[Xanthe]

These are all series that I re-read on a regular basis:

Catherine Asaro's "Primary Inversion" - first book in the Saga of the Skolian Empire series: http://www.webscription.net/p-811-pr...inversion.aspx

In an unusually masterful first novel, physicist Asaro combines hard speculative science and first-rate storytelling to look at the galaxy's distant future. Earth's peaceful Alliance shares power with two other empires, those of the Skolians and the Traders, who are mortal enemies of each other. Heir apparent to oversee the Skolian empire, Sauscony Valdoria is a bioengineered fighter pilot who has inherited rare psychic abilities that link her to the powerful "psiberspace" Skolian Web. Taking shore leave on a neutral planet, Sauscony encounters Jaibriol, an heir to the throne of the sadistic Trader Empire. During a fortuitous melding of minds, Sauscony not only recognizes Jaibriol as her psychic soul mate but realizes her new love has been bred specifically to give Traders the power to vanquish the Skolian empire. Asaro innovatively blends computer technology and telepathy into the electrifying, action-rich drama she creates. This is one of the best sf first novels in years, a likely candidate for the genre's major awards.

Eric Flint's "1632" - First in the "Ring of Fire" series:
http://www.baen.com/library/

In the year 1632 in northern Germany a reasonable person might conclude that things couldn't get much worse. There was no food. Disease was rampant. For over a decade religious war had ravaged the land and the people. Catholic and Protestant armies marched and countermarched across the northern plains, laying waste the cities and slaughtering everywhere. In many rural areas population plummeted toward zero. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia. The mines are working, the buck are plentiful (it's deer season) and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire membership of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time.

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED....

When the dust settles, Mike leads a small group of armed miners to find out what's going on. Out past the edge of town Grantville's asphalt road is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell; a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter Iying screaming in muck at the center of a ring of attentive men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot.

At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.

David Weber's "On Basilisk Station" - first book in his Honor Harrington series
http://www.webscription.net/p-304-on...k-station.aspx

Having made him look a fool, she's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her.

Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station.

The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens.

Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling; the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is Up To Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system.

But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They've made her mad.

David Weber & John Ringo's "March Upcountry" - first in the Prince Roger series:
http://www.webscription.net/p-267-march-upcountry.aspx

Roger Ramius Sergei Chiang MacClintock didn't understand.

He was young, handsome, athletic, an excellent dresser, and third in line for the Throne of Man ... so why wouldn't anyone at Court trust him

Why wouldn't even his own mother, the Empress, explain why they didn't trust him Or why the very mention of his father's name was forbidden at Court Or why his mother had decided to pack him off to a backwater planet aboard what was little more than a tramp freighter to represent her at a local political event better suited to a third assistant undersecretary of state

It probably wasn't too surprising that someone in his position should react by becoming spoiled, self-centered, and petulant. After all, what else did he have to do with his life

But that was before a saboteur tried to blow up his transport. Then warships of the Empire of Man's worst rivals shot the crippled vessel out of space. Then Roger found himself shipwrecked on the planet Marduk, whose jungles were full of damnbeasts, killerpillars, carnivorous plants, torrential rain, and barbarian hordes with really bad dispositions. Now all Roger has to do is hike halfway around the entire planet, then capture a spaceport from the Bad Guys, somehow commandeer a starship, and then go home to Mother for explanations.

Fortunately, Roger has an ace in the hole: Bravo Company of Bronze Battalion of The Empress� Own Regiment. If anyone can get him off Marduk alive, it's the Bronze Barbarians.

Assuming that Prince Roger manages to grow up before he gets all of them killed.

Holly Lisle's "Sympathy For The Devil" - first in her Devil's Point series:
http://www.webscription.net/p-407-sy...the-devil.aspx

Dayne Kuttner, a registered nurse tortured by the suffering of her patients and the much greater suffering of those damned to eternal suffering in hell, challenges God by demanding that the damned get a shot at redemption. . . and God proves he has a sense of humor by answering her prayer literally -- setting 56,000 devils, demons and assorted lesser Hellbound loose in North Carolina in the process to seek their salvation or wreak havoc.