— by Wombat-socho
Most of you who are interested in the Marines, or military humor period, are probably familiar with Max Uriarte’s webcomic Terminal Lance. Well, Max had a Kickstarter a while back so he could devote all his waking hours not spent on the webcomic, hookers, and booze to his magnum opus, The White Donkey. While Abe and Garcia appear in this too, it is as different from the webcomic as combat is from garrison duty, and it is a harrowing read. I don’t get emotional over books too often, but The White Donkey hit me like a Mike Tyson sucker punch, and I maintain that if you don’t have a similar reaction, you have no soul. I don’t want to get into the details, because it’s really a short story in the form of a graphic novel and to discuss the plot would spoil it, but I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Not quite as hard-hitting, but still containing some first-class combat SF, is the Castalia House reissue of Jerry Pournelle’s There Will Be War Volume IV, formerly subtitled The Day of the Tyrant. Among the great stories in this volume are Poul Anderson’s “No Truce With Kings”, “Interim Justice” by William F. Wu, and “Three Soldiers” by D.C. Poyer; it also includes G.K. Chesterton’s epic poem “Lepanto” and a fair amount of non-fiction that unfortunately seems to be coming around to being topical again. Recommended.
Old stuff I’ve been (re)reading of late: Alexis Gilliland’s The End of the Empire, which I’ve previously reviewed (back in March, as it happens) and am obviously still quite fond of. Also, Robert Frezza’s A Small Colonial War, first book of Frezza’s Suid-Afrika trilogy, previously reviewed here.
, not to be confused with the updated version, 
, that drops the non-Beowulf Shaeffer stories and adds “Procrustes” and some framing material so that it seems more like a novel. I vaguely recall reading this before I took up book blogging here, and being none too impressed. Your mileage may vary.
and 
. If you haven’t read these, they’re a great coming of age story wrapped up with interstellar skulduggery, an extremely hostile, barely-explored planet…and of course, the ongoing conflict between Roger Ramius McClintock, Heir Tertiary to the throne and a spoiled brat to end all spoiled brats, and his bodyguards: the Bronze Barbarians, a company of the toughest Marines in the Empire, who are going to get Roger back to civilization…or die trying. The natives are hostile and dangerous, the local animals only slightly less so, and they’re the EASY parts of the problem. These are some of my favorite SF novels, and if you have a taste for combat SF, I think you’ll like them too.
, chronicling the last days of Senior Colonel Saloman Karff, an officer in the Holy Human Empire’s Gestapo, as he fights enemies internal and external during the Empire’s retreat to Malusia. Malusia is an interesting place, a water world that can’t feed itself and that can’t pull itself together to do so thanks to the locals’ being infected with all the worst features of anarchism and libertarianism, and Karff is sent to investigate it as a possible new home for the fleeing Imperials…but is it instead a trap being laid by traitors who sold out to the rebels? Drollery and action ensues. A quick and amusing read; one wonders why Del Rey hasn’t brought it back in a Kindle edition. 
is one of the dozens of books spawned by Bill James getting shut of the Baseball Abstracts he used to write in the 1980s. Featuring hundreds of player evaluations, and occasionally articles on the teams when the contributors haven’t been distracted by some other topic, this is probably one of the best books to pick up if you take your fantasy baseball seriously. Speaking of Bill James, he’s still publishing 
, which is not as concerned with teams or prospects as the Baseball Prospectus folks but more with individual achievements. The annual chapters on The Favorite Toy and the leader boards are always worth looking at. Which one’s better? I couldn’t tell you; I have a large stack of both waiting to be put up on my shelves. 
, the first in a series of epic fantasy novels from the International Lord of Hate. Short version: this novel delivers. Set in a society looking a lot like pre-Raj India, complete with various societal castes and perennial infighting among the powerful families, this is the tale of a master swordsman, a member of the Protectors, who has an extra edge over demons and humans thanks to his ancestor sword, a weapon forged from magical black metal that contains the memories of all its wielders back to its forging. Ashok needs it, because the demons that live in the sea and prey on seaside humans are damned tough to kill, and when the Protectors are sent in to break up a house war, numbers are never in their favor. Ashok’s entire life is upended by his teacher’s deathbed revelation, a revelation that sends him home to find the truth about his origins. This shows every sign of becoming a rich, complex series, possibly even surpassing his Monster Hunters International universe, though at times it reads more like SF than fantasy. Highly recommended, and I’m just sorry it took me so long to get around to it. 
, and I suspect the latter’s quasi-sequel, 
, suffers from the comparison in a number of ways. Whereas Lord of Light was a tightly-written tale of transhuman “gods” and “goddesses” contending for power in a world settled by colonists from India, Creatures of Light and Darkness relied a lot more on allegory and poetry to drive its plot, and the both the background and the characters suffer from that reliance. Some of the characters are given different names to start the book, because to name them by their true names would wreck the plot before it even got rolling, and while the presence of Anubis and Osiris is understandable, we know little or nothing about how they came to be the powerful figures they are in the universe Zelazny describes, since there’s very little backstory, and much of what there is lacks relevance to the main plot. It’s not a bad read, but one can understand how people who came to know Zelazny through Lord of Light were disappointed. Worth picking up for cheap. 
, a young adult novel about teenage Venetian Guido Callatta, who winds up with a ringside seat to the Battle of Lepanto in this excellent historical novel. I have the original 1960 edition and was very pleased to see that it’s been reprinted and brought out in a Kindle edition. While written for kids the same age as its 15-year-old hero (or slightly younger), the book still gives an honest portrayal of a divided Christendom facing the Islamic threat in the Mediterranean. Several historical figures make appearances, and at times I felt as if I was having flashbacks to 
, which among other great stories includes the classic “The Spectre General” by Ted Cogswell, “The Miracle Workers”, by Jack Vance, “Hide And Seek” by Arthur C. Clarke, and “Silent Leges” by Jerry Pournelle, which many of us will recognize as Mark Fuller’s story from 
.
, and terminating his contract for the unforgivable sin of Wrongthink. If not, Nick explains the whole stupid tale 
, only BETTER, since its basic plot revolves around a group of AIs deciding to wipe out humanity before humanity strikes first…based on their watching the latest Hollywood reality show. At $0.99 for the Kindle edition, you’d be a fool not to buy this.
, which marks the revival of the classic Cold War anthology series edited by Jerry Pournelle. There’s stories in here from Larry Niven, Greg Benford, Poul Anderson and some new talents, as well as non-fiction from William Lind, Martin van Creveld, and Phillip Pournelle. Not a clunker in the lot. Vox is absolutely right to nominate Jerry for Best Editor (Short Form), which 
, which involves the blackmailing of one Jernau Morat Gurgeh, a noted master of games, into traveling to the Empire of Azad to play the game of Azad, a tremendously involved and complicated social simulation that determines who’s going to run the Empire and how. Nobody, not even Gurgeh himself, expects him to do well, but as he becomes more familiar with the society that the game mirrors, something inside him changes…and so does the game. A very dark book in several respects, but along with 
, probably the best of the Culture books. 
, and whatever else attracts my eye between now and then.
, the latest short fiction anthology dealing with the once (and possibly future) renegades of Delta Green, an organization tasked with making sure the horrific future does not become our present. Most of the stories are set in the period when Delta Green was still an official part of the government, but are no less strange for all that; Dennis Detwiller has become a master of spinning a tale where all seems normal, until the strangeness erupts into the narrative like an exploding bomb. If you’re of the opinion that Charles Stross’ Laundry novels are entirely too sunny and optimistic, or that The X-Files wasn’t nearly horrific and violent enough, then the Delta Green fiction anthologies are for you.
, the second collection of J.B. Zimmerman’s stories and the first of his science fiction. Unlike Detwiller’s collection, these are not all tales of horror from beyond space and time; many of them, in fact, would not have been out of place in the pages of Analog back when John W. Campbell Jr. and Ben Bova were at the helm. A couple of the stories, though, are stark reminders that in addition to hope and freedom, there is also horror in space. Spacelore is an unusual anthology in that the quality is very consistent. There isn’t a clunker in the lot, though obviously you’re going to like some of the stories more than others. Free on Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime, but $3.49 is a very reasonable price.
. It is less comedic than the British history parody 
, but as Fraser himself admits, he is recounting what he can remember with a little help from the official history. It is by turns serious and amusing, with occasional reflections on the state of England as it’s changed since 1945, and well worth reading.
