Pew-pew-pew fun from one end to the other

Military Science Fiction | Scorpion’s Fury (Series: Metal Legion, #1) | C.H. Gideon  

⭐⭐⭐ and a large planet, aka I liked it quite a bit

No wasting time. Our heroine leaps into battle in the prologue itself, and then continues for the rest of the book, winning a field promotion while saving the day and dissing the inept officers around. So far, fairly standard expectations. So what else is there?

Bad language used by soldiers (who are supposedly the dregs anyway)? Check. Sassy and fearless heroine? Check. At least one decent senior officer? Check. Comrade under fire? Check. Bureaucratic own-ass savers? Check. Hand to hand fighting with own side? Uhh..., check. Mystery man? Check. Fancy futuristic battle craft? Check.

Flashes of humour, believable battles (ok, willing suspension of disbelief, but at least there are no infinite ammunition supplies), almost invincible aliens, all check. Political twists and turns, yup, a few.

The characters come to life and you care about them. Hence, an 'I like it' rating. No way to give a partial star, so let me say: this sits at the top of 3 stars, with a large planet.

Futuristic boot camp to fight alien monsters

Military science fiction | Earth Alone (Series: Earthrise, #1) | Daniel Arenson 

⭐⭐⭐ aka I liked it

This book features mandatory drafting of all eighteen year olds, worldwide, to fight alien monsters. Most of the book is about the boot camp that our heroes go to. There is the mandatory bully, the tough sergeants, the unapproachable officers, the teen romances.

But the boot camp went on and on, and the remaining pages got less and less. This was supposed to be a military sf book featuring alien monsters. Now, there was hardly any book left, and the boot camp was still on. I wondered if these teens would ever actually fight a war or, horrors, was I expected to go to book two for that?

Well, if Arenson had done that to us, nobody would buy book two. Fortunately for sales, he did not disappoint regarding battles with the aliens. The book went into high gear, the aliens appeared. And there was still a chapter left to wrap up the whole thing  in case you decided to stop at book one. However, such authorial kindness should be rewarded, and the rest of the series beckons more appealingly as a result.

Human scale wars fought by god scale AIs

Burning Eagle | Navin Weeraratne | military science fiction

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Navin Weeraratne has a winner here. 693 pages of action packed high tech military sci fi. The best word for what I did with the book is probably 'inhaled'. I was reading 5 pages every morning before my eyes were fully unglued. 

It has 3D printers, railguns, FTL, alien invasions, von Neumann catastrophes, nanotech, personal backup and posthumans. What more do you want? Characterisation, plotting, good editing, mystery and closure, intelligent economics, a hint of a sequel? Fussy, aren't you. You don't want romance and humour while you're at it? Ooh, aren't you the lucky thing?

The only thing that made me go nuh uh was manufacturing antimatter for fuel en route on a generation ship. Thermodynamics doesn't work like that, sorry. On the other hand, Arabs are Asians, bingo. I really liked that people in the book come from diverse ethnicites, without much more than a name to indicate it; no stereotypes, no token characters. 

I'll think of some more negatives when I come down from the high I'm on right now. Like the motivations of Sarasvati and what happened to her. But those are minor. 

Am I going to go hunt down The Hundred Gram Mission? Tautology.

And what you should be doing is going to your favourite online bookstore and buying this one right away.

Wholesale mayhem in a post-apocalyptic world

Military science fiction | The Perseid Collapse | Steven Konkoly

A fast paced story with more or less relatable characters.

Placed in the USA after what is either a nuclear attack or an asteroid strike, three neighbouring families decide to trek out to a survivalist camp set up by the protagonist at his parents' farm in the wake of the Jakarta Epidemic*, with one working car and a lot of bikes and firearms between them.

If military sci fi with post apocalyptic situations and a hero who can single-handedly take down large numbers of baddies is your scene, look no further. There is a reference in there to the Die Hard movies, and it's not accidental. But if you feel squeamish at wholesale mayhem, stay away.

Be warned that the story does not reach any kind of conclusion in this volume. For that, you'll need to buy the next, and possibly the next book. If you like this stuff, that won’t be a hardship. Steven Konkoly writes with reliable quality.

*Yep, that’s another book. I think this one would actually be book 3 in the series, but you can read it as standalone. Many reviewers have commented on the overly detailed weapons descriptions. I, too, needed to skip paragraphs when that started.

⭐⭐⭐ aka ‘I liked it’. Not fabulous, but a good read.

Disclaimer: I got this book when it was under heavy discount.