Books tagged with: military

The story behind LV-426 is more terrifying than anything my childhood imagination lent after watching Alien and Aliens on VHS. Although before my generation, both Ridley Scott and James Cameron contributed to one of the most terrifying storylines in cinema history. And for this reviewer, it has beco...

The fifth book in the Ultramarines series and the second in the newly released Ultramarines Omnibus II, which also includes several additional short stories and even a nice graphic short. Captain Uriel Ventris is once again in charge of the 4th company, this story is firmly rooted in Uriel's return...

Cryptonomicon is a speculative fiction novel by the American author Neal Stephenson. I've been a bit apprehensive about starting on Cryptonomicon. Neal Stephenson is a bit like Vernon Vinge – they both make wonderful books, and they both take their time about it. Also Cryptonomicon is about mathemat...

In 1992, Steve Perry wrote the first novels based on the Dark Horse comics Aliens. Somehow, I missed these books as a teen. Although, I was familiar with the comics. Aliens: Earth Hive is the first exciting, action-packed thriller in the series. The story is unique from the movies, so I won’t compar...

The Alien Invasion was unexpected and devastating, with their protective force-shields, the K'Thraa stormtroopers seem invincible and it looks as if earth is doomed. But by a miracle of chance First Sergeant Hood finds a flaw in the K'Thraa armour, a way in which he and his tiny army may be able to...

To the veteran journalist Lex Falk the planet Eighty Six looks as dull as it's unimaginative name would suggest, then trouble starts brewing with the local population and the media start getting the runaround from the military high command, his interest is suddenly roused. I have been looking forwar...

The Merseian Empire has, for some strange reason, decided to help out the water people of Starkad. Which means that the good old Earth Empire, simply has to help the land people of Starkad to keep the status quo. Now if I tell you this story was published right in the middle of the Vietnam War, the...

Nicholas Sansbury Smith’s Extinction Edge , book two in The Extinction Cycle , is a whirl-wind of action and rapid evolution! The stakes have never been higher since the Hemorrhage virus first infected humankind. Now, the transition from modern society to a surviving-society pits Beckham and his Gho...

Nicolas Sansbury Smith made his debut with Biomass Revolution , which was quickly followed by the Orbs Series . His latest series is The Extinction Cycle . After rereading book one for this review, I was reminded how effective military science fiction can be as a lens to watch civilization unravel....

It has been nearly 20 years since I first read a Warhammer 40K novel, way before Games Workshops publishing company Black Library was formed. I was and always will be a big fan of anything Games Workshop related, spending a vast amount of my formative years playing a myriad number of games and paint...

This is the first Ben Bova that I've read in a long time. Chet Kinsman will do just about anything to get into space, and luckily for him he gets to go to space with the space marines. He's not so lucky when he gets grounded after a "small" accident. He's lucky again when NASA lets him go to the moo...

Crazy fun! But not as good as Aliens: Earth Hive. Nightmare Asylum picks up immediately where Earth Hive ended. Wilks, Billie, and what remains of Bueller are headed back to Earth. Their previous encounter with a separate alien life form, one that possesses the power to effortlessly destroy Xenomorp...

Point is the near future thriller and the sequel to Edge, by Thomas Blackthorne. In a Britain on the edge of collapse, the lost teens have formed Cutter Circles, a terrible cult based on mutual suicide. For ex-Special Forces soldier Josh Cumberland, this is just the start of another descent into the...

Space Marine is a rare novel that is set in the Warhammer 40k universe, written by Ian Watson. Space Marine is essentially a piece of history in the Warhammer 40k universe, but one that Games Workshop doesn't actually agree with, and was never re-printed. The novel itself no longer "fit's in" with t...

Lieutenant Callum (called California, Cal or Harper) Harper punches his Captain, Laurence Decker for being incompetent and letting soldiers die on a mission we (initially) don’t learn much about. Cal has time and the option to finish things off but backs down and so gets re-assigned back to Earth. O...

On the edge of Earths Empire, far out in space, an elite group of soldiers are on a training mission. A training mission preparing them to face their implacible enemy against which a war rages across the galaxy. Deep in the heart of the hollowed out asteroid where their training takes place a chilli...

The Carhullan Army is a dystopian science fiction novel set in an around the cumbrian fells, written by Sarah Hall. With much of Britain underwater due to a biblical level of flooding, the surviving population exist in concentrated pockets and ruled by the rather sinister sounding "Authority". While...

The legendary Grey Knights are all that stand between mankind and the horrors of chaos. Secret Guardians who journey into the very realms of the warp and beyond in pursuit of the enemy; to most they and their foes are nothing more than myth and legend, those are the lucky ones. The fortress of Titan...

The Honour of the Knights is the first volume in the space opera series The Battle for the Solar System by Stephen Sweeney. The Honour of the Knights is quite an accomplished novel, a grand story on a fairly epic scale with some good dialog and well rounded, engaging characters. The author has a ver...

The Last Underclass is a science fiction novel by Dean Warren. A hundred and fifty years in the future, the world has polarized in to winners and losers, has and has-nots, in this book they are called Welfies and Achievers. Ghetto born and raised Quiet is a Welfie to the core. Trying to raise money...

The Rebel Worlds is a science fiction novel by author Poul Anderson. When I’m a bit stressed at my daytime job, I take a lot more care when I select a new book to read. It has to be fairly short if I want to finish it anytime soon, the story line has to be fairly simple and it has to keep me enterta...

Anthony J. Melchiorri’s The Tide (Tide Series Book One) is set in the present. It ties Japan's secret attempt to prepare its people in case of a major American assault following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mysteriously, a protein complex capable of altering the weakest of mankind...

The Vor Game is a science fiction novel by the author Lois McMaster Bujold. The Vor Game takes place in the same universe as Mirror Dance and it has the same main character - only it takes place before Mirror Dance, so I would recommend that you read The Vor Game first. The Vor Games starts when Mil...

Award winning novelist and academic Gwyneth Jones asserts that ‘a typical science fiction novel has little space for deep and studied characterisation, not because writers lack the skill (though they may) but because in the final analysis the characters are not people, they are pieces of equipment.’...

When I received this anthology to review I hadn't delved into the background behind its journey to publication. It was interesting to see its crowd-sourced origins and development. There are some misconceptions people have with crowd source funded books, firstly that the quality of the writing might...

Kira Miller is a highly gifted engineer working in the field of gene therapy; she manages to enhance the function of the brain to such a degree that makes immortality a real possibility through a savant like consciousness. But what secrets could be unlocked by playing god with the human brain? Wired...

I was quite unprepared for Mechanical Failure . While the blurb mentions it as a "sarcastic adventure", such a description doesn't do justice. Set in the far future after Humanity has spread to the stars and now live in a different Galaxy, mankind has managed to endure Two Hundred years (and countin...

Hutchinson's writing has, at times, turned out to be worryingly prophetic - he wrote about the break-up of the European Union while Brexit was just a twinkle in David Cameron's eye, in his astounding Fractured Europe series. This time he's writing about life in rural England after an apocalypse. Wor...

Illustration ©2018 Stephen Hickman from The Folio Society edition of Starship Troopers The Folio Society has produced a beautiful, limited edition of Robert Heinlein’s classic book, Starship Troopers, first published in 1959. In 1998, aged 22, I went to the cinema to see Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation...

The Star Wars tie in novels have a rich and varied galaxy to explore. An author can reach into the distant past or take on the history of an obscure character. Sometimes you just want to read about the big hitters. What happens between those massive blockbuster movies? Whilst we are waiting for the...

The future could be Utopian, but if the vast majority of science fiction novels have taught us only one thing: it’s going to be Dystopian. The setting of Myke Cole’s Sixteenth Watch promises to be an uplifting one as humans have populated the moon and therefore found the resources needed to power Ea...

There is a certain type of film that I love. It has a central character wronged in some way and this gives them the flimsy premise to basically kill all the bad guys.  Death Wish ,  John Wick ,  The Equaliser , to name  bu t a few.  Red Noise  by John P Murphy is the science fiction  equivalent  wit...