Why am I passionate about this?
I’ve loved stories of space, and especially space operas, since I was a child watching Star Trek reruns with my dad. I love the ways very different cultures can work together toward a common goal, but also the many ways those cultures can butt into each other and cause friction. While you can certainly tell stories about that kind of thing on Earth, science fiction lets you tell it writ large, without smacking any particular human group over the head with their differences. I love the way you can tell a story about humans today by focusing on struggles between alien cultures that aren’t a part of our everyday experience.
Michael's book list on multi-cultural space operas
Why did Michael love this book?
One of my writing mentors says, “history is the trade secret of science fiction.” They’re not wrong—my own work is based on Irish history—and Tanya Huff’s A Confederation of Valor series, beginning with Valor’s Choice, is another in that vein. The series centers on marine sergeant Torin Kerr. In these books, humans and two other races were brought into the peaceful Confederation to fight a war. What I love about this book is the way the various new races work together—each has their own idiosyncrasies, and Torin, whose job it is to keep her people alive in the middle of this war, is an expert at dealing with the varying needs of her soldiers, whether they’re human, Krai, or Taykan. This is a series about living with others in peace, even in the middle of a war.
1 author picked Valor's Choice as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
The first book in Tanya Huff's action-packed military sci-fi adventure Confederation series
Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr was a battle-hardened professional. So when she and her platoon were yanked from a well-deserved leave for what was supposed to be "easy" duty as the honor guard for a diplomatic mission to the non-Confederation world of the Silsviss, she was ready for anything. Sure, there’d been rumors of the Others—the sworn enemies of the Confederation—being spotted in this sector of space. But there were always rumors. The key thing was to recruit the Silsviss into the Confederation before the Others attacked or claimed…