Just Finished Pic.rel. Any similar books which are?

Just Finished Pic.rel.

Any similar books which are /k/ approved? I am finishing my exams this wek and I need somehtign to look forward to.

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

LifeStraw Water Filter for Hiking and Preparedness

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

  1. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Great book. Here are some of my favorite K related/K adjacent books. Not in any particular order but the first one is the most important one to me as a soldier. Have your seat belt buckled up these. There is no going back after you read these.

    1. Gates of Fire
    2. Blood Red Snow
    3. Triple Agent
    4. One Soldiers War
    5. The Looming Tower
    6. The Afghanistan Papers
    7. Empire of the Summer Moon
    8. Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War
    9. Surprise, Kill, Vanish

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Thanks for the recommendations

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >1. Gates of Fire
      Fantasy isnt /k/

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        wrong

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Fantasy isnt /k/
        a challenger appears
        >In April 1945, Soviet forces are storming Berlin. Captain Hasso Pemsel and the survivors of his company are under siege in Berlin's Old Museum with orders to fight to the last man. Pemsel notices a large stone artifact that had not been removed to a safer location and is curious about it. In a lull in fighting, he crawls over and reads that it is the Omphalos from Zeus' temple in Delphi, a keystone and bridge between worlds. On a fatalistic whim he sits on it and is immediately transported to another world where magic works and wizards ride unicorns.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          kek, I remember one short story when some American got isekaied into Iceland A.D.1000 or something like that, not being able to understand the language and customs he got into petty altercation and shot someone with muh 1911 and then got hunted down and hacked to pieces by the angry locals. Honestly only plot armor makes these type of characters last long enough for a novel.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            He got turned into Thor and the 1911 was turned into Mjolner so I'd say it was pretty based.
            >the whole, "modern people can't fight with blades"
            "Bladed" combat was nothing more than a fricking brawl, anyone masterbating over dueling manuals would get punched in the face and then shanked.

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              >"Bladed" combat was nothing more than a fricking brawl
              barbarians

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              Try out a few HEMA lessons and get back to us on that. Even when it's a brawl, there are a lot of things that aren't intuitive about brawling, and adding swords to the mix is another complication.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >muh HEMA
                Got kicked out because I kept breaking bones, turns out that "fencing" and "swordplay" means absolutely frick all against a round shield to the face.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                LARP

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >larp
                Yeah, HEMA is like that.

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              >"Bladed" combat was nothing more than a fricking brawl
              a fricking brawl is a bunch of beered-up tyros windmilling haymakers outside a pub on Saturday night; a bunch of swordsmen with some training would look similar but their movements would be much more economical and ambush-like

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              >"Bladed" combat was nothing more than a fricking brawl, anyone masterbating over dueling manuals would get punched in the face and then shanked.
              Why do you think peasant rebellions and religious uprisings got consistently smacked down hard by aristocratic warrior castes until the adoption of firearms, pike-and-shot, war wagons, etc?

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >Why do you think peasant rebellions and religious uprisings got consistently smacked down hard by aristocratic warrior castes
                the noble elites say they agree to negotiate, offer safe passage for those that lay down their arms etc then slaughter everyone who was dumb enough to believe it

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >how they won
                Armor, better weapons, and coordination. There was a reason why things like "rights" and "limitations of the crown" started happening in England when Yeomenry became widespread, turns out that when the peasants can snipe you with a longbow you tend to start treating them better.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                well, that, but also the fact that after huge swathes of the population (that the landed gentry relied on for everything) died from the black death they became even more valuable, and thus even more capable of negotiating terms to their leaders. If peasants and Yeomen thought their local lord, duke, duchess, or baron was a douche, they would just move and serve one who wasn't.

                Everybody likes to characterize the medieval era as one where social issues were primarily decided by violence, but irl they had a lot more than that going on. That idea is just a combination of victorian era prejudices towards history and Hollywood dramatization. If a movie about the tyrannical lord virgin the tax hungry being overthrown was just about him going broke and being bought out by somebody more popular because all of his serfs deserted him to go live on sir chad the chill's holding's it wouldn't be as cinematic as berserk human waves crashing into eachother and catapults throwing giant fireballs 3 miles like modern day artillery.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >Everybody likes to characterize the medieval era as one where social issues were primarily decided by violence, but irl they had a lot more than that going on.
                .. this was an era where the church sanctioned committing genocide

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              Kek, nope, If I recall correctly the protagonist fell victim to this exact stereotypical way of thinking. Initially welcomed into a house as a guest, he thought his pistol and superficial knowledge would make him an important man. But in reality he was nobody, tolerated as a mild curiosity and nothing else. Shot an established local guy, had nothing to pay wergeld with (muh paper $), no relatives to vouch for him or shelter after he`s been outlawed by the althing.
              He got chased into the highlands by the posses, tried to make a last stand, shoot few people more and got obliterated cause the locals would not relent, further casualties just fueling their thirst for revenge instead of intimidating them enough to just let it go.
              Here I just found the title. Pretty cool read, but sort of btfoes the Gary Stu isekai gays typical to boomer military sf-slop novels itt.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >but sort of btfoes the Gary Stu isekai gays typical to boomer military sf-slop novels itt.
                an engineering student should be able to design a bridge, and a professional military officer with prussian training can bloody well lead an army

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >industrial engineer should be able to build a medieval wooden bridge and professional army officer would know hot to lead a host of tribal warriors

                kek, literally and unironically the mindset that got the MC killed in Anderson`s short story.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                I am going to assume you're trolling

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                Nope, read the story or a plot summary.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Came_Early

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                I meant that neither of your claims are right, and that you cannot be serious

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                OK, Anon, I yeld to your autismo.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                ancient greeks understood the concept of steam turbines, we'll have them running trains on schedule in no time at all

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Blood red snow really is incredible.

  2. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    That fricking butthole
    I read all his Council War books years ago, ploughing through all the cringe to get to the good parts, years ago. And this fricker doesn't even have the decency to finish the series

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      image related is short and fun read

      >John Ringo has said publicly that he plans on finishing the series, but sales were relatively low for him, causing them to fall to the back burner in priority. A working title for the fifth book is On Hero's Trail.

  3. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    If by similar you mean successfully predicting the future to degree that makes you do a double take I do have another suggestion.. While this novel is like 14 books deep in the series and not a standalone work, you should be able to read it alone without missing anything critical, it mostly takes place on just one planet.
    In this 2014 published novel, the settings in-universe NATO equivalent sends military advisors/intelligence operatives to help what amounts to essentially organized crime groups prepare for brutal defensive urban warfare against their oppressive government

    Also Russia has apparently used this book as a source when it talks about Ukrainian super soldiers and biolabs, which are talked about in context of settings ancient history.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Earth's Final War was the last great armed conflict fought by humans on their home planet of Earth.

      >In the late first millennium of the Diaspora of Man, the Slav Supremacists of Ukraine decided to create a superior human. Their genetic laboratories produced a line of "super soldiers" with enhanced strength, better reflexes, faster healing, and (allegedly) enhanced intelligence. These soldiers were then used to attack other nations in an attempt to gain dominion over the planet.

      >At this point, the Confederacy was in the process of defeating the Ukrainians, but the chaos and political infighting after the coup turned the war in Europe around. The Western European nations had been busy genetically modifying diseases such as anthrax, botulism, bubonic plague, meningitis, typhus, cholera, and the Ebola virus. Having integrated "kill switches" and stockpiled disease-specific vaccines, they believed themselves to be safe and employed the weaponized diseases against the Asians. Initially, they had almost exactly the desired effect, but after three T-years the pathogens started spreading and mutating among the civilian population, and eventually found their way back to Europe, largely immune to the vaccines their creators expected to protect them.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      That absolute unit on the right

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      That cover is awful, what the frick is wrong with that guy on the right?

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Ringo's books almost always have terrible convers. OP's is basically the only one that doesn't.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          >Ringo's books almost always have terrible convers. OP's is basically the only one that doesn't.
          I think this ones decent

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        >what the frick is wrong with that guy on the right?
        https://honorverse.fandom.com/wiki/Manpower_Incorporated
        >Manpower Incorporated was a genetic engineering company based on the planet Mesa. Its manufacturing of genetic slaves, though outlawed by many star nations, was one of the backbones of the Mesan economy.
        >Manpower's "products" had an ID code embedded on their tongues by genetic means
        >The F-line was a line bred for heavy manual labor.

        NTA, but the first and only book by Ringo I have ever read was the one in the OP, and his post is a perfect summation of his style and content. His books are trash and appeal to people who don't like reading.

        lets have a quick look at a post-covid review of that book
        >This was published in 2008 and describes a new bird flu from China that is 60% fatal and spreads all over the world. It starts in 2019 (Gasp!).
        >It is well researched and highly informative regarding viruses.

        >The most amazing thing is that it describes in great detail precisely the way Covid19 has spread around the world, the way it has treated politically, medically, and socially.
        >It has the anti-vaxers, the anti-maskers, the vaccine mandate demonstrators. It has the delays in response, the congressional gridlock, the poor planning, the wasted money and efforts, the political posturing, the poor vaccine rollout mistakes, and much of the other phenomena we have all experienced over the last two years.

        >Incredibly prescient work.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          What it doesn't talk about is Ringo writing at length where the main character (for some reason) gets back from the middle east, starts a national hotline where his self-insert calls Gen-Xers and tells them they are useless and they cry because they have to (for some reason) learn how to farm (he's basically fantasizing about Austonian socialites being forced to use Bobcats for the first time and start crying at the idea of killing animals), and then for some reason the "NASDAQ hits 30,000" and America saves the world somehow.

          It's not prescient in the least. All he did was write about SaRS (which predates this and was topical still), and made it spread around the world because he liked the idea of that happening like was planned to happen in Rainbow Six.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            it has 4.5/5 on amazon
            >JohnRingo must have a crystal ball
            >Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2022
            >It's wierd, reading this now, to see how Ringo predicted the effects of a global epidemic.

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              That doesn't mean shit. It's a shit book, and I realized that back when I was 15 when it came out and I had just started shit posting on /k/ in 2008 after finding it in an airport book kiosk.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >It's a shit book
                thats not what the reviews say, its not what my own judgement says

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                Get better taste. That's all I can say. Genre fiction is bad enough. Genre fiction by Ringo is just stuffing your mind with garbage.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >Genre fiction by Ringo is just stuffing your mind with garbage.
                lets move to his other works, in Legacy of the Aldenata series, the galactic provided AI devices, which spying abilities act as a repeating plot point throughout most of the series basically shows Ringo figured out the name of the game well ahead before smartphones even were a thing and no one who read those books was surprised by anything Snowden released, my personal reaction was "I thought this was public information, not classified secrets"

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                I liked his side stories in the posleen wars series more than the main series
                Picrel is my favorite in the series but god all the covers are fricking awful

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                Yellow eyes has a dangerously based rant at the end.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                That series had a lot of interesting concepts but I can't really recommend it to people. Humanity being thrust into a galactic war but under equipped for economic reasons and experiencing domestic chaos after mobilizing the majority of the military age population is maybe the most interesting facet.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >but I can't really recommend it to people
                really? I haven't heard anyone say anything bad about it

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                It's full of Boomer schlock which I can tolerate but don't wish on anyone. Its a book series where 7.62 and .45, 44 magnum, ociw but in 7.62 and desert eagles are the pinnacle of small arms and everyone listens to and references 70s rock the same handful of military adjacent sayings. There's cool ideas and interesting subplots but everyone is always saying "been there done that and got the Tshirt" over and over. The whole plotline of the Sheva guns is fun largely worth it because it's people with some of the tools making due in a bad situation with a very large amount of destruction.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >It's full of Boomer schlock which I can tolerate but don't wish on anyone. Its a book series where 7.62 and .45, 44 magnum, ociw but in 7.62 and desert eagles are the pinnacle of small arms and everyone listens to and references 70s rock the same handful of military adjacent sayings
                This is my main beef with John Ringo.

                He is a good novelist, don't get me wrong. But better ones (ie really really great ones, because he is already pretty good) will not rely on shared cultural memes to connect with readers; in fact they would try to avoid cultural references so as not to "date" their work.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                In one of the later books a character listens to creed and it's one the most jarring things in the series because aside from references to older metal I don't think there any mention of contemporary music and it's far enough in the future that cree either survived an alien invasion that killed like 5 billion people or the character who would have been in elementary school pre invasion has decided to plum the cultural depths for lost music.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >plum the cultural depths for lost music
                I-I-IS THIS PROTOCULTURE?!

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                Lol, in Combat K, Andy Remic keeps referencing Life Is A Rollercoaster by Ronan Keating because according to him it's become a cultural icon, like Elvis, and never goes out of fashion.
                So his heroes are in an elevator and centuries in the future it's still playing.
                And later, they are infiltrating a skyscraper taken over by a biomechanical growth that has turned the whole building into a living organism, and the "stomach" is a disco filled with zombies gently swaying to the same song.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >or the character who would have been in elementary school pre invasion has decided to plum the cultural depths for lost music.
                my playlist has lots of old music that could be described obscure

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                good

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                You're a fricking moron. Stop embarrassing yourself.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            >All he did was write about SaRS (which predates this and was topical still)
            I'd like to point out the current pandemic causing virus is literally called SARS-CoV-2

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            He doesn't *start* a national hotline... he gets transferred to it by the notHillary administration as a way of making him disappear from the public eye (they didn't like having the public reminded about just how badly they messed up their foreign commitments). It's an almost complete waste of his time, but having grown up on a large farm, he at least knows what he's talking about when he tells the hippies what they're doing wrong.

            Also, for the record, I should point out that his fictional pandemic was the real thing, and killed tens of millions in the US alone, and was stopped by a brand-new "universal vaccine", which is totally the opposite of what later happened in real life.

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              >and was stopped by a brand-new "universal vaccine", which is totally the opposite of what later happened in real life.
              funny enough, the rona vaccine was advertised as having been designed to work even if the virus mutates

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >advertised
                Yeah, and then it was "Well, it'll protect others from you if you get sick (how?)", and then "Well, it'll make you less sick", and then "Well, you need yet *another* "booster", because the last one didn't actually do anything".

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >funny enough, the rona vaccine was advertised as having been designed to work even if the virus mutates

                Which was an outright lie, if you happened to know anything about this technology. But NPCs do not care, the TV is always right.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >A single dose of mRNA vaccine reduced the risk of SARS-CoV-2 by about two-thirds in adults≥70 years old

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              Whats even funnier is, pkay, we didn't have the govt nationalize farmland and forcibly displace their owners, but we really DID see a stampede of clueless urban hipsters into the rural countryside. The result hasn't been a national famine, but what IS happening is that the cost of living in a lot of formerly low cost areas is skyrocketing and its displacing the locals. So I mean, the spirit of what he predicted occurred.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Never met an Italian ?

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        >That cover is awful, what the frick is wrong with that guy on the right?

        Whats wrong with the woman on the right?

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Nothing at all

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >puffy simpson neck
      >w i d e
      >goth chick
      >lesbo
      >sirius black
      >mustard gas
      this better be good

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        I liked it, personally I recommend the audiobook version

  4. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I bought an elephant rifle because some random floridamen repel an interdimensional ayyliem invasion a few miles from where I live in the book: through the looking glass.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Ringo's Looking Glass is probably my favorite novel

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        I really like Live Free or Die, also. The rest of the Looking Glass gets a bit goofy for my taste.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          >I really like Live Free or Die
          I too enjoyed the series, I hope he continues it some day

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      based

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        AND moronic. But it's OK, I always wanted a moronicly powerful gun to have at the top of my collection.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >I bought an elephant rifle because some random floridamen repel an interdimensional ayyliem invasion a few miles from where I live in the book: through the looking glass.

      Sadly, the first book in the series was also the best in the series.

  5. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    If you're in a John Ringo mode, check out the "Paladin of Shadows" series.... but start with the second book.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >but start with the second book
      whats wrong with the first one?

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        The writing is rough.

        It's basically a fever dream of a book that includes things like the main character "knowing he's a rapist", some bdsm negotiation that includes a character's mother (not in a sexy way either), and just overall insanity...

        The second book onwards are all more of a "man builds stuff and gets a lot of pussy" type story instead of whatever the first book was.

        You don't really need to know the first book to understand the rest of the series, but it's worth reading once you've decided on how you feel about the series.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          To expand on this, John Ringo basically wrote the first book in an effort to get the ideas out of his head and go back to his "real" writing.

          Then Jim Baen got a hold of it and asked to buy it off him for publishing. The first book was literally never intended to be seen by anybody not named Ringo.

          Like I said, the rest of the series is great in a sort of cringe-y, 'never share this with your friends unless you absolutely know they'll enjoy it' sort of way.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            He's stated that the metrics on that series are decisively tilted towards female readers. I guess it's like 30 Shades With Guns, or something.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          >a fever dream of a book
          it was certainly quite a ride, I listened to it as an audiobook while going out on a really long night jog and the book basically starts with the character going out on a walk at night

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        OH JOHN RINGO NO! Primer:

        https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          oh yes, I shouldn't just linked this, good man.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            *should've

            for actual content, 1632 is also pretty good and worth the read.

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              The only people I've seen badmouth 1632 have been dreary normies and right-wing death squad LARPers who think good old fashioned liberal democracy is a poison and they absolutely should have shut down the library, bound the entire town to totalitarian servitude and enslaved the filthy downtimers.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                yeah... the committees of correspondence are straight up antifa. the UMWA is nothing like his trotskyist bunch in the books. and its total israeli fellatio.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >disrupting civil order to overthrow a despotic monarchy is le bad
                >collective bargaining is a communist conspiracy

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >le freedom fighters!!!
                nope theyre straight up terrorists killing anyone they simply dont like under the revolution.
                >collective bargaining
                hillbillies dont talk like cityboy chicago political science professors or bluehaired trannies
                1632 is eric flints trotskyist fantasy. the man was a goddamn trotskyist in 2000

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      no no, get all of it

      >but start with the second book
      whats wrong with the first one?

      the first one was his raw coomer fantasy self-insert (kills Osama, rapes prostitutes, has violent sex)

      the subsequent ones was his raw coomer fantasy self-insert goes to Georgia, buys a valley and a tribe of impossibly-tough not-Vikings and impossibly-hot women, builds a mini-nation to frick Chechens with, and has lots of violent sex

      i have to admire a guy who can make a living writing books based on him just wanking off to his fetishes of killing baddies while forming a harem of battle amazons and engage in bdsm
      it really opened my eyes to creative writing
      with your imagination you can do anything... even if you probably shouldn't

      the difference is John Ringo is actually good at writing.

      He's a neocon boomer cringelord, but his books are right wing junk food and his writing style is fun to read.

      >a neocon boomer
      nah, he's solidly LOL FRICK RUSSIANS
      >his books are right wing junk food and his writing style is fun
      correct, to the point of being self-parody
      nobody who's actually a neocon boomer would write like he does, to them it's SERIOUS BUSINESS

  6. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Any recomendations on books about firearms? I'd like to learn about them from places other than wikipedia, forgotten weapons, etc.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >i need books because thats where the SOVLfull knowledge is!

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      incel

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Hatchers Notebook. If you cover to cover that book you'll know more about internal ballistics than 99% of /k/.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Mein homie. Great stuff.

  7. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    i have to admire a guy who can make a living writing books based on him just wanking off to his fetishes of killing baddies while forming a harem of battle amazons and engage in bdsm
    it really opened my eyes to creative writing
    with your imagination you can do anything... even if you probably shouldn't

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      if you don't like certain parts of a book or other piece of media, you can just change it with your imagination...

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        yep
        imagination is great
        thanks mom for getting me into fiction

  8. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Legionnaire is a great book. Frickin Koobs.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Absolutely exquisite taste anon KTF

  9. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    This book. By this author.
    This right here triggered the ever living frick out of Spacebattles, which is a public service.
    >Muslims smuggle multiple nuclear weapons into the US and detonate them
    >under NotHillary's presidency and 15 million Americans die
    >NotHillary does absolutely nothing to the terrorists
    >a literal fascist gets elected in a ABSOLUTE victory, winning every state
    >disbands every intelligence agency
    >makes it legal to assassinate political opponents
    >Democrats cease to exist overnight
    >then launches nearly every nuke we have at the middle east
    >95% of the Muslim world ceases to exist
    >Europeons take in the rest
    >within a generation the "New Europeans" vote to institute Islamic law
    >Christians become serfs
    >US goes full Dirlewanger on Indonesia and the Philippines
    >shits grimdark

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >This right here triggered the ever living frick out of Spacebattles
      lmao I went to look it up
      >That book is severely offensive at best, bordering on nativism and fascism at worst. Totally without merit, needs swastika on the cover.
      maybe I should check it out

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      oh look, a book about 2023 London under Sadiq Khan

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Mayor of London has no power, moron. Lord Mayor does, however. Who isn't Khan. Khan's power is what fricking poster to put up in the tube.

  10. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Frontlines series, think Starship Troopers reimagined by a modern German soldier

  11. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    /k/ could could you critique a premise for a sci-fi military novel I've got burning my brain?
    >Rise From the Ashes (Book 1 of the Reclamation Wars)
    >the year is 1486 AD(After Downfall)
    >world is essentially Kenshi/Dune/Kharak on steroids
    >post-post apocalyptic
    >most technology is pre industrial with near magictech at the extreme
    >William Saladin is the son of Leonard Saladin, the greatest warrior of his clan and one of the greatest warriors on Jinn
    >Leonard is a owner of a Blessed Armor (pretty much a stripped down Mjolner/Iron Man/Nanosuit
    >William is due to inherit it, but he hates fighting believing it a waste of lives and causing suffering
    >he prefers to be a Ruin Runner, a archeologist/mechanic/scavenger
    >unfortunately they're seen as the second lowest class, only criminals are lower
    >William sneaks away one night to go into the Cursed Lands where the ground is glass and the air and water poison
    >he has to find some parts to fix the clans Landcruiser, as something broke
    >finds the part
    >but gets ambushed by bandits
    >he hates fighting but doesn't mean he's bad at it
    >he BTFO's the bandits and then
    >a man in Blessed Armor effortlessly disarms (literally) and throws him off a cliff.....

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      you should be able to describe the whole premise of the book in that many words anon
      don't use two words when you can use one

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Got it.
        >post-post apocalyptic sci-fi
        >story of reclaiming lost glory and technology
        >story about how technology changes society and how it isn't always good
        >breasts

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      I'm gonna drop a hot take. As long as the plot is semi-coherent, follows a relatively understandable path, and is generally "okay" then you'll be fine.

      If your ability to actually write prose is shit, you're never gonna sell more than a dozen copies. Like, okay. What series am I describing?

      > humanity is at war in space
      > MC is the Captain of a ship
      > MC does space shenanigans
      > MC kills lots of enemies through ass-pulled sci-fi bullshit
      > enemy ship go boom
      > repeat
      > war ends in human victory
      > something about how awful the war was, how hard rebuilding will be, but MC perseveres and fricks the hot chick

      That's like a solid 90% of military sci-fi right there. And we keep reading it because the authors write good prose and have interesting interactions between different characters, who ultimately aren't so different book to book.

      > MC is stern but fair
      > has a rag-tag crew
      > chief of engineering bro
      > senior enlisted bro
      > asbergers having scientist bro (sometimes cheng above, sometimes different character)

      Etc. etc. Write good prose, make sure your characters have actually interesting interactions with one another, you'll be fine.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        >What series am I describing?
        >MC perseveres and fricks the hot chick
        Honor Harrington.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          >Honor Harrington
          This series is bad. Fricking fight me.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            I have listened to every single Honor Harrington book except the new young adult ones, whats wrong with it?

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              They are all exactly the same and MC is a whiny b***h.

              • 11 months ago
                Anonymous

                >They are all exactly the same

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            Other than a select couple of books and the fact that it was a forerunner of its genre, yes, you are right. The writing is pulp verging on schlock, the infodumps are dropped on you like Havenite missile broadsides and the series jumps a massive shark or two. But yes it's also fun sometimes.

            Or The Lost Fleet, or The Mote in God's Eye, or if you drop the fricking the hot chick part it's Men of War, or if you drop the space part it's Horatio Hornblower. Which is kind of cheating because Honor Harrington is just Horatio Hornblower in space, but still.

            I was aiming for a "mm hot space lesbians" joke actually, not actual literary review.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Or The Lost Fleet, or The Mote in God's Eye, or if you drop the fricking the hot chick part it's Men of War, or if you drop the space part it's Horatio Hornblower. Which is kind of cheating because Honor Harrington is just Horatio Hornblower in space, but still.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            >just Horatio Hornblower in space
            with false flag nuclear terrorism, bioweapons and modern guerrilla warfare

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              I said what I said

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Thanks for the advice.

  12. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    >~~*people*~~ on /k/ like John Ringo

    Good Lord.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      What? Do israelites famously enjoy John Ringo novels?

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        He's a neocon boomer cringelord, but his books are right wing junk food and his writing style is fun to read.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          >a neocon boomer cringelord
          >his books are right wing junk food
          have you actually read them or is this someone elses opinion? I think whoever you're getting your information from was unable to interpret what was actually being communicated

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            NTA, but the first and only book by Ringo I have ever read was the one in the OP, and his post is a perfect summation of his style and content. His books are trash and appeal to people who don't like reading.

          • 11 months ago
            Anonymous

            I've read and own dozens of his works, I like his writings but am in no way convinced he's some sort of literary God.
            >posleen series
            >dark tide rising
            >council wars
            >prince rodger series

            • 11 months ago
              Anonymous

              >but am in no way convinced he's some sort of literary God
              in this specific niche, he has carved himself a sizable empire

  13. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Only book I actually enjoyed reading in high school. That and The Outsiders which is gay to say but whatever.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      man, that book got heavy at times. read it ten years ago, still think of it often.

  14. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Hammer's Slammers Series by David Drake
    "The Third World War: August 1985", and "The Third World War: The Untold Story" by General Sir John Winthrop Hackett, GCB, CBE, DSO & Bar, MC
    Beside the Bulldog: The Intimate Memoirs of Churchill's Bodyguard, by Detective Inspector Walter Henry Thompson BEM
    Former Soldier Seeks Employment, by John Miller
    Chickenhawk, by Robert Mason
    The Spook Who Sat by the Door, by Sam Greenlee
    The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth
    Ian Fleming's James Bond books
    Modesty Blaise Series by Peter O'Donnell
    Biker series by Mike Baron
    Case Files of the Tracker, by Tom Brown Jr.
    The New Green Beret Gourmet: A Cookbook for Advisors, by Charlotte and James Guttenberg
    Burn This Book, by Dan Hoff

  15. 11 months ago
    Anonymous
    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous
    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      If you are ok with reading for 200 pages at a time from 2 dozen charecter's perspectives before anything happens. (I liked it, but god it was a slog to get through)

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Read this in the midst of a Tom Clancy binge - coldwar and alien invasion felt like a weird and welcome bottle episode withing the same literary canon

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Lucifer's Hammer is another good book by the same authors

  16. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I never considered John Ringo before (only seen him come up a few times) but considering the rustled jimmies in this thread I feel he's worth a look. Just bought the Last Centurion.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >rustled jimmies
      Tom Kratman turns that up to 15, to full on demonic screeching.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        kek
        I wonder if there are any good female novelists who this kind of liberal-baiting shit

  17. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Casual reminder that you can safely skip all if the parts in Iceland and miss nothing

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      You're not wrong... it's been at least 15 years since I last read it, I should re-read that book...

      Picrel is also pretty decent.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Thanks a lot. Now I have the music from the C-64 version of that game in my head again.

  18. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I can't believe no one's mentioned S. M. Stirling. Like Ringo, he writes a lot of alt history.

    >the Domination: collects a trilogy into a single book. starts with alt-WW2, goes through French resistance, hyped up Cold War, and WW3 in 1999.
    >Island in the Sea of Time trilogy: Nantucket in the year 1999 gets zapped back to 1500 BC. the unlucky residents have to survive in a hostile world.... and then one of them decides "farming sucks, let's build an empire". violence ensues. notable for having a bunch of SJWs naively try to help some native american cannibals, who eat them.
    >the Emberverse: when Nantucket got moved, the rest of the world changed too. Something caused all electricity, explosives (including gunpowder), and steam engines to stop working. book one is the immediate aftermath. it's not pretty. after that, the series follows groups of survivors who rebuild in the area around Portland, Oregon. later in the series we get to see more of the rest of the world. pretty crazy cultural shifts which are part funny, part cool, and part realistic, like the cannibal North Koreans whose battle cry is "Juche!"
    >Black Chamber: lesbian spies do shenanigans in an alt-WW1 where Germany decides to do a first strike on the US with nerve gas.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >one of them decides "farming sucks, let's build an empire". violence ensues. notable for having a bunch of SJWs naively try to help some native american cannibals, who eat them
      holy based

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >I can't believe no one's mentioned S. M. Stirling
      I have his Draka series on my reading list, have had for quite a while, but haven't worked my way there yet

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      his T2 sequel novels should have been used as the roadmap for the series.
      Peshawar lancers should be a tv show
      the conquistadors is a great book. I want to see more of the world of it.

  19. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    How are you fricks listing nearly every book on my book shelf?

    Jesus get out of my office and house.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >How are you fricks listing nearly every book on my book shelf?

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      I wouldn't worry about it.

  20. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    The Lieutenant Leary/RCN series by David Drake is a good take on the same sort of vaguely Napoleonic space war as Honor Harrington, but instead of Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE it's Aubrey/Martin IN SPACE.
    Actually, it was based on a short story Drake wrote for a Honor anthology, so it has clear DNA from that too, but a different setting.

  21. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Band of Brothers obviously, but there's my personal favorite: Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.

  22. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    this book basically predicted the 2019 to present time-line to a T.

    1: Airborne respiratory virus throws the world into chaos.

    2: The US abruptly withdraws from its wars in the middle east leaving chaos, panic, fear, and quite a few of our own people behind

    3: A newly elected democrat administration literally cannot stop prattling on about racism, global warming, LGBT issues, and feminism long enough to formulate a workable solution to any of these compounding catastrophes

    4: They respond to the increasingly shrill public with censorship and by utilizing government agencies as hit-squads to take down political opposition for calling them out about it too loudly

    5: Massive aid is STILL being sent over seas despite our cities slowly descending into 3rd world tier living conditions.

    Literally the only thing in the last centurion that HASN'T happened yet is some army commander conducting a fighting retreat from afghanistan to instanbul.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >this book basically predicted the 2019 to present time-line to a T.

  23. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Found this by chance. One of my favourite novels. If you’re feeling adventurous, her first novel is fantastic.

  24. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    get all of Johns books, hes based as frick and so is larry corriea who wrote a official and literal TALES OF THE GUN for the M41A Pulse Rifle from aliens.

    they wrote books together. extra based

  25. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    He put himself on the cover, demonstrating his confidence in his writing.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      is that robocops gun?

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        He certainly has a body frame of Robocop.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Sure, if Robocop was just a big metal ball.

  26. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Currently rereading pic related on the can every morning. It's pretty good.

    Bobby Shaftoe is pretty cool. eh kills nips and doesn't afraid of anything

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Their goal is to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.
      wat

  27. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Also all Baen books have shitty covers, it's a trademark

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      lies

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Another series of Ringo that fizzled out into nothing. Too bad, this one had promise. Its similar to the looking glass series but Ringo stumbles because he is bad at inventing new alien cultures so he runs out of plot space.

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          >he is bad at inventing new alien cultures so he runs out of plot space
          the aliens are plenty alien and unique enough, but what happens, if you ask me, is that the good guys become too strong

  28. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    If no one has recommended it, the Monster Hunter International series is fun. The author must be a /k/ommando.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      My boomer dad is obsessed with these. He's also unironically the best read man I know. He was a child prodigy and reads constantly.
      Nobody mentioned Delta Green so I guess I have to shill Through A Glass Darkly.

      Other cool boo/k/s:
      Off Season (about feral cannibals in rural Maine)
      The Eisenhorn books if you like 40k
      The Commentaries by Julius Cesar
      The Memoirs of Bernal Diaz del Castillo (conquistador CHAD dabs on Aztec savages)
      Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence
      The Wolfen (spoopy superwolves stalk New York)
      Three Years With Quantrill (Quantrill did nothing wrong)

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Through A Glass Darkly
        thank you for the rec

        He's stated that the metrics on that series are decisively tilted towards female readers. I guess it's like 30 Shades With Guns, or something.

        what the actual frick lol
        I'd have thought the exact opposite
        gee wonder if he's on to something with all that rape

        Mayor of London has no power, moron. Lord Mayor does, however. Who isn't Khan. Khan's power is what fricking poster to put up in the tube.

        tell me more bonganon

        • 11 months ago
          Anonymous

          Yeah, somebody asked him why he kept writing those, and that was part of his response. Those books actually sold *really* well, and mostly to middle-aged women. Meanwhile, interest in future Council or Posleen books was far less. Go figure. You can't really blame authors for writing what people will buy, although it is somewhat disappointing that both of those series are left on semi-cliffhangers.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      Larry is a /k/ommando. he used to sell machineguns.

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      I came here to post this. Larry Correia's novels are a lot of fun and he's definitely a gun guy. My only complaint with the MHI novels is the fact that the main character and his wife are fairly obvious idealized self-insert versions of the author and his wife. Kinda cringe. He makes up for it by having the main character generally get the ever loving shit kicked out of him in every book. His lesser known Grimnoir series is pretty fun as well.

  29. 11 months ago
    Anonymous
  30. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I read Gust Front by John Ringo, the first in his Posleen War series.
    It was good enough that I might pick up the rest of the series.
    Basically Earth, present day Earth, gets caught up in a space war where both sides are complete bastards, and Earth's armies are being used as is, with no alien supertech, just dropped off with our own tanks and rifles on alien planets as cannon fodder, fighting zerg rush moronic GM centaurs with railguns.

  31. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I don't know what was the most surreal part of this book: Chicago becoming a mini-Caliphate, NYC being the only not moronic Dem city, the Islamic harem of teenagers, or the Ghurkas being every colonial stereotype combined.

  32. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Black company is loadsa fun

  33. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    I finished The Lions of Al-Rassan recently. It's technically fantasy, but its set in a world that's pretty much 11th century Spain after the fall of the caliphate.
    I also really like the Latro series, its similar in concept. Brain damaged Roman mercenary travels around the classical Mediterranean, he can't remember anything from day to day, but he can see the gods.

  34. 11 months ago
    Anonymous
  35. 11 months ago
    Anonymous
    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      I've read this and support White Separation, but this guy has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.
      >.50BMG shooting down AH-64's
      >the government not going full Gulag on suspected "racists"
      The author has the mentality that "gorilla warfare" is the end all be all of war, but go ask the Boer's or post-WW2 Baltic states how that worked out.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        Sure, but it's a fun book.

  36. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    >History professor Benjamin Schröder lives a happy life. He has a job he loves in a profession he adores. Then everything changes. A student’s dissertation on Operation Oz, the Pacific Allies’ invasion of Vladivostok, staged through occupied Japan to meet their Imperial German allies, sets off a psychotic episode in Schröder. It has to be psychotic, right?

    >Schröder is flooded with memories of a different, ghastly world in which Operation Oz never happened. Memories of helpless civilians slaughtered in extermination camps. A world where the Chinese Communists succeeded. Where the Middle East became a festering sore of bloodshed and fanaticism. Worst of all—a world filled with thousands of nuclear warheads waiting to launch!

    >Then a lunatic knocks on Schröder’s door.

  37. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    C. S. Forester's Hornblower
    Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey–Maturin series
    Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe
    The Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser

    • 11 months ago
      Anonymous

      >Flashman
      whys he so damn smug?

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        If you were fighting for King and Country and had a uniform that fricking fly you'd be smug too.

      • 11 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Flashman is 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall, weighs 13 stone (180 lb; 83 kg) (12½ stone in the first book, fourteen stone in the last), has broad shoulders and is attractive to women.[15][c] He was forced into marriage in the first book, after he "caddishly deflowered" Elspeth Morrison,[3] the daughter of a wealthy Scottish textile manufacturer with whom he had been billeted.[15] Despite being married—and the fact he deeply loves his wife—Flashman is "a compulsive womaniser"[10] who has bedded 480 women by the tenth book in the series, which was set in 1859.[20] Elspeth is also probably unfaithful to him on several occasions.[15] Flashman notes that he has three "prime talents, for horses, languages, and fornication"

        Yeah, I'd be pretty smug too.

  38. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    God's War. It covers the people's crusades through the reconquista. I've been reading it for a week, and enjoy it so far.

  39. 11 months ago
    Anonymous

    Basically, its Stephen King's "The Stand" for the first half, but the super-flu that kill's 99% of the human race turns out to be a bioweapon deployed by aliens to pave the way for a colonization effort. The aliens are well written in that they are inscrutably alien. Its not like hollywood where they talk and state intentions and demonstrate culture and have every single thing they do explained by a bunch of exposition from somebody who realistically has no actual way of knowing any of it.

    They just... DO stuff, and the surviving humans have to figure out how to respond. It is mildly IMPLIED the aliens are actually some fringe religious extremist group that hijacked a military vessel and don't really know wtf they are actually doing either, but its very nebulous in a good way that makes the story more intriguing.

    There's lots of guerilla tactics and survivalist stuff in it. The way it is depicted is very grounded and realistic. At one point a bunch of military remnants and former combat vets are firing stinger missiles at alien shuttles from the tops of ruined sky scrapers in between having apocalypse orgies. Its pretty neat.

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