Tag: military science fiction

Is Stars of Blood and Glory for You?

Stars of Blood and Glory is a character-driven military science fiction novel about war at its breaking point—when survival, honor, and loyalty are no longer abstract ideals but immediate, costly choices. Set during a decisive turning point in an interstellar war between the Hameji and the Federation, it follows soldiers, mercenaries, exiles, and captives forced to confront what victory actually costs. This is a story about sacrifice, identity, and whether a shattered people can reclaim a future without losing what made them human.

What Kind of Reader Will Love Stars of Blood and Glory?

If you love…

  • military science fiction that treats war as a moral and human problem, not just a tactical one
  • stories about exile, lost homelands, and the longing to return
  • character-driven space opera focused on loyalty, duty, and personal cost across a connected series narrative
  • gritty but meaningful narratives where hope survives through action, not speeches
  • ensembles of soldiers, mercenaries, and civilians bound together by shared loss in an ongoing interstellar war

…then Stars of Blood and Glory is probably your kind of story.

What You’ll Find Inside

The story follows multiple viewpoints—most notably veteran mercenary Roman, the haunted assassin Rina, and a captured Hameji prince—caught in the aftermath of catastrophic defeats and desperate counterstrikes. The emotional journey moves from grief, rage, and moral exhaustion toward hard-won resolve, as each character must decide what they are still willing to fight for—and what they can no longer justify. The pacing balances intense space combat, covert operations, and quiet character moments, with a grounded, serious tone that emphasizes consequence, responsibility, and survival over spectacle.

What Makes Stars of Blood and Glory Different

Unlike many military science fiction novels that focus on how wars are won, Stars of Blood and Glory focuses on what comes after—when victory is uncertain, morale is shattered, and survival alone feels hollow. Drawing inspiration from real historical turning points—such as the Battle of Ain Jalut, where a seemingly unstoppable empire suffered its first decisive defeat—the story blends space opera with themes of exile and cultural survival. Rather than glorifying conquest or domination, it examines how meaning is rebuilt when honor and glory have already failed.

What You Won’t Find

This is not a light or comedic military adventure, and it doesn’t shy away from the emotional and psychological toll of war. You won’t find invincible heroes, easy victories, or a cynical “nothing matters” worldview. The violence is purposeful and character-driven, serving the story’s moral weight rather than existing for shock value or spectacle alone.

Why I Think You Might Love It

Stars of Blood and Glory brings the mercenary characters from Bringing Stella Home to a turning point while telling a complete, emotionally self-contained story. It closes a major chapter in the Hameji conquests, and can be read as a standalone or in series order. At its heart, it’s about choosing dignity, responsibility, and meaning even when the universe refuses to offer clean answers—and trusting that those choices still matter. If you care about characters who endure, adapt, and choose meaning in the aftermath of loss, I think this story will stay with you.

Where to Get Stars of Blood and Glory

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for The Hameji Cycle.

Return to the book page for Stars of Blood and Glory

The Hope That Survives Trauma in Comrades in Hope

War has a way of shrinking the future until all you can see is the next breath, the next corridor, the next impossible choice. Comrades in Hope is a character-driven military science fiction novel that asks a simple question with a hard edge: what does hope look like when you’ve already seen the worst—and you don’t get to look away? In this book, hope isn’t optimism or denial. It’s what you do after the damage, when survival alone isn’t enough.

Where the Idea Came From

Part of the spark for this theme came from pairing two kinds of characters I wanted in the same story: a young man who still believes the universe can bend toward good, and a survivor who has learned—through loss—that the universe doesn’t care what you believe. Aaron arrives in the Outworld Flotilla carrying naïve expectations and a private vow, while Mara has already been forged by catastrophe, grief, and the long-term psychological trauma of war. Their shared culture and language create a lifeline between them, but it also forces the question into the open: can hope survive trauma without becoming a lie?

How Hope and Trauma Shape the Story

From the beginning, Aaron is out of place—linguistically, culturally, militarily—and that displacement matters, because Comrades in Hope is not a story about winning battles, but about surviving war with your humanity intact. It comes from not understanding the world you’ve been thrown into, from feeling helpless at the exact moments when competence would save lives. Aaron leans on translation tools and improvisation, while Mara carries the grim competence of someone who’s already paid the price of being unprepared. Their relationship becomes a pressure chamber where hope and trauma argue with each other in real time: Aaron keeps reaching for the possibility of a better outcome, while Mara keeps pointing to the body count and the way war turns people into numbers. Yet even her pessimism has a wound behind it—she doesn’t reject hope because it’s childish; she rejects it because she’s afraid of what it costs to believe again.

As the conflict escalates, the book keeps putting hope in the least comfortable place: inside terror, exhaustion, and grief. There are moments where survival narrows to shared oxygen, sealed compartments, and the blunt math of “who made it and who didn’t.” In those scenes, hope stops being a feeling and becomes a decision—sometimes as small as refusing to abandon someone, sometimes as stubborn as continuing the search when every rational signal says it’s over. One of the most revealing turns comes when Aaron challenges Mara’s refusal to hope for herself, and she answers that she can still hope for someone else. That’s the heart of the book: trauma isolates, but hope reconnects—often first as hope for another person, when you can’t yet hold hope for yourself.

What This Theme Says About Us

Most of us won’t fight aboard captured battleships or live under the constant threat of empire, but we do know what it’s like to be changed by pain—and to wonder whether what we lost can ever be rebuilt. Comrades in Hope leans into a truth that shows up again and again in real life: trauma doesn’t only injure the body or the memory; it injures the imagination. It makes the future feel unsafe to picture. And yet, again and again, people choose hope anyway—not because they’re sure things will work out, but because they refuse to let suffering have the final word on who they are. This is why stories like Comrades in Hope resonate with readers who care about resilience, found family, and the quiet moral choices people make under pressure—especially in times of war and displacement.

Why This Theme Matters to Me

I wrote Comrades in Hope fast, almost breathless, and in a very “discovery writer” way—following the characters into the war and letting their struggles shape what the book became. What I love about this story is that it doesn’t treat hope as a motivational poster, especially in the context of war and trauma. It treats it as something you earn, something you protect, and sometimes something you borrow from the people beside you when you’ve got nothing left. And on a personal level, I keep coming back to how much this whole career—and every book I get to write—depends on readers choosing to care, choosing to share, choosing to keep stories alive. That’s its own kind of hope, and I don’t take it for granted.

Where to Get the Book

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for the Sons of the Starfarers series.

Return to the book page for Comrades in Hope.

Is Comrades in Hope for you?

Comrades in Hope (Sons of the Starfarers: Book 2) is a classic military science fiction space-war adventure that balances pulse-pounding starship combat with a character-driven choice to keep going when morale—and manpower—are running out. It has military SF boarding actions, starship danger, tight comradeship, and a thread of mystery and longing centered on a captured young woman—known only as the “henna girl”—and what it costs Aaron to keep hoping she can be saved.

What Kind of Reader Will Love Comrades in Hope?

If you love…

  • military science fiction and space opera with starship battles, drop-ship runs, and boarding actions
  • ragtag underdogs vs. an empire, where victory is possible but never easy
  • comrades-in-arms stories about loyalty, survival, and carrying each other through the worst of it
  • a hope-in-the-dark emotional tone (grim circumstances, but not nihilistic)

…then Comrades in Hope is probably your kind of story.

What You’ll Find Inside

The story follows Aaron Deltana, a young pilot thrown into a sprawling interstellar war before he’s fully ready for it. As missions grow more dangerous and losses mount, he must rely on his crew, risky technology, and sheer determination to keep people alive during desperate missions behind enemy lines. The mood is tense and urgent, balancing fast-paced action with quieter moments of fear, resolve, and hard-earned trust. The style is mission-driven and cinematic, with a strong emotional core rooted in comradeship. While this is the second book in the series, the story provides enough context to follow the conflict while deepening the larger arc of the war.

What Makes Comrades in Hope Different

Fans of classic space opera and military science fiction will recognize familiar elements—campaign briefings, shipboard action, and soldiers doing their best under impossible pressure. What sets this story apart is its focus on a protagonist who begins as a cultural and linguistic outsider, forced to learn, adapt, and grow in real time. Layered beneath the war narrative is a haunting personal mystery that gives the conflict a deeply human stake, turning survival into something more than just winning the next battle.

What You Won’t Find

You won’t find grimdark nihilism or cruelty for its own sake. The violence and hardship are real, but the story consistently returns to loyalty, sacrifice, and the choice to protect others. You also won’t find a romance-driven plot—the emotional heart of the story lies in duty, rescue, and standing by your comrades under fire.

Why I Think You Might Love It

I wrote this story as a love letter to classic space adventure—the kind that believes courage and loyalty still matter, even in the middle of chaos. At its core, it’s about choosing hope, courage, and responsibility when giving up would be easier, and about the bonds formed when people rely on each other in the worst conditions imaginable. If you enjoy science fiction that looks hardship in the eye and still insists on meaning, I think this story will resonate with you.

Where to Get the Book

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for the Sons of the Starfarers series.

Return to the book page for Comrades in Hope.

Agency Under Tyranny in Bringing Stella Home

Bringing Stella Home is a character-driven military science fiction novel that asks a deceptively simple question: what does it mean to have agency when freedom has already been taken away? In a universe shaped by conquest and domination, the novel explores whether choice still matters when the best options have been stripped away. Rather than framing agency as escape or rebellion, the story focuses on the quieter, harder work of choosing who you will be under tyranny. Rather than centering on battles or political intrigue, the story is driven by character choices and moral tension within a military science fiction setting.

Where the Idea Came From

This theme grew directly out of my fears as an older brother. Growing up, I was deeply protective of my younger sisters, and the idea of not being able to save the people I love has always terrified me. That pushed the story away from a simple rescue narrative and toward a deeper exploration of agency, responsibility, and moral choice under tyranny.

How Agency Under Tyranny Shapes the Story

Stella’s storyline is where this theme takes its clearest form. Captured by the Hameji and absorbed into a system built on hierarchy, conquest, and dehumanization, she loses nearly every form of conventional freedom. She cannot leave. She cannot reshape the system that controls her. And yet, the novel insists that her choices still matter. Her agency survives not through open defiance, but through the moral boundaries she maintains, even when compliance would make her life easier or safer.

James’s journey reflects a different facet of the same theme. His actions are driven by loyalty, love, and a desire to restore what has been lost, but the story steadily challenges the idea that agency means control or correction. As events unfold, he is forced to confront the reality that respecting another person’s agency—especially under tyranny—may require restraint, humility, and the willingness to accept choices he cannot fully understand or direct.

What Agency Under Tyranny Says About Us

The theme of agency under tyranny speaks to a difficult truth about human nature: we do not always choose our circumstances, but we remain responsible for who we become within them. Tyranny works by narrowing choices until obedience feels inevitable, offering safety or comfort in exchange for moral surrender. Bringing Stella Home suggests that agency persists even in constrained forms, and that the decisions people make under pressure—often unseen and uncelebrated—still shape their identity, integrity, and future. This is a story for readers who are less interested in easy victories than in moral resilience, responsibility, and the cost of choosing well.

Why This Theme Matters to Me

I care about this theme because it reflects how life often actually works. We don’t always get clean victories or heroic options. Sometimes we are forced to live inside broken systems, painful relationships, or irreversible losses. Writing Bringing Stella Home was my way of wrestling with the belief that dignity, responsibility, and moral choice still matter—even when the world refuses to be fair, and even when doing the right thing doesn’t lead to the outcome we might hope for.

Where to Get the Book

Books

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for The Hameji Cycle.

Return to the book page for Bringing Stella Home.

Is Bringing Stella Home for You?

Some science fiction dazzles with ideas. Some unsettles with spectacle. Bringing Stella Home is the kind that stays with you because it feels personal. It’s a character-driven science fiction novel about family loyalty, moral courage, and the consequences of refusing to abandon the people you love. It blends character-driven space opera with political science fiction and ethical war fiction, set during a brutal interstellar war fought by clashing human civilizations.

This is an emotionally grounded story where the biggest question isn’t how the war is won—but who the characters choose to be while it’s being fought.

What Kind of Reader Will Love Bringing Stella Home?

If you love…

  • Science fiction that treats war as a human and moral problem, not just a tactical one
  • Character-driven space opera focused on families, civilians, and reluctant heroes
  • Stories about siblings and loved ones who refuse to “move on” when someone is taken
  • Thoughtful, serious SF that explores captivity, occupation, and ethical resistance

…then Bringing Stella Home is probably your kind of story.

What You’ll Find Inside

Bringing Stella Home follows James McCoy after his sister Stella is captured during a catastrophic invasion that leaves entire worlds devastated. While governments negotiate and societies rebuild, others learn to live with loss. James refuses to accept that Stella is simply gone. His search forces him into political gray zones, moral compromises, and dangerous alliances—while Stella, trapped inside captivity, fights a quieter but no less difficult battle to preserve her dignity, identity, and sense of right and wrong.

The story is tense, intimate, and emotionally weighty, balancing suspense and danger with a steady focus on conscience, restraint, and the long-term cost of love.

What Makes Bringing Stella Home Different

Where many science fiction war stories focus on soldiers and commanders, Bringing Stella Home centers on civilians—families caught between invasion and indifference, and on the uncomfortable truth that compassion doesn’t end when the crisis fades from the headlines. Readers familiar with classic space opera will recognize the larger-scale setting, but this story consistently pulls inward, asking what responsibility looks like when walking away would be easier, safer, and socially acceptable.

What You Won’t Find

If you’re looking for grimdark cynicism, casual brutality, or a story where morality is treated as naïve, this isn’t that book. While the story does not shy away from darkness or injustice, it treats suffering seriously and never as entertainment. If you’re drawn to science fiction that wrestles honestly with evil while still affirming human dignity, you’ll feel at home here.

Why I Think You Might Love Bringing Stella Home

I wrote Bringing Stella Home early in my career, when finishing a novel still felt like climbing a cliff with your fingernails. The idea first took shape in a BYU history class, where studying the Mongol conquests made me wonder what a ruthless, sky-mandated expansionist culture would look like in space—and how it would collide with a radically democratic society built on shared civic responsibility. But the real heart of the story came from something more personal: my instincts as an older brother. The scariest thing I can imagine is not being able to save the people I love—and the even darker possibility of being able to save them, only to have them refuse rescue—and choosing to stay where they are.

I also wrote this book with a deliberate ethical aim: to take suffering seriously without exploiting it—to write about captivity, power, fear, and vulnerability in a way that insists the characters remain fully human and morally real. Some scenes were emotionally exhausting to write, but I didn’t want to soften them just to make the story easier. At its core, this novel reflects a belief that integrity matters most when it costs something.

If you’re drawn to science fiction that goes to dark places without becoming cynical—stories that still reach for the good, the true, and the beautiful—I think this one will stay with you.

Where to Get the Book

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for The Hameji Cycle.

Return to the book page for Bringing Stella Home.

Is Brothers in Exile for you?

Brothers in Exile by Joe Vasicek is a character-driven space opera / adventure sci-fi about two brothers trying to survive as independent starfarers on the edge of a growing empire. When their routine run takes them to a silent derelict station—and a discovery they can’t ignore—the story turns into a tense, momentum-driven ride through frontier ports, bad deals, and the early tremors of interstellar conquest.

Brothers in Exile is Book 1 of Sons of the Starfarers, a clean, character-driven space opera series about starfarers caught in the early tremors of imperial expansion.

What Kind of Reader Will Love Brothers in Exile?

If you love…

  • frontier space opera: starships, stations, salvage, dangerous trade routes
  • space opera with heart: loyal crews, sacrifice, and family bonds under pressure
  • clean, hopeful science fiction (minimal profanity, no explicit sex) with faith, family, and conscience in the background
  • high-stakes trouble that escalates fast: one decision → bigger consequences → empire-scale ripple effects
  • mystery + rescue momentum, where “we can’t just walk away” drives the plot

…then Brothers in Exile is probably your kind of story.

What You’ll Find Inside

Isaac Deltana is the careful one—the older brother trying to keep their ship, their finances, and their lives from flying apart. Aaron is the spark—reckless, brave, and stubbornly determined to do the right thing once he believes something matters. The tone is tense but humane: a fast-paced, character-driven space adventure with heart, built around survival, moral choice, and the bond between brothers as the Outworlds begin to feel the shadow of the Gaian Imperials stretching outward.

What Makes Brothers in Exile Different

A lot of space opera is driven by lone wolves or chosen ones; this one is driven by family—two brothers who can’t stop being brothers even when everything is going wrong. It has the frontier trading feel of classic space opera, but puts family and moral choice front and center. It has a “scrappy ship on the fringe” flavor you might associate with Firefly, but the moral center is steadier and the tone is less cynical. And while there’s big-picture geopolitics (expansion, control, annexation), the story stays grounded in human-scale decisions: what you owe a stranger, what freedom costs, and how far you’ll go to keep someone from being used or erased.

What You Won’t Find

You won’t find grimdark nihilism, explicit sexual content, or shock-for-shock’s-sake violence. This is clean, character-driven space opera—fast-moving and emotional—rather than slow, technical hard sci-fi. The science is ‘believable enough,’ but the focus is on choices, consequences, and the bond between brothers.

Why I Think You Might Love Brothers in Exile

I wrote Brothers in Exile because I wanted a space adventure where the relationship mattered as much as the action. In my author’s note, I talk about how the brother dynamic in the film Gettysburg (and the real emotional weight behind it) helped shape the characters Isaac and Aaron—the older brother trying to be the responsible one, and the reckless younger brother who pushes back against the authority figures in his life. If you enjoy stories where family is both the complication and the strength—where two people face the void together and refuse to stop caring—I think you’re going to enjoy this book.

Where to Get Brothers in Exile

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for the Sons of the Starfarers series.

Return to the book page for Brothers in Exile.

The Choice to Believe in Gunslinger to Earth

At its core, Gunslinger to Earth, the space-opera finale of the Gunslinger Trilogy, asks a simple but lifelong question: What do you choose to believe when the universe refuses to give you certainty? When Earth vanishes into an impossible anomaly—and later reappears transformed—no one can prove exactly what happened. The characters must decide for themselves what is true, what is worth fighting for, and who they will become in the face of the miraculous.

Where the Idea Came From

The theme grew out of a major turning point in my own life. I started this book just after I began dating the woman who would become my wife and while I was reinventing my writing process to tell better stories. It was a season of uncertainty, hope, and change, full of questions I didn’t know how to answer. That personal crossroads naturally shaped the theme of the story into one about faith, conviction, and choosing a future even when you can’t see what comes next.

How the Choice to Believe Shapes the Story

Throughout Gunslinger to Earth, every major character is confronted with a moment where proof is impossible, but a choice is required. Rex must decide whether to trust Charlotte, whether to follow Sam and Jane, whether to cross the wormhole, and ultimately whether to stay in paradise or return to a mortal life with someone he loves. No one can make these choices for him—not Sam, not Jane, not Charlotte—because the heart of his journey is learning to choose his own truth instead of waiting for certainty that will never come.

On a cosmic scale, the entire plot turns on the same dilemma—an end-times science fiction mystery wrapped in the language of prophecy. The anomaly that swallowed Earth may be the fulfillment of ancient prophecies, or it may be an alien event we don’t yet understand. Mahijah may be exactly who he claims to be, or something else entirely. No lab test or political briefing can answer those questions. Sam, Jane, Rex, the empaths, and the remnants of Earthfleet all have to decide for themselves what they believe—and those choices lead them to the endings they earn. The story isn’t about proving the miracle; it’s about how people respond when the miraculous breaks into their lives—the heart of the choice to believe.

What the Choice to Believe Says About Us

We all live in a world where certainty is rare, where conflicting stories demand our loyalty, and where the most important truths—love, faith, family, hope—are things you commit to long before you can prove them. Gunslinger to Earth reflects that deeply human reality in a character-driven science fiction way. It suggests that belief isn’t about having perfect evidence; it’s about having the courage to choose who you’re going to be and what kind of future you want to build. At the end of the day, the world is shaped not just by what happens to us, but by what we decide to believe about ourselves, about others, and about the meaning of our lives.

Why This Theme Matters to Me

When I wrote Gunslinger to Earth, the closing volume of the Gunslinger Trilogy, I was learning to make those kinds of choices in my own life—about faith, about love, and about the kind of writer and person I wanted to become. It was a moment when I had to step forward without seeing the whole path. That experience shaped the story in ways I couldn’t fully articulate at the time, but I can see clearly now. This book matters to me because it’s ultimately about hope: the hope that even in chaos, even in uncertainty, we can choose what we believe—and those choices can lead us somewhere good.

Where to Get the Book

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for the Gunslinger Trilogy.

Return to the book page for Gunslinger to Earth.

Is Gunslinger to Earth for you?

See all of my books in series order.

Is Gunslinger to Earth for You?

Gunslinger to Earth is a character-driven space opera adventure about crossing a cosmic no-man’s-land to discover what happened to the home you thought was lost forever. It blends gunslinger-style starship action, found-family dynamics, political revolution, and end-times mystery as Rex Carter, Sam Kletchka, and Jane Kletchka risk everything to follow Earth into an impossible anomaly. It’s a fast, hopeful, and surprisingly tender finale that wraps up the Gunslinger Trilogy with both high stakes and a genuine sense of homecoming.

What Kind of Reader Will Love This Book?

If you love…

  • Space opera that feels like Firefly meets end-times science fiction, with a gunslinger pilot, a loyal found family, and a war-torn galaxy trying to pull them apart
  • Stories where faith, prophecy, and cosmic mystery actually matter to the plot, not just as window dressing
  • Coming-of-age under fire, as Rex Carter tries to decide who he is and where he belongs while revolutions, wormholes, and vanished planets rearrange the map of human history
  • Character-focused military SF with moral clarity, loyalty, and hope, rather than grimdark cynicism

…then Gunslinger to Earth is probably your kind of story.

What You’ll Find Inside

Gunslinger to Earth is a story rooted in space opera adventure, end-times science fiction, and prophecy-driven mystery. The hero of this third book in the trilogy is Rex Carter, a cadet still reeling from the day Earth and Luna vanished into an impossible anomaly. Torn between his patriot girlfriend Charlotte, his loyalty to Sam and Jane, and his fear for his family back home, Rex has to grow up fast as he’s swept into a mission to follow Earth across the “world-bridge” and find out what really happened.

The mood balances tense, boots-on-the-deck action (derelict ghost ships in the anomaly, desperate battles near wormholes, claustrophobic escapes from Luna) with a deep, almost awe-struck sense of wonder as the crew finally confronts a transformed Earth and the fulfillment of ancient prophecies. The style is fast-paced, voice-driven, and accessible—more “frontier adventure with big ideas” than hard-science textbook—with a strong throughline of family, faith, and the search for home.

What Makes It Different

Fans of classic space opera and military SF—think Firefly, The Expanse, or David Weber—will recognize the starship battles, political tensions, and ragtag crews, but Gunslinger to Earth takes those ideas in a very different direction. Instead of treating religion and prophecy as background flavor, this book leans straight into them: the disappearance of Earth isn’t just a physics problem, it’s tied to the City of Enoch, the fulfillment of Latter-day Saint-style millennial prophecies, and a literal “new Earth” where history has turned a corner.

Where many space war stories focus on winning the next battle or installing the next regime, this one asks what happens when the war is suddenly dwarfed by something much bigger—when the homeworld itself is renewed and taken off the game board. It’s less about toppling empires and more about how ordinary, stubbornly decent people respond when God, history, and politics all collide at once. And because it’s the capstone of the Gunslinger Trilogy, it doesn’t just raise the stakes; it actually lands them with a clear, hopeful ending.

Readers who enjoy the moral backbone of Lois McMaster Bujold, the frontier grit of Firefly, and the cosmic mystery of The Expanse will find familiar elements here—but woven together in a way that feels genuinely new.

What You Won’t Find

You won’t find grimdark nihilism, graphic sex, or wall-to-wall gore here. The story has violence, war, and real loss—this is a revolution and an end-times crisis, after all—but it’s written at about a PG-13 level, with the camera panning away from anything needlessly explicit. You also won’t find a sneering, anti-religious tone; faith and prophecy are treated respectfully and sincerely, even when characters struggle to believe them. This is a cleaner-but-still-intense sci-fi adventure that focuses more on meaning, loyalty, and wonder than shock value.

Why I Think You Might Love It

I wrote Gunslinger to Earth during a major turning point in my own life—just after I started dating the woman who would become my wife, at a time when I was reinventing my writing process so I could tell better stories more consistently. In a lot of ways, this book is about that same kind of turning point on a galactic scale: the moment when old patterns break, a long-promised future finally arrives, and you have to decide who you’re going to be on the other side of it. My hope is that if you care about loyalty, about home, about the possibility that history is going somewhere meaningful, then this story will leave you with the same feeling it gave me while I was writing it: that even in the middle of chaos, there’s a way through—and it leads somewhere worth fighting for.

Where to Get the Book

Related Posts and Pages

Explore the series index for the Gunslinger Trilogy.

Return to the book page for Gunslinger to Earth.

The Choice to Believe in Gunslinger to Earth.

See all of my books in series order.

Captain Cosette by R. Bruce Sundrud

captain_cosetteSo I saw this book in my alsobots on Amazon a few months ago, and it looked interesting so I figured I’d give it a shot.  The cover is admittedly pretty bad, but it has two of my favorite things in the universe (space and girls), and besides, I’ll sample just about anything.  A few days later, I realized the sample folder on my Kindle was getting pretty big, so I decided to go through and clear some of it out.

Well, I ended up buying this one.  The beginning really hooked me, and the rest of the book did not disappoint.

Captain Cosette is basically a Cinderella story set in space, except instead of getting glass slippers and going to the dance, Cosette goes to war and becomes a knock-out starship pilot.  It’s military sci-fi with a lighter edge than Drake or Haldeman.  And it’s good.  I think I read from the 36% mark to the end without stopping.  Sundrud is really good at making you care about his characters and then putting them in peril.

One thing that I really enjoyed were all the pulpy Renee Chevalier books that Cosette always reads, which were really just tongue-in-cheek references to modern pop-culture phenomena like Twilight and Casablanca.  It broke the fourth wall at times, but I always found them hilarious, especially with some of the twists they add at the end.

Unlike some other sci-fi books that I’ve started recently and failed to finish, the science fictional elements here are not just window dressing–they really drive the plot.  I thought the teaching machine was particularly interesting, especially when it … well, I won’t give away any spoilers.  And of course, the lost colonies and border worlds were also fascinating.  Cosette comes from a backwards farming planet, and the way she thinks about things at first, you really get the sense that this has been her whole universe.  As she gradually comes to understand the geo- (astro?) politics of Union and Alliance, her awareness expands, and so does yours as the reader.  It’s very cool.

There are a couple of things I wish this book had done a little better.  The world is not nearly as immersive as I wanted it to be, and sometimes it feels like the characters are hurrying from place to place.  Also, sometimes the characters seemed to blend together a bit.  There was enough to differentiate them, but at times they sounded almost the same.  None of these issues took much away from my overall enjoyment of the book, however.  The story was solid.

So yeah, if you like the kind of stuff I like to write, you’re probably going to love this one.  At $2.99 for the ebook, you really can’t go wrong.  Even if you’re not a huge military sf fan, if you like Cinderella stories (and who doesn’t?), this one is definitely worth checking out.

Starliner by David Drake

starlinerWelcome to the Empress of Earth, the finest luxury liner in all of settled space.  Whether you’re alien or human, first class or economy, there is a place on the ship for you.  Just watch out for those Grantholmers and Nevassans–those planets are about to go to war, but don’t worry, the Empress is strictly neutral territory.  The envoys from Earth will see to that.  And as for the rumors that one of those sides might try to hijack the ship, I’m sure the crew is capable enough to deal with such threats.  Even if they are unarmed…

I saw this book on my also-boughts on Amazon, so I decided to pick it up.  It was an enjoyable read.  David Drake is very good at showing competent characters dealing with all sorts of complicated problems, operating within a strict chain of command while sometimes bending the rules a bit to get the job done.

The book is really a series of small vignettes, all tied together through the main viewpoint character, Ran Colville.  There is an overarching storyline about the Empress’s role as a coveted pawn in a larger interstellar war, but that only really drives the story at the very end.  Really, it’s more of a slice-of-life story about the crew of the ship, punctuated by all of the strange and exotic stops along the way–and boy, are there plenty of those!

Even though the Empress is neutral, she’s a potentially valuable military asset that both sides in the Grantholm-Nevassan war want to capture.  To complicate matters further, some of the passengers are dignitaries from either side.  At one point, there’s a romance between the peacenik daughter of a Nevassan diplomat and the son of a Grantholmer nobleman who is honor-bound to fight in the war.  That subplot was a lot of fun.

As you can imagine, there’s plenty of violence.  And really, what would you expect from one of the world’s best military science fiction writers?  Drake does a really good job showing the adrenaline-soaked excitement of combat, as well as all the ugliness.  Even the mooks get a viewpoint from time to time, and when they die, it’s messy and traumatic.  For that reason, the violence feels very realistic, especially in how it affects the main characters.

Ran is something of a player, so there is a fair amount of explicit sex (including a bit of inter-species action).  Drake doesn’t mince words or shy away from the gritty details–he puts it all on the page as matter-of-factly as any other aspect of life.  The sex was brief enough that it didn’t really bother me that much, but Ran’s relationship toward one of his coworkers takes a turn at the end that seemed to come completely out of left-field.  I could understand why, for the purposes of the story, it had to happen, but the way it was handled I just didn’t buy it.

That was probably my biggest gripe.  If I had another, it would be that the story seems to meander a bit in the first two-thirds, but the world-building was interesting enough that it didn’t really bother me.  Overall, it was a fun, light read (well, light for military sf).  The ebook version is free on Amazon, so it’s definitely worth picking up.  If you haven’t read any David Drake yet, this isn’t a bad place to start.