Bookdriftopen the map →

Books like Halo: The Fall of Reach

Eric Nylund · 2001 · US · science fiction
★ 4.20 Goodreads · 15,991 ratings

John-117, taken from his family as a child for the secret SPARTAN-II programme, grows up into the supersoldier who will fight humanity's war against the alien Covenant.

Explore books like this on the map

12 books for readers of Halo: The Fall of Reach

First and Only

Dan Abnett · 1999 · UK 98% match ★ 4.21 Goodreads · 11,661 ratings
shares: gaming, soldier, scifi, military · action-packed, speculative

Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt leads the Tanith First and Only, the last regiment of a world destroyed on the day it was founded, through an endless galactic war.

Terms of Enlistment

Marko Kloos · 2013 · US 98% match ★ 4.07 Goodreads · 34,252 ratings
shares: soldier, scifi, space, military · easy read, earnest

Andrew Grayson escapes the welfare tenements of a crowded future North America the only way he can, by enlisting, and is sent to fight rioters at home and something far worse in space.

Horus Rising

Dan Abnett · 2006 · UK 97% match ★ 4.26 Goodreads · 44,213 ratings
shares: gaming, soldier, scifi, military · cold, speculative

Two hundred years into the Great Crusade to reconquer the galaxy, the Emperor withdraws and names the primarch Horus his Warmaster, and Captain Garviel Loken of the Luna Wolves watches what follows.

On Basilisk Station

David Weber · 1993 · US 97% match ★ 4.14 Goodreads · 49,602 ratings
shares: strategic, space, action heavy, military · earnest, speculative

Commander Honor Harrington, given a refitted light cruiser and a humiliating posting to the backwater Basilisk system, starts doing the job properly and stumbles on a plot by the Republic of Haven.

Columbus Day

Craig Alanson · 2016 · US 97% match ★ 4.25 Goodreads · 36,442 ratings
shares: soldier, scifi, space, military · easy read, plain prose

When aliens invade Earth on Columbus Day, Joe Bishop, a young army specialist, is sent to fight on alien worlds and ends up teamed with Skippy, an ancient, arrogant AI in something like a beer can.

Hammer's Slammers

David Drake · 1979 · US 97% match ★ 3.98 Goodreads · 6,338 ratings
shares: strategic, soldier, scifi, military · action-packed, cold

Linked stories of Colonel Alois Hammer's mercenary armoured regiment, fighting other people's wars on colony planets.

Dauntless

Jack Campbell · 2006 · US 97% match ★ 3.97 Goodreads · 34,660 ratings
Book 1 of 6 in The Lost Fleet
shares: strategic, space, action heavy, military · earnest, speculative

Captain John 'Black Jack' Geary, frozen in a survival pod for a hundred years and revered as a legend, is woken to take command of a trapped fleet deep in enemy space.

Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card · 1985 · US 96% match ★ 4.31 Goodreads · 1,507,381 ratings
Book 1 of 5 in Ender Quintet
shares: strategic, gaming, war, military · easy read, speculative

A gifted child is recruited to a military academy in space, where he must train to fight an alien invasion that may already be lost.

Armor

John Steakley · 1984 · US 96% match ★ 4.10 Goodreads · 21,272 ratings
shares: soldier, scifi, action heavy, military · action-packed, cold

Felix, a scout in powered armour fighting an endless war against insectoid aliens on the planet Banshee, survives drop after drop by switching off everything but the Engine inside him.

Ender's Shadow

Orson Scott Card · 1999 · US 96% match ★ 4.32 Goodreads · 182,813 ratings
Book 1 of 5 in The Shadow Saga
shares: strategic, space, series starter, military · earnest, easy read

Bean, a tiny, starving orphan who has survived the streets of Rotterdam on intelligence alone, is noticed by the International Fleet and sent to Battle School, where he studies the boy everyone else is watching, Ender Wiggin.

Skyward

Brandon Sanderson · 2018 · US 96% match ★ 4.46 Goodreads · 175,118 ratings
Book 1 of 4 in Skyward
shares: scifi, space, series starter, military · easy read, earnest

Spensa, a girl on the planet Detritus whose father was branded a coward, wants nothing more than to be a pilot fighting the alien Krell, and finds a broken ship with an AI in a cave.

Heir to the Empire

Timothy Zahn · 1991 · US 96% match ★ 4.06 Hardcover · 609 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Thrawn Trilogy
shares: strategic, space, series starter, military · easy read, earnest

Five years after the fall of the Empire, as Leia and Han await twins and Luke Skywalker trains alone as a Jedi, Grand Admiral Thrawn, a brilliant strategist from the Unknown Regions, takes command of what is left of the Imperial fleet.