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Originally Posted by captobvs
Any advice on some other military Sc-Fi? It would be great if they would put out The Sand Wars by Charles Ingrid in ebook form!
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The obvious starting point is David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series.
Honor Harrington is the yeoman daughter of two doctors on the planet Sphinx of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. The books follow her career in the Royal Manticoran Navy, from Midshipman to Fleet Admiral and peer of the realm in two star nations. At the outset, Manticore is preparing for war. The neighboring Republic of Haven is a hereditary oligarchy whose home planet is a welfare state with a huge population of Dolists who live on government handouts and expect a continually increasing standard of living. The Republic is going broke paying the upkeep, and had been conquering and looting smaller neighboring star nations to bay the bills. Manticore is next in their path. The RMN is better, ship for ship, than the Havenite navy, with better technology and better crews, but the Republic is much bigger.
It's the Napoleonic Wars in space, with Manticore as Britain and Haven as France. Weber has fun with the physics he postulates for his space drives, allowing his to have ships drawn up in "walls of battle", stationary relative to each other, and whaling away with lasers, grasers, and missiles till one side is forced to break off and retreat. Weber also pays attention to politics, and Honor's biggest problems may be back on Manticore.
Lots of fun, and a protagonist worth cheering for.
Another suggestion would be a set of collaborations between Weber and Steve White. Mankind has settled the stars, and encountered a variety of alien races, including the Orions, Ophichi, Gorm, and Thebans. Interstellar transit is via wormhole, so "close by" bears no relation to positions in real space. Man fights what the Orions call the "Wars of Shame" with them (and the Orions call them that because they see themselves as a warrior race, but are beaten by a humanity they consider soft and unprepared), then the Thebans. Finally, all intelligent races must ally against the Bugs, a species resembling giant spiders, whose goal is to expand, and who see all other species as food.
Weber and White do a nice job with characterizations, especially of the Orions (called Tabbies by humans because of their resemblance to upright biped felines), and there is to the death combat in abundance.
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Dennis