Hello! It’s a new year, and I’ve got a whole bunch of awesome plans for it, including a new release every month! For all the latest, be sure to sign up for my email list if you haven’t already. But first, I want to start off the year by sharing some books by other authors. If you enjoy my books, I think you’ll like these as well.

I read Skye Object 3270a back in 2011, when I was just getting started with indie publishing. I think it showed up on my Amazon also boughts or something. Bought it, read it, loved it! It’s basically the story of a 14 year old girl who fell from the sky, and her journey to find out where she came from. Written for a younger audience, it’s a fun sci-fi adventure.

I discovered On My Way To Paradise on the now defunct Mechmuse podcast, and picked up a tattered, dog-eared copy at Pioneer Book. I still have it on my shelf—I must have read it two or three times, and the ebook version at least once. It’s one of the greatest works of science fiction that I’ve ever read.

I can’t tell you how much it’s influenced my own writing. David Farland is truly a master. The depth and emotion in this book is incredible, and the story still haunts me even today. This is the kind of book that changes the way you see the world.

A word of warning, though: this book is not for the light-hearted. It is the most violent piece of fiction that I have ever consumed. It’s basically about a seventy year-old doctor trying to keep his humanity after being drafted as a grunt in an army fighting a war of mass genocide. He trains in a simulator device reminiscent of Inception and the Matrix, where he’s brutally killed over and over and over. To top it all off, he suspects that someone has tampered with his brain, and he doesn’t know how.

It’s a magnificent book. The short story that the novel is based on won the 1987 Writers of the Future award and launched David Farland’s career. If you want to try out the short story first (basically the first three chapters), you can find it on Amazon here. It’s also available on Kindle Unlimited.

The last book this month is the one that introduced me to Miles Vorkosigan, one of the most beloved characters in all of science fiction. If you haven’t discovered Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, you are in for a real treat. This is classic sci-fi, and The Warrior’s Apprentice is probably the best entry point into the series.

The ebook cover is absolutely atrocious, probably because it’s published by Bujold’s literary agency (the heck?). Seriously, it’s like the cover of a 1970s college textbook for a psychology class. And the rest of the series? It’s like someone forgot to tell the cover artist that these books are science fiction, not high-brow literary whatever. The print editions are published by Baen, though, and you can find them just about anywhere, including your local used bookstore or library.

That pretty much does it for this month’s book recommendations. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!