STG's

By Heresies Distressed is the third title in the SafeHold series, by David Weber. In this series, human kind got to the brink of extinction because of an alien race hunting us, and hid in a planet far away. The leaders decided to lower the tech level to avoid detection by the aliens, erase everyone's memories and establish a church where they were archangels to keep it this way. In this volume, the war between Charis and the church continues, and now is time to counter-attack Corisande. As usual, plenty of low tech battles, with a little SF added in. There is still a little less action that what I'd like, but I still enjoyed it very much.

I had Off Armageddon Reef, by David Weber for a while, but decided to read it (or re-read it - I know I read parts of it before, not sure if got to the end) because I heard that the 10th book in the series was released. The story base is nice - human kind was interstellar, but aliens hunted each planet down and destroyed it. Humanity escapes with enough to make a colony, but tries to do it with low tech because the aliens located other colonies, presumably through tech emissions. One android with a human download survived the crazy church that was established by the colony leaders, and she will have to lead humanity to liberate itself from the church and eventually beat the aliens. Of course, most of the novel is not SF - it takes place in the world where yes, there is an android messing with things, but the tech has to be pretty low. So substantial portions are just conspiracies and politics (which is a common David Weber thing, if you've read the Honor series). There is a l...

Steel World, by B.V. Larson, is a sequel to Dust World, an SF Military title. In the universe of the series, humans are a minor player in a galaxy filled with aliens, and can only earn galactic credits with their mercenaries. In this one, the mercs go what is called Tech World - an usually cushy job running security on a space station filled with alien tech that as always for the series, goes to a terrible mess. Overall, pretty good, and another very interesting setup for the continuation of the series.

Dust World, by B.V. Larson, is a sequel to Steel World, an SF Military title. In the universe of the series, humans are a minor player in a galaxy filled with aliens, and can only earn galactic credits with their mercenaries. Overall, pretty good, and a very interesting setup for the continuation of the series.

Steel World , by B. V. Larson , is a military SF book and the first on the Undying Mercenaries series. Steel World use some common themes in military SF - aliens came, and for some reason or other humans are now fighting, using a mix of human tech and tech that was reverse engineered/bought/stolen - usually for the fate of mankind. In this particular case, aliens got the humans to enroll in a galactic empire, and the only thing we could contribute with were mercenaries. The undying part is also not uncommon but fairly well employed - they can clone both your body and the content of your mind right to the point you die. The story comes from the perspective of James McGill, born in 2099 and who discovered that his only real option after being kicked out of the university is joining the mercenaries. On his first mission, he ends up in a routine campaign in the Steel World - which contains various species of dinosaur like sentient beings of various levels of intelligence which are co...

Terms of Enlistment, by Marko Kloos, is a military SF book. The story takes place in the future, when the world is even more packed full, with plenty of huge wellfare neighborhoods - and colonies on other planets. The main protagonist is smarter than average and manages to leave the projects for a better life. (This reminds me of a Charles Sheffield book - Higher Education) In this book, the boy joins the military. Cue pretty much regular SF military start (although very engaging). Eventually, he gets dumped into the territorial army and goes to nice, heavy battles. Then there is a twist and he goes elsewhere. The ending makes sequels very much possible, and I'd buy they in a heartbeat. While the overall plot description seem formulaic, the execution is very good and I enjoyed it very much. Recommended to fans of Military SF.