OT: Books and such

[PvK]

I've had gamers recommend David Weber's Honor Harrington series for years, and finally went and started reading the series and got hooked. Very nice space combat episodes, revolving around a righteous tactical genius character who gets into various underappreciated situations and eventually gets her comeuppance by kicking arse in episode after episode. Mainly the space battles are really well done, and worth getting through the descriptions of Honor fodling her cat, getting over hard feelings, politics, etc.

Edit: Oh, the series also "gets points in my book" for including many other characters and having them come and go through military rotation, occasionally having them reappear, etc., but no matter who they are and how heroic or virtuous or story-relevant, anyone might get suddenly violently killed or maimed, generally in an interestingly-described/explained way. One never knows who's going to die when or how, but the cause and effects makes sense, making the situation more tense and interesting.

PvK

[Baron Munchausen]

The HH series is pretty good. Even though the stories are actually formulaic. You'll realize that as you read more of them. He's got a basic toolkit of plot devices and he re-uses things often. But the space battles are so excellent that it's a forgivable fault.