Military Science Fiction Series

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Most people are either knee deep in relatives, eating turkey and cheering on their football team or battling it out in the stores, scooping up door busting deals.

With most of my family on the East Coast and my daughter in sunny Puerto Vallarta (shed a quick tear for her…no wait), hubbie and I will be munching a hot turkey sandwich and cheering on a favorite football team. Maybe check out a sale.

With Someone’s Clone in final proof, I am now turning my attention over to the next book…named…?? Well, Gosh, I have no firm title so far.

So I thought to engage you, my blog readers, to help me. Tell me which title you would be most likely buy to read.

Saving Angels

Factoring Fate

Angels in the Equation

Angels and Equations

The Grandmother paradox

If there be Angels

The Fate Factor

Shaping the Future

Killing Time

(Your suggestion..not a published title)

There will be a prize for those selecting the winning title.

A quick note on my Countdown Deal. After blogging last week, I went to list Touching Crystal and found that I had not enrolled it in the KDP Select program yet. The rules state that you must be enrolled at least thirty days prior to scheduling a Countdown. So I listed Space Song instead and confused everyone.

My apologies.

I will set up a Countdown for Touching Crystal when it becomes eligible and let you know ahead of time.

As promised, I read Ark Royal and was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed it. It was well written and well edited. Christopher Nuttall is very prolific with several military series ( Ark Royal, The Empire’s Corp, Martial Law, The Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire) and fantasy series also. (Schooled in Magic) Okay, more books than I have room here to mention. He has over thirty-five published on Amazon and is an example of how an author can do very well self-publishing.

What I was curious about was his reviews for Ark Royal. He had 1518 reviews total for this book. That was amazing. 751 were five star, 505 were four star, 153 three star, 69 two star and 40 one star. I was intrigued by how many reviewed his book, and then at the wide variety of opinions. Some loved it, “A fun read” to those who called it bad, “Space Karaoke.” Getting reviews is painfully hard for me, or else I don’t know the secret sauce. Nuttall’s wide range of comments prepared me as a writer to understand how subjective science fiction stories can be and that every writer, no matter how good, gets a few bad reviews. For such an enjoyable story, some were brutal.

This is the first book in a series of three. Ark Royal is the name of a lumbering and aged space warship put aside in the shipyard and barely functioning. What keeps her functioning is an alcoholic captain, Ted Smith, who cobbles together her outdated systems and tenderly cares for her as he drinks himself senseless, mourning a dead wife.

Then aliens attack a Russian settled colony world along the space tramlines, and when Earth sends her best and brightest to defend her territories, the aliens tear through all those sleek new warships in an eye-opening rout. The Ark Royal, because of her heavy dense hull and projectile style weaponry, becomes the lone ship able to resist the enemy’s firepower.

Of course, a young, ambitious, newly-graduated Lieutenant, James Fitzwilliam, uses his family’s friendship with the Spacelord to try to take command, but Captain Smith’s knowledge of her idiosyncrasies just barely enables him to hang onto his command while karma makes James his XO. The Spacelord asks the young XO to keep an eye on the shaky captain and report any slip-ups.

The two are sent out to confront and delay the alien enemy until Earth can build the ships it needs. Also on board for this dangerous mission are a ragbag crew and a group of obnoxious embedded reporters. The mix is volatile and the pressures both inside and out would be enough to drive even a teetotaler to drink, much less a vulnerable captain who swears he’ll stay sober through the war.

The inevitable space battles are nicely balanced with a crew who fight their own internal battles and put a human face on war. Also interesting is the process of trying to figure out how the aliens might think, what they might look like and what technology and society they might have developed.