I just finished the Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy and The Forever War. I’m still craving some more space sci-fi war stories. Ideally ones that are relatively hard sci-fi, although as long as it is a good sci-fi military/war story soft sci-fi is fine too. I like stories like The Praxis and The Forever War because there at least a good amount of focus on the war itself, and its progress.
I was looking at “The Lost Fleet: Dauntless” as the next title, but I thought I would ask for recommendations. I’ve received good recommendations from the Teeming Masses before.
I’ve read the first three you recommended, and I like all of them so I think our tastes may be similiar. I checked out Tanya Huff’s Valor series. Looks good (and the first book is $3 so I cannot really go wrong).
Legacy of the Aldenata shows up on a lot of recommended lists (goodreads and such), so I think I’ll give that one a try too.
Thanks for the recommendations! If you have more, then I’ll take them. I’ll be starting Valor’s Choice tonight.
The Culture series by Iain M Banks gets a lot of praise.
I’ve only read the first one, Consider Phlebas, which I liked a lot - though some people say it’s not the best introduction to the series. Also, the “series” is separate stories set in the same universe, not the continuing adventures of the same group of people.
I read the Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy myself recently, and the two follow-up novellas. Good stuff.
Thanks for the additional recommendations Little Nemo and Shakester. I’ve added those to my list. It ends up that Legacy of the Aldenata was $0 (for Amazon Prime customers) so I figured I may as well start there. Good so far.
I really enjoyed the description of combat in the series. Whether it is 100% scientifically accurate or not, I’ve no idea, but it felt real-ish, which is more than sufficient for me. I enjoyed the conflict between the rigidity of the Praxis and the need for new tactics. All in all, a top notch book. I’m not sure why the third book gets such bad reviews. I thought it was equally as good as the first two. Bizarre.
I agree about the space combat. The author has also written about naval combat in the Napoleonic era, and I think his familiarity with that contributed a lot to making the space combat believable.
I thought the last book was great. Really tied things together and concluded everything well. It was long, but my interest didn’t wane. Maybe it got bad reviews from people with short attention spans.
I really enjoyed both the novellas, too - read them if you haven’t already done so.
There’s a new trilogy, with the same characters. The first book came out last year, but I’m holding off reading it for now.
IMO stay far, far away from the related Cally’s War spinoff series. It’s not really military sci-fi, anyway. It’s more bad spy thriller set after the invasion was defeated. Kratman’s spinoff, Watch on the Rhein, in the universe was IMO excellent but potentially offensive. The protagonists are literal Nazis. The rejuvenate elderly Waffen SS troops to man the German super heavy tanks in order to save humanity. I’m an armor officer and Ringo wrote the tank bits of his books in a way that disappointed me. Good armored bits in military sci-fi can be hard to find. This did something other than “space marine” for ground forces well. YMMV quite a bit.
You found the series for free so this is late. It’s still worth knowing about the Baen Free Library. They offer a host of ebooks they’ve published for free, including two of the Aldenata series by Ringo. All books in the free library have the authors permission. Sometimes they are older works by the authors. Sometimes they are the first book of an ongoing series. Think of them as entire book sized free samples.
I finished Legacy of the Aldenata book 1 this morning. Now I’m having a hard time choosing what to read next. So many good choices.
I’m leaning towards Iain Banks’ Consider Phelbas. But I’m also eyeing David Weber’s Honor Harrington book 1. And also considering A Call to Duty by Weber and Zahn. I like a lot of Zahn’s books.
Ugh. First world problems, too many books to choose from.
Some recommendations that may or may not be up your alley:
John Scalzi’s books, especially Old Man’s War and the others in the series, are military SF. We’re not talking ultra-hard, but it’s also not full of magic space knights or anything. He’s pretty light on characterization, and his prose is workmanlike at best, but he’s clever and funny and can write a damn fine page-turner.
If humor isn’t your thing but weird shit is, boy howdy am I gonna make some recommendations. Ancillary Justice won the Hugo and Nebula, with good reason. The protagonist is a woman (or maybe a man, it doesn’t matter) who’s also a destroyed warship of a galactic empire ruled by a woman (or maybe a man, again, doesn’t matter) with dozens of bodies. It’s actually pretty hard SF.
Then there’s Hugo and Nebula-nominated Ninefox Gambit and its sequels, which are very much military space SF, and they’re rock-hard in some ways and not at all in others. The technology is explained in great depth, but it’s totally bonkers technology, and not in a funny way (e.g., the first page introduce a weapon called something like the threshold winnower, which turns every doorway, window, and bodily orifice into an emitter of deadly radiation, and also causes eyes and mouths to sprout over the bodies of its victims). I loved the series, but they’re not gonna be to every taste.
That’s because John Ringo was a wind-dummy, and deliberately set up his “bad guys” (the Posleen) to be death on anything/everything except infantry. Well, Artillery and Combat Engineers shine, too, but Aviation and Armor are worthless.
I’ll recommend Mr. Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers series whole heartedly; Rolling Hot is one of my favorite military sci-fi novels.
I’ll also recommend John Ringo’s Empire of Man series; a bratty prince, His Highness Prince Roger Ramius Alexander Chang MacClintock, Heir Tertiary to the Throne of The Empire of Man, and his Security Detachment (a company of Imperial Marines) wind up marooned, via treachery, on a Death World.
To get home, they must march (March Up Country, March To The Sea, March To The Stars, and We Few being the book titles of the series) half-way around the world, battling hostile native barbarians and fauna, then somehow secure an Imperial Starport (that’s likely been suborned by their enemies), capture a starship, and go home.
Oh, and the Conspiracy Against The throne that stranded them there in the first place? It was an unsuccessful assassination attempt by power-hungry Senators, who’ve captured the Prince’s mother, The Empress of The Empire of Man, forcing her via torture and mind control to be their puppet to advance their military/industrial agenda.
And the conspirators hung the whole “Treason Plot” on Roger. Whom they believe to be safely dead. Hilarity ensues.
My favourite recent military sci-fi read was the bobiverse series, first book is ‘We are Legion’. I thought the series had a fairly fresh take on ‘human’ exploration of the stars and first contact.
Agree very strongly with this. If you’re reading Banks for the military parts, you’re doing it wrong. You should still read him though.
I’ll throw in Rick Partlow, for a turn the brain off and have fun with it military romp. He has a series that’s basically if the mecha from Battlebots were in a clone of Jerry Pournelle’s Empire of Man/Motie universe. Well worth your time on a plane.
There’s a hilarious takedown of the Honor Harrington style military writing at the end of Charles Stross’s Singularity Sky. Stross does satirize other points of view rather well, IMHO.
As per the OP, hard isn’t a strict requirement. I picked up Consider Phelbas last night, but I didn’t get a chance to start it. I’m hoping to start this evening. I appreciate all the recommendations, even if I’m not replying to each individually. They’re all going on my sci-fi wishlist on Amazon.
