Customer Reviews

Falkenberg's Legion: Prince of Mercenaries

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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When I say not to buy this book, it's not because there's anything inherently wrong with it. Prince of Mercenaries is actually a great book. It's just that its content has been collected in a more complete edition. The first two books in Pournelle's novels of John Christian Falkenberg were The Mercenary, followed by West of Honor. Those two books were eventually stitched together into Falkenberg's Legion, which is now considered the first book in the series. There were three later books, Prince of Mercenaries, Go Tell the Spartans, and Prince of Spartans. The last two books were co-written with S.M. Stirling; all four were eventually collected as The Prince. Thus my advice, if you want to read Pournelle/Stirling's tales of John Christian Falkenberg - and you should, they're some of the best military SF ever written - pass on the individual books and buy The Prince instead, to have the complete series in one volume.

Excellent story with believable polital plotting in the background...also with excellent military strategies and quite realistic charactors for fiction....good starting read if you've never read anything by this writer before.

These were the first military fiction I ever read, mublety mumble years ago. In many ways, they're the best. They lay the foundation for understanding much about Falkenberg and the later stories set on Sparta. Pournelle's portrayals are honest and believable, and the military and political insights make for good story telling.

The Falkenberg legion is a great series of books and this one is no different. It helps if you do them in order, but you do not have to. Military Sci-fi without all the darkness in Warhammer 40K series