Science Fiction
On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington Book 1) by David Weber
Amazon: 4.5/5
Goodreads: 4.12/5
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Having made him look a fool, she’s been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her.
Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship’s humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station.
The aborigines of the system’s only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens.
Parliament isn’t sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling; the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called “Republic” of Haven is Up To Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn’t work to police the entire star system.
But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They’ve made her mad.
Opinion: I have really enjoyed reading about Honor Herrington over the years and even better, for people new to the series, the first book is free. There are some great battles and story lines in these books and I can still remember when I first found them in the public library and tried to read them in order. The only complaint I have is that as the universe has gotten larger the main storyline has progressed less and less. I have high hopes for the new book that is supposed to be released in 2018 and hopefully it progresses the story in a meaningful way.
Off Armageddon Reef: A Novel of the Safehold Series (#1) by David Weber
Amazon: 4.2/5
Goodreads: 4.12/5
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Humanity pushed its way to the stars – and encountered the Gbaba, a ruthless alien race that nearly wiped us out.
Earth and her colonies are now smoldering ruins, and the few survivors have fled to distant, Earth-like Safehold, to try to rebuild. But the Gbaba can detect the emissions of an industrial civilization, so the human rulers of Safehold have taken extraordinary measures: with mind control and hidden high technology, they’ve built a religion in which every Safeholdian believes, a religion designed to keep Safehold society medieval forever.
800 years pass. In a hidden chamber on Safehold, an android from the far human past awakens. This “rebirth” was set in motion centuries before, by a faction that opposed shackling humanity with a concocted religion. Via automated recordings, “Nimue” – or, rather, the android with the memories of Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban – is told her fate: she will emerge into Safeholdian society, suitably disguised, and begin the process of provoking the technological progress which the Church of God Awaiting has worked for centuries to prevent.
Nothing about this will be easy. To better deal with a medieval society, “Nimue” takes a new gender and a new name, “Merlin.” His formidable powers and access to caches of hidden high technology will need to be carefully concealed. And he’ll need to find a base of operations, a Safeholdian country that’s just a little more freewheeling, a little less orthodox, a little more open to the new.
And thus Merlin comes to Charis, a mid-sized kingdom with a talent for naval warfare. He plans to make the acquaintance of King Haarahld and Crown Prince Cayleb, and maybe, just maybe, kick off a new era of invention. Which is bound to draw the attention of the Church…and, inevitably, lead to war.
Opinion: All the books in this series are beefy and some are definitely better than others. There are quite a few memorable characters introduced throughout the books and quite a bit of political maneuvering and scheming. Like many series, in later books the story seems to drag and isn’t moved forward as much as one would like. On the other hand this series does have an advantage of having an ending, which is an attraction to some.
March Upcountry (Empire of Man Book 1) by David Weber
Amazon: 4.4/5
Goodreads: 4.18/5
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Roger Ramius Sergei Chiang MacClintock didn’t understand.
He was young, handsome, athletic, an excellent dresser, and third in line for the Throne of Man … so why wouldn’t anyone at Court trust him.
Why wouldn’t even his own mother, the Empress, explain why they didn’t trust him Or why the very mention of his father’s name was forbidden at Court Or why his mother had decided to pack him off to a backwater planet aboard what was little more than a tramp freighter to represent her at a local political event better suited to a third assistant undersecretary of state
It probably wasn’t too surprising that someone in his position should react by becoming spoiled, self-centered, and petulant. After all, what else did he have to do with his life.
But that was before a saboteur tried to blow up his transport. Then warships of the Empire of Man’s worst rivals shot the crippled vessel out of space. Then Roger found himself shipwrecked on the planet Marduk, whose jungles were full of damnbeasts, killerpillars, carnivorous plants, torrential rain, and barbarian hordes with really bad dispositions. Now all Roger has to do is hike halfway around the entire planet, then capture a spaceport from the Bad Guys, somehow commandeer a starship, and then go home to Mother for explanations.
Fortunately, Roger has an ace in the hole: Bravo Company of Bronze Battalion of The Empress’ Own Regiment. If anyone can get him off Marduk alive, it’s the Bronze Barbarians.
Assuming that Prince Roger manages to grow up before he gets all of them killed.
Opinion: I really enjoy reading about Prince Roger’s quest to return to his family and own the hardbacks of the series which I re-read from time to time. The Marduk characters are great and there are some great lines and scenes throughout the series. The books can be a bit repetitive in places but more than make up for that with some epic battles. A finished series with 4 books, you wont be disappointed.
In Fury Born (Fury Series Book 1) by David Weber
Book Stats:
Amazon: 4.6/5
Goodreads: 4.24/5
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Imperial Intelligence couldn’t find them, the Imperial Fleet couldn’t catch them, and local defenses couldn’t stop them. It seemed the planet-wrecking pirates were invincible. But they made a big mistake when they raided ex-commando leader Alicia DeVries’ quiet home work, tortured and murdered her family, and then left her for dead. Alicia decided to turn “pirate” herself, and stole a cutting-edge AI ship from the Empire to start her vendetta. Her fellow veterans think she’s gone crazy, the Imperial Fleet has shoot-on-sight orders. And of course the pirates want her dead, too. But Alicia DeVries has two allies nobody knows about, allies as implacable as she is: a self-aware computer, and a creature from the mists of Old Earth’s most ancient legends. And this trio of furies won’t rest until vengeance is served.
Opinion: This story was originally published as Path of the Fury and is an expanded version of that story that includes, or starts with depending on how you want to look at it, a “prequel” story before covering the events in Path of the Fury. It definitely takes some time to get into the meat of the story but that just made me appreciate where Alicia DeVries ends up even more. Lasers, Spaceships, and a hint of the supernatural? Go for it.
Dune by Frank Herbert
Amazon: 4.5/5
Goodreads: 4.20/5
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides—who would become known as Muad’Dib—and of a great family’s ambition to bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.
A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.
Opinion: Dune, and the Dune series, is one of the pillars of the scifi community. According to Wikepdia, Dune is also the best selling scifi book ever. For myself I loved watching the movie as a kid and would randomly point at things and yell Maud’Dib in the hopes they would explode…but they never did. Some of the books in the series were kinda of eh but Dune, Children of Dune
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Amazon: 4.5/5
Goodreads: 4.3/5
Authors Website
Amazon Description: In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.
Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.
Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender’s two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives.
Ender’s Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Opinion: You may have been introduced to this book in high school but if you haven’t the adventures of Ender Wiggins will enthrall, urging you to stay up all night to finish the story, so beware the time you start reading it. I loved this book as well as Ender’s Shadow (The Shadow Series)
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Amazon: 4.3/5
Goodreads: 4.15/5
Authors Website
Amazon Description: In this novel, a landmark of science fiction that began as an MFA thesis for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and went on to become an award-winning classic—inspiring a play, a graphic novel, and most recently an in-development film—man has taken to the stars, and soldiers fighting the wars of the future return to Earth forever alienated from their home.
Conscripted into service for the United Nations Exploratory Force, a highly trained unit built for revenge, physics student William Mandella fights for his planet light years away against the alien force known as the Taurans. “Mandella’s attempt to survive and remain human in the face of an absurd, almost endless war is harrowing, hilarious, heartbreaking, and true,” says Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Junot Díaz—and because of the relative passage of time when one travels at incredibly high speed, the Earth Mandella returns to after his two-year experience has progressed decades and is foreign to him in disturbing ways.
Based in part on the author’s experiences in Vietnam, The Forever War is regarded as one of the greatest military science fiction novels ever written, capturing the alienation that servicemen and women experience even now upon returning home from battle. It shines a light not only on the culture of the 1970s in which it was written, but also on our potential future. “To say that The Forever War is the best science fiction war novel ever written is to damn it with faint praise. It is . . . as fine and woundingly genuine a war story as any I’ve read” (William Gibson)
Opinion: While short on the science this book spins a great yearn about war and the effect it can have on an individual as they lose touch with the culture of home. If you have served, or have relatives who have served, in the military this book will have a special place in your heart after you read it. While it does have a sequel I haven’t read it because I don’t want it to taint the experience I have every time I reread this book.
Armor by John Steakley
Amazon: 4.4/5
Goodreads: 4.12/5
Authors Website: N/A
Amazon Description: The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water is poisonous. It is home to the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered.
Body armor has been devised for the commando forces that are to be dropped on Banshee—the culmination of ten thousand years of the armorers’ craft. A trooper in this armor is a one-man, atomic powered battle fortress. But he will have to fight a nearly endless horde of berserk, hard-shelled monsters—the fighting arm of a species which uses biological technology to design perfect, mindless war minions.
Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred. And he is protected, not only by his custom-fitted body armor, but by an odd being which seems to live within him, a cold killing machine he calls “The Engine.”
This is Felix’s story—a story of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat, and the story, too, of how strength of spirit can be the greatest armor of all.
Opinion: Written in the same vein as The Forever War, the only negative thing I can say about this book is that the author passed away before he could write a sequel. RIP sir. That being said it doesn’t really need one. For the best review of any book you will ever read check out Simeon’s from Goodreads for this book.