Military Fantasy Fiction

John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater.

The Blaze are getting their direction and technology from those who had driven the Progenitors from the galaxy. The Vestrall. Leviathan takes his select humans to the frontlines in Earth's war with the Blaze Collective to collect intelligence on where to find the Vestrall. The Blaze aren't forthcoming. They go farther, a thousand light-years behind enemy lines to a planet that used to be important. It's no longer the home of the Vestrall, but of a biomechanical race that is little more than drones.

Constantine had forsaken his family name and birthright. At 28-years old, he’d escaped Earth to help terraform Mars. An empire’s heir went missing just as the universe’s greatest threat announces itself. War Games will decide who represents humanity in this extinction level struggle. Constantine is summoned. With little training but abundant talent, can Constantine win these games? If he does, will he be a force in the coming war? Or is it already too late for humanity?

The world taught them to hate each other. Now they are the only ones who can save it. Josh grew up fearing the dangerous world beyond his Hive. Decades after the bombs fell, he believed himself safe—until his home was invaded and nearly destroyed. Years later, Josh is a Defender, patrolling the treacherous land once called Colorado in search of Raiders who dare wander too close. After a mission goes horribly wrong, Josh falls into the hands of someone he’d only heard about in stories. River is a Semi-Human—part of an enhanced group once engineered to purify the radioactive air. After ...

The lines. No ship can traverse the void without them. Only linesmen can work with them. But only Ean Lambert hears their song. And everyone thinks he's crazy.... Most slum kids never go far, certainly not becoming a level 10 linesman like Ean. Even if he's part of a small and unethical cartel, and the other linesmen disdain his self-taught methods, he's certified and working. Then a mysterious alien ship is discovered at the edges of the galaxy.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

The Tenth Realm has been lost, and Akran’s hordes of devourers and ravagers have been loosed upon the lower realms, dealing the reclusive and powerful Imperium a serious blow. It will take Alva, the Imperium, the sects, clans, nations, and city-states to band together as they did in times of old. It’s time for everyone to put their war boots on and put their cultivation to use.

On the planet Mistral, an uprising of barons has upset the delicate balance of power. But, as Yarrick was soon forced to learn, Mistral and Imperial politics are often murky, the truth seldom clear cut. As war engulfs the world, a plot unravels that pits old friends against one another and fashions unusual alliances. Chaos cults, the fanatical Adepta Sororitas and clandestine inquisitors all stand between Yarrick and his mission. Here is where the legend began. In this crucible, Lord Commissar Sebastian Yarrick was forged in blood.

Two hundred years ago, a fleet of colony ships left Earth and started a settlement on Proxima Centauri. Centurion Space Force pilot Nathan Stacker didn't expect to return home to find his wife dead. He didn't expect the murderer to look just like him, and he definitely didn't expect to be the one to take the blame. But his wife had control of a powerful secret. A secret that stretches across the light years between two worlds and could lead to the end of both. Now that secret is in Nathan's hands, and he's about to make the most desperate evasive maneuver of his life.

Two hundred years after nuclear and chemical weapons have nearly annihilated the global population, the last of mankind struggles on in isolated communities. Law and order is carried out by the Political Office, black-clad police who rule through fear and violence, commanding the world's survivors how to think, how to act, and when to obey the call to the Gathering: the ritual massing for war against an unknown and unseen enemy. Now the call has come, and all nations must pay tribute.

With the galaxy thrown into chaos by mutual breaches of the Two Hundred Years' peace, what seemed like an isolated incident on the Thelicosa/Merida border has become an epidemic. In the midst of this chaos, the Thelicosan and Meridan fleets on their respective borders have come to a sort of tense peace after the events in Book II, but now it's clear: Somebody wants war. And it's not the Free Systems of the galaxy.

Deep within Syndicate World space, the Alliance fleet continues its dangerous journey home under the command of Captain John “Black Jack” Geary—revived after a century spent in suspended animation. Geary’s victories over the enemy have earned him both the respect—and the envy—of his fellow officers…

Dr. Beth Parker is a space archaeologist, documenting the history of planetary expansion and colonization for Kalok Enterprises and the Interplanetary Mining Guild. A piece of alien technology embeds itself in Beth's arm, giving her the ability to see the energy impressions of long-ago people and events. When Beth uncovers proof of genocide that could bring down the big mining companies, she's the target of assassins. Wyatt makes a split-second decision to intervene, launching them both into a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game with some of the most powerful organizations in the system.

The war will come - it is inevitable. After centuries of struggle, the ISF Intrepid has finally brought its colonists to New Canaan, a star system better than any they imagined. They made landfall and began to build their new home, far from the troubles of Sol and the Inner Stars. Yet no one in the Orion Arm has forgotten that the colonists possess the most valuable technology known to humankind, least of all Tanis Richards - as she secretly prepares to defend New Canaan against any and all aggressors.

The 26th century. Humanity has expanded beyond Earth’s system to hundreds of planets that colonists now call home. But the United Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command is struggling to control this vast empire. After exhausting all strategies to keep seething colonial insurrections from exploding into a full-blown interplanetary civil war, the UNSC has one last hope.

His name is Taylor McFadden, survivor of 83 trips into the ZOO. Now, he's retired, and yet his country needs his skills to save people in the country he calls home. Can he build a company, put down roots, and still bring the pain when the FBI calls? When they tag him as The Cryptid Assassin, they weren't wrong. For monsters that go bump in the night, he is death incarnate.

U.S. Marine Tyson Gage has only one option left: to become a bounty hunter, then collect enough loot and upgrades to mount a rescue among the stars... Eight hundred years in the future. Joined by his dog and a beautiful woman who, despite their attraction, is on his last nerve, Gage must leave life on Earth behind for a universe of aliens, criminals, and hyperspace more deadly and awesome than he can imagine.

MacKinlay Kantor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and master storyteller, shows us how the South could have won the Civil War, how two small shifts in history (as we know it) in the summer of 1863 could have turned the tide for the Confederacy. What would have happened: to the Union, to Abraham Lincoln, to the people of the North and South, to the world?

When Lieutenant Iari hears screams in the night, she expects to interrupt a robbery or break up a fight. Instead she discovers a murder with an impossible suspect: a riev, one of the battle-mecha decommissioned after the end of the last conflict, repurposed for manual labor. Riev don't kill people. And yet, clearly, one has. Iari sets out to find it.

Mark Victor was a soldier left broken after the Harmony War ended. What can a broken ex-trooper really do? What are they good for if they've gone through the EMF and been tossed out the other side? If you were to ask Mark...Maybe, doing what the enemy couldn't and following his brothers and sisters. Mark wakes up to a nightmare, to an unfamiliar place with unknown faces. A planet under attack, an enemy he's never seen before. He just wants to escape, but when he sees others in danger, he realizes that a trooper stands for something; they stand to protect their own. No matter the cost.