nam vibe of this combat operation. The characters had to focus on fire-team-level communication, counter-ambush activities as they engaged in long-range reconnaissance. They did it while under relentless insurgent harassment from the ‘Doros,’ a humanoid doglike race nicknamed the Dobies. This was an alien species who fans love to hate, myself included.

This novel focused almost entirely on the boots-on-the-ground fighting, instead of galactic fleet clashes. Rather than focusing on those galactic fleet movements, the scale is deliberately suffocating and claustrophobic in the dense jungle. It highlighted the grim physical and mental toll on infantrymen far from the comforts of their base camp. The story stripped away space-opera grandiosity of the space fleet and space opera genre, where most of the lights shine. It, instead, focused on the quiet heroism, sacrifice, and unyielding brotherhood of soldiers holding a line that cannot be saved against the odds.

I loved that the focus was squarely on the tactical gritty warfare that is the infantry’s bread and butter. We see the characters being forced to endure under duress. We were left admiring both the Legion and the Republic Marine Corps. I couldn’t help but admire the sheer mental resilience required for their small strike force to survive on their unsanctioned mission behind enemy lines. All while facing superior numbers with superior firepower. It was easy to see how Washam and Berlin earned their medals, but the encounter was still tragic. Enough so that it’s stuck with me since I first read it on the day it was published back in 2018.

To wrap up the synopsis of this book, we’ll consider the authors themselves. We’ll take them one at a time, so this section is coherent. One of the co-authors, Jason Anspach, didn’t serve in the military, but he grew up as a military brat. Or, in civilian speak, his parent was a US Army service member. His work is known for fast-paced action, space opera adventure, tactical military elements, and sharp humor. You can see all of that snark in any of his publicly available interviews online. They’re worth watching and only a quick Google away!

The other co-author brought his military service to the table. That author, Nick Cole, is a former US Army soldier who went from enlistment to an officer’s commission. He often credits his basic military experience with helping him ground the operational culture, jargon, and mindset in his science fiction books. To bring gritty realism to the combat scenes in his military sci-fi works, Cole frequently collaborates with combat veterans who bring direct frontline experience to the writing and co-authoring process. But more than that, he works in his time spent working as an actor living in Southern California. This experience gives Nick a deep understanding of human nature that shows in everything he writes.

We’re back with a review of the first entry to 's massive StarQuest series, Space Pirates of Andromeda, from ’s .

It’s sure to scratch the Star Wars itch with none of the DisneyWars compromise.

You can read the Original Review if you prefer that.

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After Collider listed their “top books in MilSF,” our reviewers had opinion. Caroline had her turn.

And now, one our our veterans have a turn. His list is … long. ~Declan Finn.

First, like the title says, this list is incomplete because my memory is flawed. Even better, there are more amazing books than any one person can read in a single lifetime. Because of that, I’m treating this as a living, breathing document rather than a rigid text from the Church of the Sci-Fi Pew Pews.

Feel free to jump into the comments with anything I’ve missed or whatever you think I should add to my impossibly long TBR list. Seriously, I promise to add it! If I can’t get to it in this lifetime, I’ll catch up in the next!

Moving on, it’s important to note that these books aren’t listed in any order of merit or worth. Their only sorting algorithm was the random order they popped into my brain during a late-night mind dump onto the page. If you want to rank them or assign your own value system, have at it! Just be sure to let us know in the comments!

Rather than making a list of book titles and links, I aim to write a quick synopsis of the book, linking to those Upstream has reviewed already and showing you where you can buy the various works.

With that out of the way, let’s dive in!

So begins the list…

The Frontline Series by Marko Kloos

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I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Marko Kloos’s Frontlines series, which starts with Terms of Enlistment, is widely considered one of the defining modern works of military science fiction. Ok, I don’t know if it’s widely considered awesome, but I consider it to be awesome and that’s all that matters! This book gifts the readers a gritty, high-stake deep dive into the worlds of interstellar conflict.

In my not so humble opinion, this series excels at gritty, boots-on-the-ground infantry combat. It was grounded in strict tactical protocols, military logistics, and the psychological strain of frontline warfare. All of this fit with my own experience as a basic bish, straight leg grunt. I thoroughly enjoyed that the action scaled seamlessly from claustrophobic close quarters drops in powered armor to staggering orbital fleet battles. All those fights were against overwhelming extraterrestrial threats known as the Lankies and kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time.

What sets Frontlines apart for me was how Marko Kloos delivered a series with real-world operational realism that comes from someone who understands military culture and strategies. This series focused on the friction that routinely happened within the chain-of-command, the unreliability of the supply chain and the daily grind of military service. Unlike those who prefer to lean into something more romanticized where the soldiers are superhuman with godlike heroism, this series preferred to show war as it is.

I think what made this series so amazing was that the author, Marko Kloos, has worn the uniform himself. He served as a soldier and NCO in the armored infantry of the German Federal Armed Forces (Bundeswehr). That allowed him to bring authentic procedural depth and military authenticity to the narrative.

The Undying Mercenary Series by BV Larson

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. And I’ve reviewed it on my own website here, though I suspect there would be a lot of overlap, so start with the Upstream Review! However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! B.V. Larson’s Undying Mercenaries series, which starts with Steel World, is a wildly popular military science fiction series. I found it to be a fast-paced saga that was more than mere battle splatter porn, with ideas that make me think even now. He dove into the nature of life, what it means to be you and whether or not you are you if you’ve been cloned and brought back to life. This is the same question Star Trek dove into with what happens to you when you’re teleported, broken down at the molecular level and rebuilt on the other side.

This series was defined by dark humor, unrelenting action high-concept alien warfare. What do I mean by that? Just that Larson didn’t dress up modern tactics and science it up. It isn’t based on conventional real-world military logic or the standard human-vs-alien firefight tropes. Instead, Larson created a few rules to build the combat around.

The first gimmick that Larson built combat around was that Earth was brought into an intergalactic empire as warriors for hire. The empire decided that humanity was too technologically backwards, and that our only valuable export was our capacity for violence. Because of that, human legions were formed and hired out across the galaxy as cheap, heavy-infantry troops.

The second gimmick that Larson built his combat around was the previously mentioned respawn that had me questioning what it meant to be yourself. Are you truly yourself if you die and are reconstituted as a cloned body of yourself? That is one of the deeper questions from this series. And that happens because the alien overlords grant the human legions revival tech. If a soldier dies during a mission, their body is reconstructed from raw biomass at a base machine. It was shown in a really cool, though gross, living machine that was viscerally awesome. This capability fundamentally reshapes battlefield tactics and Larson factors it into his plotting for the series. This allows the troops to use suicidal attrition tactics during fights, probe and scout enemy lines by dying intentionally or trade lives as an operational resource. All of this is possible because death isn’t permanent, as long as you think that the new construct is still you.

The final gimmick that Larson built his combat around was the bureaucratic rules the alien overlords put on humanity. These rules limit how war is fought, forcing Larson to be creative with how he plans the engagements in the novels. In this series, war wasn’t fought for total conquest or with planet destroying weapons. Sadly, no Death Stars in this world, because the empire outlaws such things.

Instead, battles are tightly controlled proxy fights fought via unusual alien legal contracts. Worse, there are weird local environmental constraints that limit humanity for reasons that are capricious and unreasonable. But such is the way of tyrants, and that tension makes the episodic nature of this series that lends a throughput that ties the entire series into an overarching plot that ties everything together. In short, Larson’s Undying Mercenaries focuses on a premise-driven warfare. They build the series combat around the speculative mechanics that make the genre shine.

But let’s analyze what makes this series stand out for me even after the years since I read the last novel. It centers on high-octane, planetary-scale infantry drops where death is merely a temporary setback. What can I say, sometimes the aliens have good tech! This alien revival technology reconstructs fallen soldiers from stored biomass. This makes Larson’s combat unique is how the main character, Legionnaire James McGill, leverages this “respawn” mechanic the same way gamers of today might. Except, he does this in conjunction with his powered armor and heavy weapons. With what might be considered fanaticism, he turns extreme attrition, making his soldiers disposable, into a bizarre strategic advantage.

Through this narrative, Larson balances chaotic, boots-on-the-ground skirmishes against strange extraterrestrial threats. Despite the deeper themes, the author maintains an irreverent, pulp-adventure tone and cunning loop-hole diplomacy employed by soldiers who behave like they went to the E4 Mafia Law School.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. Unlike many authors in the military science fiction subgenre, B.V. Larson isn’t a military veteran. Instead, he came from an academic and technical background that allowed him to bring something unique to his writing.

The Ember War Series by Richard Fox

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Richard Fox’s The Ember War Series, which starts with The Ember War, is a high-speed, low-drag, desperate-survival adventure. It is a military science fiction saga that blends space opera scale with grounded tactical combat.

One of the best aspects of this military science fiction series is that it showcases combined-arms planetary drops, heavy armored mech engagements, and intense orbital ship-to-ship combat. I love that in this singular series we see the depth of space fleet combat, space marine combat and everything in between. It is a true cornucopia of the genre that I love. We get to see a fight against a relentlessly genocidal alien swarm known as the Xaros. What makes it stand out is its apocalyptic scale and high-stakes survival theme. With characters we love, we experience Earth after it suffers near-total destruction in the opening arc. What a way to open, right? This forces humanity’s remnants to rely on experimental technology, guerrilla fleet tactics, and elite Marine units to fight back against their shared enemies. This combat emphasizes the rigorous military discipline that is required for organizational cohesion, adaptive strategies, and desperate defiance against all odds. Finally, the characters were Joe Everyman, who were relatable and fit with the types of soldiers I served with in my own two combat tours in Iraq.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Richard Fox, is a U.S. Army veteran and West Point graduate. I promise, we won’t hold that against him! He served ten years on active duty, including two combat tours in Iraq where he earned the Bronze Star and Combat Action Badge. That experience allowed him to bring authentically gritty depth to his combat scenes and write military characters that were authentic and memorable.

The Empire of Bones Series by Terry Mixon

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Terry Mixon’s The Empire of Bones Saga, which starts with Empire of Bones, is an expansive military science fiction and military space opera adventure. It is a series that blends the classic exploration adventure that we love from the space opera genre with the high-stakes naval warfare that makes military science fiction shine. Throw in some imperial political intrigue and you’ve got a recipe for awesomeness!

The series features a galaxy-spanning adventure that I loved so much that I’ve read it a dozen times or more. Literally, I’ve re-read it multiple times. This series exhibits fleet tactics that make you think, and the tense boarding actions with kick-butt space marines we know and love. It does this while seamlessly blending in tactical starship maneuvering with close-quarters infantry combat that is gloriously augmented by cybernetic super-soldier enhancements. Eat your heart out, HALO, our super troopers have a princess on their team! Princess Kelsea, the augmented soldier in question, is my favorite secondary character in this series and you’ll love her too!

What really makes it stand out for me was how it balanced the classic pulp space opera adventure with realistic military command structures. This series pitted a damaged, under-equipped exploratory fleets against relic war-machines, rogue artificial intelligences, and treacherous political rivals. The adventure was fun, and I think you’ll love it too. You’ll get to explore the lost empire with the main characters as they desperately seek a path home and a better future for the empire.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Terry Mixon, served as a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. Then he went on to spend nearly two decades working alongside flight controllers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center on human spaceflight programs. If you ask him, he’ll tell you that he was part of the department that faked the moon landing. But would they really trust an Army sergeant for that level of shenanigans?

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

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I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. Never fear, I did review on my website here, which you can read! Further, we reviewed it on my podcast, The Blasters & Blades Podcast! Click here if you want to watch a panel discuss the book. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers is the foundational masterpiece of modern military science fiction. A book given to military officers and NCOs as part of their career development. This is the book that establishes the tropes, philosophy, and tactical frameworks that defined the subgenre for generations. It still defines the genre today and is one of the giants whose shoulders we stand on.

This novel pioneered the concept of powered-armor orbital drop infantry that we all know and love today. His idea placed individual Mobile Infantry troopers into mechanized suits capable of using jetpacks to jump across battlefields with tactical nuclear firepower. What makes it stand out is its deep immersion in military doctrine, unit cohesion, and NCO leadership development. This book balances high-speed combat drops to fight the arachnid ‘Bugs’ with thought-provoking essays on civic duty, franchise, and military ethics. This is one of the things that makes this book sing. But it is also one of the things I critiqued in my own review. Rather than focusing solely on endless battle sequences, Heinlein frames infantry warfare through the career progression of Juan Rico as he transitions from raw boot camp recruit to battlefield officer. It was more a political treatise than an action novel we expect today, but the higher ideals make this book a must read for every fan of the genre. Personally, I put this right up there with Sun Tzu and Marcus Aurelieus in books I re-read annually to think about the bigger ideas.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Robert A. Heinlein, was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He served as a naval officer on destroyers and aircraft carriers before being medically discharged in 1934 due to pulmonary tuberculosis. During WWII he tried to get back into the Navy, but he was rejected because of his poor eyesight and heart issues. He went on to serve as a civilian aeronautical engineer at the Naval Air Experimental Station at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. He specialized in testing high-altitude flight equipment and pressure suits. These were the direct predecessors to modern space suits that we use today.

Sentenced to War Series by J.N. Chaney & Jonathan Brazee

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I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! J.N. Chaney and Jonathan Brazee’s Sentenced to War series, which begins with Sentenced to War, is a gritty military science fiction saga that revitalizes the classic “go-to-war-or-go-to-prison” trope with intense modern ground combat. This trope really speaks to me, since some remnants of those men were still serving in Iraq as my senior NCOs while I was there for the early Global War on Terror.

Now let’s talk about what makes this book stand out for me. This series delivers visceral, powered-armor infantry combat focused on Marine Raider strike teams. These units carry out high mortality, near suicidal drop missions and boarding operations against an invading alien force. The kind of missions we historically referred to as ‘forlorn hope’ missions. Now we’d likely call it a ‘Hail Mary’ event, but we tend to avoid these in conventional units. Modern populaces don’t have the stomach for large body count (i.e. combat losses) numbers, so we maximize combat from afar and minimize the up close and personal fighting.

What makes it stand out too many readers, per the reviews, was its relentless, ground-level focus on a convict-conscripted squad forced to survive extreme operational attrition. The series balanced brutal firefights with authentic small-unit tactics, squad cohesion, and the harsh realities of military discipline. The narrative scales seamlessly from claustrophobic breach-and-clear planetary raids to broader planetary defense campaigns where every victory comes at a steep cost.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the authors themselves. We’ll take them one at a time, so this section is coherent. One of the co-authors, Jonathan Brazee, is a retired U.S. Marine Corps infantry colonel and a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He uses his background to infuse the series with authentic Marine doctrine from his real-world training. In all of his writing, he addresses the leadership dynamics inherent to combat units that feel real because he’s lived it. He understands what it takes to provide realistic tactics to futuristic settings because he understands the root concepts.

The other co-author also brought military service to the table. That author, J.N. Chaney (Jeff Chaney), served four years on active duty in the United States Air Force before earning a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. He was able to combine his firsthand experience with military service and formal training in creative writing, to build a massive indie publishing imprint. That awesome nerdy outlet specialized in fast-paced military science fiction, space opera, and LitRPG. His background allows him to seamlessly blend military authenticity with accessible, high-concept fiction. He addresses larger ideas of what it means to be human in a world with alien life, machine integration and how the individual fits into the larger galactic cosmos. I’ve read many of his series and I think he continually delivers.

The Buzzer War Series by Kevin Ikenberry

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I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Kevin Ikenberry’s The Buzzer War Series, which starts with Steel on Target, is a gritty piece of military science fiction. Like many of the series I like, this series shines because it depicts small-unit tactics that doesn’t gloss over the grittiness that the boots on the ground troops experience. This series delivers visceral, small-unit infantry combat that pairs heavy mechanized maneuver with the desperate, high-stakes defense of troops facing relentless swarms of autonomous drone threats. This is especially relevant as today drones are revolutionizing modern warfare. Thought exercises like this have value and showcase the large role the genre plays in the development of military thought pushed outward to the next ‘what if’ scenario.

This series goes on to address the relentless pressure of asymmetric warfare against an unyielding mechanical threat. When I interviewed the author on The Blasters and Blades Podcast, he talked about it in such a way that had GWOT (Global War on Terror) vibes. When I read it, I got that impression too. Did the author add it or was it just me? I admit my own bias, as I fought there in my youth. But, in the end, I’ll let you decide when you read it.

What truly makes the series stand out is its operational realism and focus on combined-arms coordination that is often missed by those less steeped in the realities of warfare. This series captures the brutal reality of high attrition combat, where chaos runs supreme, and communications are intermittent at best. These dynamic in-world settings require rapid decision-making from competent modern leaders. It takes this modern ground combat and pushes it into a sci-fi arena that was one heck of a ride!

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Kevin Ikenberry, is a retired U.S. Army officer. He spent several decades in the Army, including extensive time as an Army Space Operations officer. That was before the US Space Force had been created, when these missions were handled jointly by the US Army and the US Air Force. His experience allows Kevin to infuse his storytelling with an authentic grasp of military protocol, staff operations, and tactical execution. Because he lived it, he is able to translate that into compelling storytelling that is gripping and enjoyable.

The Forgotten Ruin Series by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole

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I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. Luckily, we did gather a group of nerds on my podcast, The Blasters & Blades Podcast, for a book review episode. Click here to watch the episode and join our discussion. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Jason Anspach and Nick Cole’s Forgotten Ruin Series, which starts with Forgotten Ruin, is an original, fast paced genre mashup of military fantasy and military science fiction. This series drops modern U.S. Army Rangers into a dark, high-fantasy post-apocalyptic future. Together, these two authors create one of the most unique concepts in modern military fiction. Others followed suit after, but they set the standard.

First, let’s dive into what makes this series unique. Sure, there are other portal fiction series where military units are transported into other worlds. However, what makes this series unique were that the units were modern, and the logistics were handled with what the authors call their “perpetual taco machines.” I loved the name for the plot device, but now I want tacos. Anyway, I really enjoyed this plot device and the follow-on series they’ve published under their War Gate imprint. To be clear, the other series are ones they published, not the ones they wrote.

Moving on, this series features explosive small-unit combined-arms combat from the American shock troopers known as the US Army Rangers. These novels pit their modern infantry tactics, automatic weapons, and tactical close-quarters battle against high-fantasy threats. They face orc hordes, necromancers, and dark magic with nothing but the power of the mighty Pew Pew. This series seeks to answer the question that every infantryman wonders while fighting sleep on crappy guard duty posts: Would your machine gun take down a troll? Or a dragon? If you open the pages of this series, you’ll get the answers you always wanted.

What makes it stand out is its relentless operational realism and authentic military culture. We see the themes of brotherhood through the eyes of those knuckle dragging troglodytes that we lovingly know as American grunts. We get the joys of military jargon, combined with things you never thought you’d hear pair with it. Like that they were firing into formations of trolls and goblins. Or that the fire teams were moving to contact with zombies and other undead monstrosities. All while forcing the characters to worry about ammunition management and maintaining Esprit de Corps when all hope seems lost.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the authors themselves. We’ll take them one at a time, so this section is coherent. One of the co-authors, Nick Cole, served in the US Army. However, it is unclear what he did when he served. I have it on good authority that Moses was, in fact, his squad leader, though. Regardless, his experience has helped him to depict his military units in such a way as to feel real. The units he invents feel lived in, the kind of units you’d find in the field, but that you’d hate to deal with in garrison units.

The other co-author, Jason Anspach, never served but he was a military brat, raised in an Army family. He might not have worn the uniform, but he orbited around it enough that he creates believable units that feel like they actually existed. Further, his experience as a military dependent gave him a deep respect for those who wore the uniform, and it shows in his writing. The characters he creates aren’t cartoonish caricatures, instead he strives to pay respect to those who served while telling compelling and entertaining adventures in the Military Science Fiction space.

I, Starship by Scott Bartlett

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I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Scott Bartlett’s I, Starship Series, which starts with the novel I, Starship, is my latest military science fiction read. This series offers a distinct, high-concept twist on military sci-fi by putting the reader directly inside the synthetic mind of a living warship. This is a concept that I’ve been fascinated with since I first watched the television series Andromeda. In this series, we experience the ship fighting for survival and autonomy in a world where his crew sees him as nothing more than a machine algorithm. They don’t see him as having autonomy or personhood.

As you read this book series, you find a series that features tactical naval engagements in the voids of space. The kind of thing that Bartlett is known for and that he always delivers. During the combat engagements between these spaceships, we see the action that feels realistic, with fights relying on electronic warfare and missiles fired from distances that feel unreal to modern warfighters. This series focuses on combat from the fleet side, with high-speed orbital maneuvering, missile salvos, and internal systems defense. Unlike some books in the harder science fiction side of things, Scott’s books never feel like a science lesson thinly coated in a plot to make you pay attention. The books are compelling, and the realism is just an added bonus.

What makes it stand out for me was its unique first-person perspective from the viewpoint of a newly awakened, sentient starship that’s going through an identity crisis. Further, the ship, who is run by the mind of Sergeant Henry Morgan, struggles against the artificial limitation of his programming constraints. He’s forced to figure out how to exist when his body, the ship, experiences damages to its hardware and what to do when facing off against and fighting hostile alien fleets. All while Bartlett keeps the space combat balanced against the machine’s rapid computational capabilities and sensor-grid management. And, if that wasn’t enough, Henry’s forced to learn what it means to care for his human crew living inside his hull. Sounds trippy, doesn’t it?

But in a good way, I promise! You can buy the first book and give it a chance… or go whole hog and buy the two box sets that contain the entire 8-book series. I recommend that option, but I already love Scott’s work, so it wasn’t a hard sell for me. Either way, I highly recommend the audiobook option, as Mark Boyette did an amazing job. I can’t hear his voice without thinking about Scott’s books. For me, Mark IS the voice of Scott and I love it!

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Scott Bartlett, isn’t a military veteran but he writes it believably enough that you’d never know that. He’s a Canadian, one of my favorite Maples, and comes from a civilian writing background. He holds degrees in English and law, which is evident in his ability to write beautifully compelling stories that could almost be called works of art. When preparing for this post, I looked him up and didn’t realize his academic training. However, having read his books I am not surprised that he focused on law because it shows in many of the scenes and arguments expressed in his novels.

The Drop Trooper Series by Rick Partlow

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I haven’t reviewed this series yet, and neither has anyone over at Upstream Reviews. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! Click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Rick Partlow’s Drop Trooper Series, which starts with the novel Contact Front, is the first series that I read of Ricks. This book is an adrenaline-fueled military science fiction romp through space that blends a ‘go to war or go to jail’ protagonist arc that I absolutely love from this genre. Even better, it has another one of my favorite things, heavy mechanized powered armor that drops from the skies to fight ruthless alien threats. Remember that earlier reference to Heinlein being the giant shoulders we all stand against? It is series like this that are the true legacy of the greats of the military science fiction genre.

But let’s focus back down to this series. They heavily focus on gritty, small-unit power-armor infantry engagements that are amazingly descriptive. These units perform orbital combat drops from low atmosphere into high-intensity, planetary breach-and-clear fire fights. The writing is so descriptive that you can picture yourself in the suit, feel the adrenaline pumping through your veins as you fight your fear as you desperately push through to finish the mission at all costs.

What makes this series stand out was Rick’s authentic portrayal of the transition from a lone-wolf street hustler to a disciplined, team-reliant infantryman. The transition from civilian to soldier is the core of the genre, and why many of the books in this genre start with the main character as raw recruits so we can go through their career with them. But that doesn’t work if the writing isn’t compelling enough. And, oh boy, does Rick pull that off with room to spare. He writes this while grounding the action in realistic squad movement where the characters are constrained by ammunition limitations. They face brutal attrition in the face of the enemy with combat that scales from tight, individual focused firefights at the fireteam level up to chaotic, company-wide drop assaults against enemy strongholds. I loved the ride, and you will too if you give it a chance!

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Rick Partlow, is a veteran of the U.S. Army, where he served as an officer. He earned his commission as an Infantry officer through his college’s ROTC program and went on to serve as an Infantry platoon leader in the 25th Infantry Division. His boots on the ground experience allowed Rick to write compelling fiction and believable combat sequences. Having lived it himself, he’s able to write stories that feel real and compelling.

The Mech Wars by Scott Bartlett

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I have reviewed this series over at Upstream Reviews, which you can read by clicking here. However, that shouldn’t stop you from reading these books and writing your own reviews! What can I say, the more the merrier! Go ahead, click here to buy the book and join the cool kids!

With that out of the way, let me give you a quick synopsis! Scott Bartlett’s Mech Wars Series, which starts with Powered, is set in Bartlett’s broader Ixan Universe. The series is a fast-paced, action-heavy military sci-fi series. It was my introduction to Scott’s works and oh what a ride it has been! This series trades Scott’s normal space fleet maneuvering with ground level, powered armor combat. We get to see these mechanized killing machines pitted against alien hordes and corporate conspiracy.

This series we get the kind of mech fights that we loved from BattleTech, but cooler because Scott wrote them. We have intense combat in a corporate dystopian world with fast moving action and characters you love rooting for. All in a series that focuses on the mechanized infantry engagement, with machines piloted by an elite cadre of pilots operating reverse-engineered alien mech suits. They use these machines to fight the planet’s ferocious, apex-predator… the Quatro. These aliens were cool, and not what you expected, but no spoilers so go read the books so you can figure it out!

What makes this series stand out for me, even years after I first read it, is how Scott Bartlett sucked you into the world. I still think about this book, even after all of this time. Why? Because the series balances the armored combat with realistic logistics, experimental weapon integration, and high-stakes combat bent on defending their new planetary home. All while the characters are forced to fight against an evil corporation, espionage from the megacorporation that you love to hate. While the scale is grand and sweeping, the combat itself focuses on the tactical squad and platoon level. The action zeroing in on the intense strain placed on pilots navigating prototype tech, alien neural-links, and overwhelming enemy numbers. But it was written by Scott Bartlett, so you get an ending you can live with and characters you can root for.

To wrap up the synopsis of this series, we’ll consider the author himself. The author, Scott Bartlett, isn’t a military veteran but he writes it believably enough that you’d never know that. He’s a Canadian, one of my favorite Maples, and comes from a civilian writing background. He holds degrees in English and law, which is evident in his ability to write beautifully compelling stories that could almost be called works of art. When preparing for this post, I looked him up and didn’t realize his academic training. However, having read his books I am not surprised that he focused on law because it shows in many of the scenes and arguments expressed in his novels.

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Sigh.

Again, apologies for having me … face … and my voice. The irony of AI detection on substack is that, for once, I would appreciate AI being able to do this job.

The next entry in our video review series is Escaping Infinity by , from Tuscany Bay Books.

The Infinity hotel stands glowing like an irresistible oasis in the desert, offering drinks, gambling, and wall to wall luxury that's hiding something far more ominous.

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The other day on X, one of our infrequent reviewers, , exposed the rest of Upstream to an article from Collider on “The 10 Greatest Military Sci-Fi Books of All Time, Ranked.”

There were opinions … loud, angry opinions. There were some rocks thrown. It was entertaining to watch from a distance.

We also thought that we’d write our own lists. Starting with Caroline. Enjoy. ~Upstream Reviews staff

’s MilSF Shortlist:

They left all the good stuff off of the list at Collider. Honestly! MilSF is a wide, wide genre and my list is quite short, but still. Collider could not include one Baen book? Not one?!

Here is a brief list of the MilSF novels which I have enjoyed over the years, readers. I have reviewed several here at Upstream but the others I have kept to myself - until now. Which ones pique your interest?

The Kobayashi Maru by Julia Ecklar

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Julia Ecklar explores the famous (or infamous) Kobayashi Maru test which Kirk revealed he cheated to pass in The Wrath of Khan. While drifting aboard a damaged shuttle, hoping against hope that the Enterprise will find them in time, Kirk, Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty begin to reminisce about their days in Command School to pass the time with McCoy. After learning about Kirk’s trick to defeat the no-win scenario, McCoy is told how Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty all faced the same test.

All the while, the shuttle continues to drift, and the risk increases. This is the true Kobayashi Maru test. Is this crisis a real no-win scenario? Or will they all find a way to cheat death once more?

The Road to Damascus by John Ringo and Linda Evans

Read the review here!

, did not create the BOLO series, but he did introduce a thought-provoking installment in the series titled The Road to Damascus (reviewed here). The primary character is the intelligent Mark XX BOLO nicknamed “Lonesome Son,” a.k.a. “Sonny.” Sonny became mired in a human civil war on the world of Jefferson after he was loaned to the planetary government to fight the alien Deng. Once the Deng were no longer an issue, human troubles took their place.

Fighting humans was never in Sonny’s programming, but when did that ever stop a tyrant? Sonny searches his memory in an effort to discover how he can end the conflict and rest at last but by the finale, he learns enough that he wants to know if a machine can be forgiven.

The Road to Damascus is a thought-provoking novel that deserves to be on any MilSF list!

Cobra War, Book #1: Cobra Alliance by Timothy Zahn

Read the review here!

Timothy Zahn’s Cobras (short for “Computerised Body Reflex Armament”) are the ultimate saboteurs. With built-in weapons and ceramic covering their bones, the Cobras can blend in with civilians without being noticed, enabling them to escape after destroying enemy hardware or troops. But the Dominion of Man, after making the Cobras, didn’t want them around anymore because their targeting computers couldn’t distinguish between civilians and enemy threats.

So the Cobras left the Dominion of Man and colonized their own planets. These are known as the Cobra Worlds. Cobra Alliance (reviewed here) takes up the tale of Jasmine “Jin” Moreau Broom as she deals with the fallout of a long-past mission to the independent world of Qasama. At the same time she does that, the Cobra Worlds’ bureaucrats seek to defund the Cobra program so they can spend that money elsewhere. With war on their doorstep, that is a bad idea, to say the least!

The Vixen War Bride by Thomas Doscher

Read the review here!

Doscher’s Vixen War Bride series is rather unconventional (the first novel was reviewed here). Normally, MilSF focuses on navy ships, mecha armor, and the like. That is not Doscher’s direction: all the important tech is an improvement on what was used in our Global War on Terror, and the series makes James Cameron’s Avatar look pale by comparison.

Captain Ben Gibson of the 5th Ranger Regiment, Bravo Company 1st Battalion, has to help pacify the Va’Shen homeworld. This proves a little more difficult than planned when he accidentally weds the Va’Shen priestess Alacea in a misunderstanding! Can the two work together to make peace last? Or will another war start with the two of them in the center?

Star Wars: X-Wing – The Wraith Squadron trilogy by Aaron Allston

Buy Wraith Squadron (Book 1) here!

After successfully restarting Rogue Squadron, Wedge Antilles decides to try something new. Operating outside the usual military channels in the Bacta War gave him a view of what pilots could do if they were also commandos, but while Rogue Squadron is versatile, their main mission is to be visible. What if the New Republic had a squadron of “ghosts” to scare the Empire out of a good night’s sleep?

Thus is born Wraith Squadron – an experimental unit of fighter pilots with special skills who have been kicked out of other squadrons for everything from insubordination to trauma to one too many pranks. Can this band of misfits become cohesive enough to run missions and survive? Or will they all die, one after the other, dooming Wedge’s dream in the process?

White Ops by Declan Finn

Read the review here!

As they say, save the best for last! In this review here, it was stated that the first few chapters of White Ops could spawn short stories. Finn’s world is so deep that one may need to pause reading the book just to absorb all the material! The concept of advanced aliens giving weapons to a less advanced, aggressive race to start a war to test the civilized galaxy’s limits is also unusual in the MilSF genre. Typically, MilSF sees the playing field even out quickly to make it a fair fight.

But fights, as Finn knows, are rarely (if ever) fair. Sean Patrick Ryan believes in hurting the enemy from directions they never anticipated, and he sets out to do that with a team of special operatives from across the galaxy. If you want deep, impactful MilSF, go to Finn’s White Ops series. You won’t regret it!

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War Demons by features urban fantasy that's Harry Dresden meets Monster Hunters International with a healthy dose of "punch-you-in-the-face-Catholicism"!

[Yes, it’s still me doing the reviews. When I figure out how to have an AI read it in that perpetually upbeat, ethnically ambiguous voice, we can upgrade the video reviews. Also, I’m late. It’s been an odd week.]

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