I rank the nine Kindle Unlimited military SciFi series I’d read by the summer of 2015, from worst to best, with my scores out of 10: Constitution, Escape to Earth, Swarm, the Human Legion, Battle Cruiser, Space Carrier Avalon, Steel Breach, Fractured Space and the Saiph books. I say what worked, what didn’t and which ones are worth your reading time.
The Saiph series is my pick of the bunch, with Fractured Space and Steel Breach close behind, while Constitution is the one I’d skip.
I’ve already gone into the good and bad of Kindle Unlimited so I won’t repeat it here. The short version is that it’s a cheap way to try new and fairly unknown authors, but nobody wants to burn evenings on books that aren’t worth it. This is my quick and dirty list of the Kindle Unlimited military SciFi I’ve read so far, from worst to best, with the scores I gave each series out of 10 at the time. It isn’t a ranking of the genre’s greats. It’s a list of what I actually picked up on a subscription and whether I’d tell a friend to do the same.
A couple of notes before the list. The scores are from when I read each book, and a few of them look a little different now that I can see the whole run side by side. Where that’s the case I say so. And since I wrote these as I went, the order has more to do with how each series held up for me than with how ambitious it is. A series with a so-so first book and a strong run after it is going to sit differently than one that opens well and fades, and I’ve tried to be straight about which is which. Most of these are cheap or free if you’ve got the subscription, which is exactly why I’m telling you which ones to leave alone. There’s no point spending a weekend on a book that was never going to pay you back for it, and I’d rather you spent that weekend on something, like one of the books near the end of the list.
The ones I’d skip or only borrow
Constitution, Book 1 of the Legacy Fleet, is the one I’d miss, and I gave it a 3.3. A broken down ship, a down on his luck captain and an Engineer and Doctor who are basically Scotty and Bones, and nothing really new in the tale apart from maybe the enemy. The writing and editing errors don’t help, and the science is fine, but I’d just come off a run of very good books and this one jarred me. Looking at the whole list now I’d probably score it a bit higher, and I might change that depending on how the rest of the series does (assuming I read it).
Escape to Earth got a 5.8. There are some interesting ideas here, like an escape pod from an advanced race crash landing on Earth with one survivor who’s changed to look human, but the writing is stilted and the massive fleet battles take away any caring you might have for the characters. Whatever challenge comes up there’s a technical solution waiting in the wings, and it’s hard to feel for the death and destruction when you know it’s only temporary. I read all four books because they were free, and I wouldn’t have paid for them.
Swarm is the odd one on this list because I didn’t give it a score, but the first book is actually quite good. You’ll run into a fair few typos and other writing errors, and over a series that’s now ten books and counting my enjoyment waned. It’s about an imminent attack on Earth, and another species sends out emissaries who pick their candidates through a brutal Darwinian process that weeds out all but the strongest and smartest, who then pilot a fleet of somewhat self aware ships. That’s similar to The Ember War, and like that one it’s good, mindless reading for a beach or a flight, though definitely not at the level of the books further down.
Fine for the price
The Human Legion got a 6.1. Book 1, Marine Cadet, starts out way too slowly and the action sequences take forever, though it’s written well and the characters are interesting, especially the aliens and a likeable Pedro. The premise is a good one, with millions of children sold into slavery to found a Marine Corps that grows over the centuries into an enhanced race of warriors. The later books are better paced, but the overarching story still only moves slowly, and I’d say Old Man’s War does a similar kind of thing better.
Battle Cruiser scored a 6.8 and it comes from the same author as Swarm. It’s written significantly better and has a much larger scope. I’ll be honest, I almost gave it up in the first quarter because it starts so slowly, but it gets going once the crew finds a derelict in space with a single lone occupant, and the enemy are well enough designed that they could literally be anyone. It reminded me of the Nicholas Seafort books, which are better written, and I don’t think this one reaches that level. It’s still a story with real promise, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Space Carrier Avalon gets a 7.3, and the reason it works is a nice contrast with Constitution. It’s also about a legacy ship from a war fought decades earlier, but the captain isn’t a broken down has-been, the engineer isn’t Scotty and the doctor isn’t Bones. There are no aliens here, just humans against the Terran Commonwealth, with good fighter action and some well explained ship to ship combat. The tension builds more slowly than most books of this type, and I liked the more personal moments, because they made the characters feel human. The final sequence had me flipping pages frantically, since nobody’s safe, and I’d happily follow the author after this one. Weirdly, I almost passed on it because of the cover.
Worth your money
Steel Breach earned a 7.7 and it takes us in a different direction to everything else here. It’s trench warfare à la World War I, with no man’s land between the armies and waves of charging faceless foes, and the technology on the front lines is understandable and recognizable and in some ways more archaic than you’d expect. A penal battalion gets sent in with unfamiliar leadership, weapons and training and has to make a difference in a war to the death, which is a setup we’ve seen before, but this one is well conceived and well written. The chapters are very short and full of action, and there are some small typographical errors, though it’s easy to read all the way through. The story arc underneath, which only gets touched on in Book 1, is extremely interesting, and the bogeymen to really fear are the Emflife, synthetic beings that can take on any shape and look nearly invulnerable.
Fractured Space scored an 8, and if I’m honest that might be a little high for the list as a whole. I’m leaving it, because it’s well written and the story, while a bit weird, is interesting enough that I wanted to read the next part. A ragtag group of castaways ends up on a strangely changed Mars that’s been turned into a game preserve and farming planet, where monsters from other worlds and dinosaurs from Earth’s past roam free to be hunted for Earth’s teeming masses. Then you find out all communication with every other human world has stopped, and you start wondering whether they’re the last people left. I had a couple of gripes, like how an enemy device could catch every ship in the fleet with no holdouts or patrols, but I still recommend it. There’s something almost charming in it.
My pick of the bunch
The Saiph series is the one I’d put at the top, and I gave it an 8. I only grabbed it because it was free on Kindle Unlimited and I needed backup books for a holiday, and it had me up late turning pages. Mankind perfects faster than light travel, and on the maiden voyage the ship detects an artificial signal on a planet and finds the remnants of a long dead civilization. The alien DNA is almost identical to ours, and the Saiph, we realize, manipulated humanity in a last ditch effort to leave a little of themselves behind in their fight with the Others. They also left a library of information to help bootstrap us, because the Others are coming for humans too. Then book 2 picks right up where that ends, and it fixed most of my complaints from the first one, which is always nice when an author listens.
The characters are what sell it for me. They’re interesting and engaging and, most refreshingly, they’re not infallible, so they make mistakes and they’re as human as we are. The enemy in book one is somewhat faceless and amorphous, but that changes quickly in book two, and by the end of it the question of who the real enemy is starts to raise its head. Both books have scientists and marines working side by side, plus big space battles that make you feel like you’re part of them. It’s the series I’d tell you to pick up first, and if you do only one thing from this list, I’d say start with it.
