I Read Books: The Belisarius Series
A six-book* series from the team of Drake and Flint, last seen on this blog writing some alternate-Roman-Republic-disrupted-by-gunpowder stuff. Here we have a 6th century Byzantine Empire disrupted by gunpowder which is very different. Honestly.
Some bad guys have sent a cyborg (named LINK**) back in time to create a genetic purity hell-state in India. The good guys send a crystal entity (Aide) back in time to stop them and it ends up with the (historical) General Belisarius. There ensues much plotting and backstabbing (as might be expected as the name of the Byzantine Empire became a word meaning labyrinthine plotting) and a lot of fighting.
As the series progresses the types of weapons, and therefore troops, tactics and eventually strategy are all in flux. Belisarius starts with a historically accurate Byzantine army, then as more gunpowder weapons start to be produced rapidly advances a thousand years to pike and musket units, though with plenty of horse archery and traditional skirmishing going on. There are a number of points being made about generalship, particularly about that of Belisarius; the title of the first book An Oblique Approach perhaps summing up a good number of them. Rather than defeating an enemy by hitting them head-on he prefers to threaten or attack from an unexpected angle.
It’s logistics and engineering and strategic-offence-tactical-defence and finding and exploiting divisions in your enemy (that may not have been visible before they were put under pressure). There’s the somewhat overdone ruthlessness-in-defence-of-the-good, but here interestingly paired with mercy as a weapon as sharp as any lance.
This is, in the end, a fairly straight-forward tale of good versus evil, with a fascination in military tactics and weapons. But most of all it is interested in character, and later books will often return to some of the broader, stereotypical characters that make up the cast and put them into new and interesting situations to deepen our understanding and give a little nuance to them.
Read This: For superior gunpowder warfare science fiction
Don’t Read This: If fighting and plotting bores you
* Sexology, sadly my inner 12-year-old can’t let this pass without a snigger
** Glancing at this before posting I spent slightly too long trying to figure out what hyperlink I intended to put here
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