Crossing the Line

Author	Amy Thomson
ISBN	0441006329

See also my blog review: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...

The depth of world-building and character development in this book is amazing. The style of world-building is different than what you get in Herbert's Dune universe or Tolkien's Middle-Earth. Maybe it would have been...

Author	Tanya Huff
ISBN	0756403995

As military SF, maybe 4 stars. Better than most.

But I'm starting to think that military fiction has become so rigid that it's almost an automatic minus when you judge it just as SF.

Military SF checklist:
* Protagonist is a hard-boiled NCO - check (but a point for her being female)
*...

Author	Sandra McDonald
ISBN	0765316439

Lieutenant Jodenny Scott is a hero.  She has the medals and the scars to prove it.
 
She's cooling her heels on Kookaburra, recovering from injuries sustained during the fiery loss of her last ship, the Yangtze, and she's bored -- so bored, in fact, that she takes a berth on the next ship out. ...

Author	Karin Lowachee
ISBN	0446615080

Pirate Protege At age four, Yuri Kirov watched his home colony destroyed by the alien enemy. By six, he was a wounded soul, fending for himself in a desolate refugee camp, and still a child when the pirates found him. Now twenty-two, Yuri is a killer, a spy, an arms dealer, and a pirate captain himself-doing...

Author	S.L. Viehl
ISBN	0451460081

It was an enjoyable, quick read except for the idiotic romance. Viehl writes great aliens. She points out potential cultural differences from humans in a way that feels objective and interesting. And she's a good story teller. But she has serious issues when it comes to love and respect. The guy in this...

Author	Catherine Asaro
ISBN	0812580362

Living in exile on a deserted planet, Sauscony and Jaibriol, each the heir to an interstellar empire, become entangled in the machinations of the Skolian Empire. Interstellar war erupts and Jaibriol is snatched away to be the unwilling ruler of the Highton Aristos. Sauscony must lead an invading space...

Author	Julie E. Czerneda
ISBN	0756400759

Julie E. Czerneda's 1997 debut, A Thousand Words for Stranger, was the first novel of the Trade Pact Universe-an instant best-seller, Science Fiction Book Club Editor's Choice and Locus Recommended First Novel. Book two, Ties of Power, further established the author's reputation as a master of vivid...

Author	Liz Williams
ISBN	0553583778

From Liz Williams comes a bold and provocative novel of the future in which the vast Indian subcontinent, home to thousands of gods, is visited by all-powerful alien beings from a distant world of controlled, sterile perfection. But what is their purpose: to free humanity–or to enslave it?

EMPIRE...

Author	Adam-Troy Castro
ISBN	0061443727

Two murders have occurred on One One One, an artificial ecosystem created by the universe's dominant AIs to house several engineered species, including a violent, sentient race of sloth-like creatures. Under order from the Diplomatic Corps, Counselor Andrea Cort has come to this cylinder world...

Author

Elizabeth Bear

The year is 2062, and after years on the run, Jenny Casey is back in the Canadian armed forces. Those who were once her enemies are now her allies, and at fifty, she’s been handpicked for the most important mission of her life–a mission for which her artificially reconstructed body is perfectly suited....

Author

Kristine Smith

For eighteen years, Captain Jani Kilian has been hiding from her bloody past. Now she faces trial for what she once did, what she knows now, and what she has become.

Eighteen years ago, she was saved by a radical--and illegal--medical procedure that added alien genetic material to her own. But...

Author	Kate Elliott
ISBN	0886775515

Following the events of An Earthly Crown, the jaran conquest of Rhui intensifies as rebel hearts simmer with conflicting loyalties

Across Rhui, the jaran have been taking over towns and bending all non-jaran to the law of their rule. With Ilya Bakhtiian in charge, the nomadic fighters are...