My Top Military SciFi Picks of 2019: Mechs, Mercenaries and the Clans

These are my military SciFi picks of 2019, and I’ve cheated a little, because 2018 was so quiet on the book front that it didn’t deserve a list of its own. So this covers both years, built only from the books I’d actually written about on the blog by the end of 2019. The last time I did one of these was my military SciFi picks of 2016, and the shelf looks very different now. Back then it was mostly Kindle Unlimited reads, cheap or free, and a lot of self-published series. This time it’s nearly all BattleTech. I cancelled Kindle Unlimited, picked up Scribd, and came across the BattleTech novels again after a very long time away from the universe, and I’ve been working through them ever since.

That turned into a bit of a project. The books are published under the BattleTech Legends label, and the numbering doesn’t follow the timeline, so I put together a reading order for the whole series with notes on each book as I get through it. The short version is that the Legends order seems a bit out of whack. Wolves on the Border was actually the first one I read, because it’s number one in their list, but going by when things happen in the universe it’s out of sequence, which is the whole reason I made the list in the first place. So the order below is my order, the way I think you should read them, not the order on the covers. There are four books here from the two years, plus a handful of older favorites I keep going back to.

Where I’d start: the Gray Death Legion

Decision at Thunder Rift is the book I’d start anybody on, and it’s the one I think should be first or close to it, even though Legends has it at number 24. It’s set entirely in 3024 and covers the founding of the Gray Death Legion, a famous mercenary unit, by Grayson Death Carlyle. He’s barely more than a boy when his father’s mercenary regiment is wiped out by traitors and sabotage, and he’s left on a world that’s turned hostile to offworlders, without a mech to his name. He rallies the local militia, takes down a Wasp, captures a Locust and its pilot, Lori Kalmar, and trains a ragtag team of infantry to fight mechs. It’s a good introduction to the BattleTech universe, because it gives a quick overview of the politics and history of the Inner Sphere without getting bogged down in the details, and the mechs are described well enough that they’re easy to picture.

It’s not perfect. The underlying plot is somewhat overcomplicated and convoluted, in all honesty, and the politics of the local lords and ladies on Trellwan are a bit transparent. But those are small negatives, and it was a good start, and it brings in characters who carry forward for a few books. Mercenary’s Star picks up directly afterwards, with the new Legion short of money and taking a contract to train a guerrilla army on Verthandi, a planet the Draconis Combine took in 3015. It’s the Kuritans again, the same people responsible for the death of Grayson’s father, which gives him a debt he badly wants to collect while he’s supposed to be acting like a commander. The dropship crash, the rebel base and the slow turn into a full uprising in the capital make it a natural second book, and I went straight on to it.

The Clans: Way of the Clans and Bloodname

Way of the Clans is the one that made me wish I’d started reading BattleTech much sooner, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the first real look at the Clans, an extremely martial society descended from Kerensky’s forces, and it follows Aidan, a Trueborn Jade Falcon recruit bred to be a warrior, through his training on Ironhold. His instructor, Falconer Joanna, takes an instant dislike to him and does everything she can to make his life miserable, and the weaker trainees get flushed out one after another. There’s less action than in most BattleTech books, because it’s more about Clan attitudes and procedures, but there’s a great blend of technology, action and Clan culture. I also loved the extras, the artwork tucked into the pages, the glossary and the schematic drawings for each mech. Aidan’s bold, risky tactics in his Trial of Position reminded me of the first Gray Death Legion book, too, which is one more reason to read that one first.

Bloodname has much more action than the first one, and it’s another one I’d highly recommend, especially if you like your stories driven by action. Aidan is living under a false identity as a Freeborn warrior called Jorge, and his base commander, Kael Pershaw, despises the Freeborn under his command and makes him wear the Dark Band of Shame. Then Aidan’s unit is picked for a rescue mission into a place called Blood Swamp, and the Trueborn warriors, who have no idea how to pilot mechs through a swamp, have to suffer a Freeborn leading the operation. It ends in a victory so big that it opens up a Bloodname contest, which only Trueborn are allowed to enter, and Aidan reveals who he really is and demands the right to compete. I won’t spoil how the Trial of Refusal goes, with the odds at three to one against him.

Carried over from earlier years

A year’s reading never really starts from zero, and a few books from before 2018 are still the ones I’d measure everything else against. The Warp Marines come first. Decisively Engaged hooks you right from the beginning, with no slow build up, and humanity bombed back to the stone age and coming back with a Marine corps nobody wants to meet. The aliens are a bit flat, and a plot thread that felt like the Boxer Rebellion bugged me, but neither slowed me down. No Price Too High proved the series wasn’t a fluke, with proper starship combat and a whole planet to defend, and I gave it 8.8 out of 10 and pretty much inhaled it.

Old Man’s War is still a staple I go back to every now and then, a 75 year old signing up for a young body and a war, and I gave it 8 out of 10, with 4 out of 5 for both the characters and the story. Troy Rising is the series I reread whenever I need a pick me up, with Live Free or Die still my favorite of the three, Citadel my least favorite and The Hot Gate somewhere in between. Empire of Bones is tightly paced with characters who aren’t two dimensional, and The Collapsing Empire left me really positive about Scalzi again, with its feuding houses and an Emperox who charmed me. None of these are 2018 or 2019 picks, so they’re not ranked, but they’re the yardstick. When I say a BattleTech book is a good start, it’s against books like these that I’m saying it.

Why it turned into a BattleTech year

It came down to the subscription. I liked Kindle Unlimited, but I also disliked it at the same time, because it really only offered self-published books. I enjoyed getting to know a lot of those authors, and some of my favorite series came out of it, but I also wanted to read stuff from some of the big names in the industry. Scribd gave me that for about the same cost, plus magazines and audiobooks on top, and the first thing I found when I went looking was a whole shelf of BattleTech novels I hadn’t read in years. It’s been a long time since I originally read and played in that universe, and I was genuinely happy to come across the series again after so long.

So if this list looks lopsided, that’s why. My advice is the same as it was in the reviews. Read Decision at Thunder Rift first, then Mercenary’s Star. The Legends numbering has Way of the Clans at number two, which simply wouldn’t make any sense as a starting point. After those two, go to the Clans with Way of the Clans and Bloodname, and keep the reading order handy because the Legends numbering will only confuse you. I’ve got a long way still to go, from the Warrior trilogy to Wolves on the Border in its proper place, which is basically all about the mercenary group Wolf’s Dragoons and their Kurita paymasters, and plenty of Clan books after Bloodname. I even ended the year writing about the new MechWarrior 5 game, which tells you where my head was at by December.

Which BattleTech novel would you tell a new reader to start with? Tell me in the comments.