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The Regiment: A Trilogy (Baen Books Megabooks)

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Whether you get the separate paperbacks on this hardcover edition, the Regiment series is well worth discovering. Full of action, humor, surprising developments, and a storyline that spans millennia, it has been endorsed by both Spider Robinson and C. J. Cherryh, and it's a good bet Bujold fans will like it also.
The premise is that in a distant, galactic future, the marginal planet, Tiss, has only one export: mercenaries - but very unusual mercenaries. Each soldier has the equivalent of a triple PhD in history, applied philosophy, and practical psychology. They only hire out as independent units; they require a contract that defines their objective, and THEY decide how that objective will be fulfilled. They never replace fallen comrades. When a unit is too decimated to function, it is retired.
In the first book, Varlik Lormagen is a reporter who gets imbedded with a T'swa mercenary unit, which has been hired by one side of a planetary insurrection. Konni Wenter is a rival reporter who does camera interviews. Both reporters become acquainted with fractal-fragments of the Matrix, the guiding philosophy of the T'Swa mercenaries, and they reinterpret their lives in terms of it. Varlik becomes the first T'swi warrior not from Tiss, discovering a brotherhood that renders almost all aspects of his former life trivial; his closest relationships with people from his home world, however, including his marriage, are only deepened. As a result of his experiences, and the reports he and Konni send back to the Confederation of Worlds, Varlik becomes an ambassador of sorts, and the Confederation of Worlds begins a social and scientific renaissance. The story ends with Varlik dreaming of one of his fallen comrades, with the promise that they will meet again.
One aspect of these books is that they are VERY strong on values. The main characters are moral, good people. Scattered throughout the books are explanations of the Matrix philosophy of the T'swa warriors, including the chart that shows how each soul manifests itself. It's kind of a cross between Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs, reincarnation, and Zen.
Volume two, The White Regiment, is a great book for adolescents and young adults. The entire population of Tiss is dark-skinned, almost obsidian black. Varlik was the first Euro-descendant to become T'Swa; decades later, a Confederation world is about to graduate the first class of homegrown T'swa: 594 twelve years old boys, all "warriors born." But Varlik and his associates are concerned about a large number of social misfits - teenaged trouble-makers. It turns out that when tested against the Matrix, over 70% of these boys are also "warriors born," but they preceded the school's recruitment and training period. So they have the souls of T'swa, but lacking the education and grounding, they are wild cards: "An unprecedented bunch of little warriors have gotten themselves born, with nowhere to fight." A special military training school is started just for them, under the guidance of retired T'swa, survivors of old campaigns, and the new wave of Confederation T'sel psychologists, some of whom are no older than the recruits. One of the worst of the recruits, Romlar, has an epiphany that turns him from a fat loser to one of the two leaders of the unit. Several romances develop: one between another Regiment leader, Jerym Alsnor, and a journalist named Tain; one between Romlar and Jerym's sister, Lotta.
The Regiment's War pits two mercenary units of T'swa against each other. Romlar has to figure out the politics of war, all the while fighting against friends and former mentors. Furthermore, there is a wrongness to the situation, beyond the whole I-am-killing-guys-I-went-to-school-with that is giving him nightmares. Eventually he has a presentment that a galactic war is in the offing, and the Confederation will need all the T'swa it can muster.
For the full story, you will also need to track down The Kalif's War and The Three-Cornered War, in which Romlar's premonition is proven correct.

This is a fun read in an excellent SF series.The Three-Cornered War (The Regiment Series)The Regiment's War