Looking for good space battles!!!

S

sheck001

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Ok everybody, I am looking for books or book series that involve some really good space battles. Of course the books should have reasonable plots, as well as decently fleshed out characters, but what really does it for me is heart pumping ship to ship combat.


Series that I have enjoyed so far would be, jack cambell's "Lost Fleet" and, Ryk Brown's "The Frontier's Saga".


Any help would be appreciated! Lately I have been slogging through way too much mediocre sci-fi and am starting to loose hope in a beloved genre.


Again thanks for your help.
 
The obvious recommendation is David Weber's Honor Harrington series. If you are unfamiliar with it it's similar to Cambell's Lost Fleet - space navy type stuff. There are a lot of books out in the series, so if you haven't read them you're in for a fun time.
 
Yes to the above, and be sure to read them in order. On Basilisk Station is first. :)
 
TheDustyZebra said:
Yes to the above, and be sure to read them in order. On Basilisk Station is first. :)
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I don't agree, Honor of the Queen, the second novel, is way better.

If I had read the first one first I might have given up on the series and might not have finished the first book.

I have heard the Honor movie is based on the second book.

For those of you who have been wondering, we’ll be beginning with "Honor of the Queen," not "On Basilisk Station." There are some solid reasons for that, and I came down in favor of that decision well before Evergreen finally made up its mind which starting point to choose.
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News || David Weber

psik
 
Thanks for the quick reply! I actually got the first honor harington a couple days ago after I polished off david weber's dahak trilogy. So that was already my next planned read (it helps that the book is free on kindle right now). Any other suggestions?
 
I didn't say it was better, I said it was first. :)

I don't know what anyone has against Basilisk (and I've seen that argument before), and you can certainly start with the second book instead if you like, but my point was that it's important not to take the series randomly. It is a forward progression through the lives of the characters, and it would spoil the earlier books to read the later ones first.

I like Basilisk as much as any of the books, myself. You want space battles, there's a space battle for you. :D

And oh my goodness, they're finally making a movie? Yippee!
 
TheDustyZebra said:
I like Basilisk as much as any of the books, myself. You want space battles, there's a space battle for you. :D

And oh my goodness, they're finally making a movie? Yippee!
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Only one space battle in OBS. There are three in HoQ and one battle in a complex on a moon and one on a space ship in a mutiny and Honor gets into two fights on Grayson.

Kick-Ass all of the way through. :D

If I gave HoQ 4 1/2 stars I would only give OBS 2. I agree it adds some perspective to Manticore's society and military and Honor's life story but I did not find it sufficiently interesting.

Oh yeah, OBS has a battle on the planet with the natives.

psik
 
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There are more space battles in Honor, but the battle in Basilisk Station is better than anything in Honor, and while it's only one battle it lasts a long time. I enjoyed the books equally overall.
 
You might try the Kris Longknife series by Mike Shepard. I have not read it yet but have heard good things and all the books got 4 stars at Goodreads.
 
Timba, I have read the first 3 or 4 longknife books. They just really don't do it for me. Most of them revolve around ground base conflict but moreover the main character just isn't interesting from my perspective.
 
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I like the Longknife series well enough. They were all fun reads. AND they get better with each book. The last ones had some serious battling-in-space, too. Having said that, though, a caveat: They are fairly typical examples of American military scifi - lots of ideology disguised as "common sense".
 
The Honor Harrington series is by far one of the best in space battles- at least the type of battle that happens in the Honor-verse. On Basilisk Station is still the first best place to get your feet wet. It's one of the shortest of the novels; probably because it was the first. It's also more character oriented so you get the first real intro to Honor.

David Webers style is a bit different in that regards so you really get to know Honor best from how other character's see her and this seems to stand mostly as the trend through most of the books. Honor's own perception of herself is a bit different from everyone else and thankfully in that book David doesn't dwell on her POV for showing the reader what Honor Harrington is really made of.

It is a bit reserved as far as the space battles and in the first battles we see her courage under fire but the battle seems to come off almost as a luck of the draw rather than the later display of cold calculation that becomes Honor's trademark. I like to think that it shows the more raw and visceral Honor Harrington who succeeds out of sheer instinct with no regard for the consequences to herself and crew.

That Harrington doesn't go away in the later books but she does spend a lot of time dwelling on the consequences and it sometimes begins to influence her performance although it mostly increases her efficiency. And when it come right down to it everything she does is always first For the Honor of the Queen.
 
For the more 'realistic' battles, or at least based in real world physics:

Honor Harrington Series: David Weber
The Expanse Series: James S Corey
Dread Empire Fall Series: William Campbell

For a more Starwarsian style:

Wing Commander Books(Particularly End Run and Fleet Action): William Forstchen
Eve: Tony Gonzales

Books that I think may interest you based on your post:

World War 2.0: John Birmingham
 
tinkerdan said:
On Basilisk Station is still the first best place to get your feet wet. It's one of the shortest of the novels; probably because it was the first.
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Hmm, first four books...
On Basilisk Station 420 pp, Honor of the Queen 421 pp, Short Victorious War 376 pp, Field of Dishonor 416 pp
Do they get longer than this? I've not read the later books at all. I'm not a big fan of tomes that (perhaps) could be cut back.
 
The later Harrington books are pretty beefy affairs. I also feel they lose the way a bit. Don't get me wrong I love rich, deeply plotted worlds but it gets cumbersome and lacking in focus. I went from buying them as they came out to merely getting round to them as and when.

However:

The first few are awesome, and don't let my post detract from that.

In my opinion, I enjoyed OBS but HOTQ is where it really took off. I would still recommend reading them in order though.
 
ralphkern said:
The later Harrington books are pretty beefy affairs. I also feel they lose the way a bit. Don't get me wrong I love rich, deeply plotted worlds but it gets cumbersome and lacking in focus.
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I don't actually read the later ones. I get them in electronic form and do text-to-speech and listen to the MP3s. I think the overall conflict with Mesa and the Solarian League is interesting but there is too much shallow detail. I can listen to it while I wash the dishes but I could not sit and read it.

psik
 
Aye. The problem for me is there is not much jeopardy for the characters. HOTQ was and that era were the best as the Manties and Peeps were relatively close to parity in term of tech. The middle books I actually found myself sympathizing more with several of the peep characters, Thiesman and Foraker etc, as they were the ones facing impossible odds against the 'goodies'.

By the later ones it just turns into space invaders and they're swatting the Sol ships out of the sky like they are little more than irritants.
 
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