Here’s a fifteen-book military SF bundle.
Aargh. So hard to turn bundles down even when you are iffy about some of the authors involved AND have a huge TBR pile already. After all, if you come across just three or four titles you really enjoy, you get your money’s worth.
The bundle includes:
Assault on Alpha Base by Dough Beason
Better to Beg Forgiveness by Michael Z Williamson
Comrades in Arms by Kevin J Anderson
Empire’s Rift by Steven Rzasa
March or Die by Andrew and William Keith
One Day on Mars by Travis Taylor
Sniper by Jonathan Brazee
Strong Arm Tactics by Jody Lynn Nye
The Golden Queen by David Farland
Triorion: Awakening by LJ Hatchmeister
Under a Graveyard Sky by John Ringo
Phule’s Company by Robert Asprin
There are also three or so anthologies in the bundle, but of course I’m not super interested in those. One’s novellas rather than short stories, though, so I may take a look at that one.
Of the whole bunch, I have previously read only the last one, Phule’s Company . . . which I liked quite a bit. If you’re familiar with Robert Asprin, then you know he’s pretty good at writing humorous SF and fantasy. Not a very easy thing to pull off, but he does it.
I really have not much cared for other books I’ve tried by Anderson. The others, well, we’ll see. I doubt I’ll find anything here I like nearly as much as Tanya Huff’s Valor series, but that’s a high bar.
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Can’t recommend Williamson *at all*, and Ringo target audience is teenage boys; he gets old fast. Jody Lynn Nye reaches the level of workmanlike, with Travis Taylor a bit behind.
Really, I’d recommend David Drake above all of the above–erudite* combat veteran who writes very well. Redliners in particular is a fascinating work–he wrote it to exorcise the devils left by Vietnam. He’s also written a number of retellings of stories from ancient history, notably ‘Cross the Stars’ following The Odyssey.
* Reads Roman histories in the original Latin as a pastime.
Follow-up: a lot of those authors are from Baen, whose eBooks I’ve been buying longer than any other publisher’s: they’ve been selling DRM free books on their web site since 1998(!) Of the Baen authors, I recommend
Bujold (obvs)
Drake
Freer (but not his latest)
Flint
Hodgell
Wentworth (RIP) (Jao Empire is *interesting*)
Lee & Miller
Moon
Gellis& Lackey–Scepter’d Isle series only. Other Lackey books have become stale for me.
There are other popular Baen authors, but I either haven’t read them, have mixed opinion, or really don’t like them. (For example, David Weber lost his mojo after he took to dictating, when his hands became too crippled to type–and the editors failed to do their jobs.)
Is that what happened to David Weber? I don’t think he was ever that great a writer, but I do think he used to tell better stories …
I would’ve put Weber’s issues more at the “Too Big to Edit” level (a fate *many* other authors have fallen into) rather than blaming hands/dictation in general. It’s not like Baen has had a great reputation for editing lately regardless.
I’ve been enjoying Weber since I was a kid in the ’90s, but the last few books have been disappointing–I still have no idea why “Shadow of Victory” was written.