 | Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
Buy new: £5.78 / Used from: £2.99 One of the first, and best, military sci-fi novels ever written. Heavy with politics, but the action is fantastic. It is, I should add, nothing like the movie. The "Mobile Infantry" are a wonder.
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 | Armor (Daw science fiction) by John Steakley
Buy new: £5.29 The protagonist is Felix, formerly a great King, fighting anonymously as a Scout on the alien planet Banshee. He joined the military as a suicidal gesture, but finds he is unkillable. A great book.
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 | Soldier, Ask Not (Childe Cycle) by Gordon R. Dickson
Buy used from: £1.51 Not the best of the bunch, but this is a fun, light read, with good action and a good lead character.
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 | Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Buy used from: £1.35 FANTASTIC BOOK. Children training as generals become locked in deadly games with one another, and with the enemy, an unknowable and relentless foe. The descriptions of 3D war are fantastic.
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 | The Forever War (S.F. Masterworks) by Joe Haldeman
Buy new: £4.99 / Used from: £2.91 This book follows a unit of soldiers which (due to relativity) fight a war over tens of thousands of years. Humanity evolves, they do not. Like Armor, a thoughtful book which offers great action
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 | The Complete Hammer's Slammers: v. 1 by David Drake
Buy used from: £27.10 More military sci-fi cotton-candy! A simple, fun read. Hammer's tanks fight alongside interesting political plotting.
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 | Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks
Buy new: £6.85 / Used from: £0.01 "Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilisation based around the planet Golter". What more can I say?
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 | On Basilisk Station (Honorverse) by David Weber
Buy used from: £1.75 The first in a great series, "which will charm the socks off schoolgirls and sailors". Honor Harrington is the only female protagonist on this list, and her place is well deserved.
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 | Falkenberg's Legion by Jerry Pournelle
Buy used from: £2.12 Very very cool. Read a number of other of Pournelle's novels. His ideas are fresh and his prose very good.
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 | Dies the Fire (Roc Science Fiction) by S. M. Stirling
Buy new: £4.85 / Used from: £1.56 What happens when the world ends. Not completely military, but as you follow the series, it becomes increasingly so. Medieval warfare with modern conceptions make the action compelling.
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 | Dauntless (The Lost Fleet, Book 1) by Jack Campbell
Buy new: £3.83 / Used from: £0.79 The plot follows a commander, saved after 100 years in cryo-sleep, as he fights his unfamiliar home fleet out of an impossible situation to get home. Leadership is a major theme. The action is great.
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 | The Praxis (Dread Empire's Fall) by Walter Jon Williams
Buy new: £5.49 / Used from: £0.01 Fantastic space opera. The story follows the course of a civil war after the Shaa, former overlord's of the "Dread Empire", die off as a species. Politics, space fights, and guerrilla warfare!
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