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Dark Expanse^© Recommended Reading List

Introduction

The Deorc Enterprise developers are avid Science Fiction fans that have a passion for reading as much as we enjoy playing Dark Expanse^©. We would like to recommend the following book series which we feel captures the essence, strategy and excitement of Dark Expanse^©. We hope you will find these books as intriguing, inspiring and special as we have.

Should you wish to provide addtional support to Dark Expanse^©, please click on one of the following books to be linked through to Amazon.com. Any purchases you make will not only give you hours of enjoyment, but also help us as well.

The Lost Fleet Series by Jack Campbell (John G. Hemry)

The Lost Fleet:Dauntless -- The Alliance has been fighting the Syndics for a century - and losing badly. Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he had been heroically idealized beyond belief . Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics. Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend. -- Jack Campbell

The Honorverse Series by David Weber

On Basalisk Station -- Having made him look a fool, she's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her. Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliating posting to an out-of-the-way picket station. The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens. Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling; the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering, so-called "Republic" of Haven is Up To Something; and Honor Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system. But the people out to get her have made one mistake. They've made her mad. -- David Weber

The Galactic Marine Saga by Ian Douglas (William H. Keith)

Semper Mars -- Scientists have discovered something astonishing in the subterranean ruins of a sprawling Martian city: startling evidence of an alternative history that threatens to split humanity into opposing factions and plunge the Earth into chaos and war. The USMC - branch of a military considered, until just recently, to be obsolete - has dispatched teh Marine Mars Expeditionary Force, a thirty-man weapons platoon, to the Red Planet to protect American civilians and interests with lethal force if necessary. -- Ian Douglas

The Clone Republic Series by Steven L. Kent

The Clone Republic -- Earth, 2508 A.D. Humans have spread across the six arms of the Milky Way Galaxy. The United Authority controls Earth's colonies with an iron fist and a powerful military - a military made up almost entirely of clones...

Private First-class Wayson Harris was raised in a U.A. orphanage among thousands of clones born and bred to be the ultimate soldiers. But Harris isn't like the other Marines: He has a mind of his own. He figures he's paying for that independent streak when his first assignment out of boot camp is the smallest Marine outpost in the whole U.A.

When a rogue general surfaces, the remove desert world Harris thought was a dead-end posting becomes anything but. Fighting off the general's raid gains Harris a promotion. But it also brings him to the attention of some unfriendly U.A. leaders. They have their own plans for the military -- plans Harris disrupts by his very existence. For in an army of clones, the one unforgiveable sin is to be different... -- Steven L. Kent

The Dragon Never Sleeps and The Starfishers Series by Glen Cook (Greg Stevens)

The Dragon Never Sleeps -- For four thousand years, the Guardships have ruled Canon Space - immortal ships with an immortal crew, dealing swiftly and harshly with any mercantile houses or alien races that threaten the status quo. But now the House Tregesser has an edge: a force from outside Canon Space offers them the resources to throw off Guardship rule. This precipitates an avalanche of unexpected outcomes, including the emergence of Kez Maefele, one of the few remaining generals of the Ku Warrior race-the only race to ever seriously threaten Guardship hegemony. Kez Maefele and a motley group of aliens, biological constructs, an scheming aristocrats find themselves at the center of the conflict. Maefele must chose which side he will support: the Guardships, who defeated and destroyed his race, or the unknown forces outside Canon Space that promise more death and destruction. -- Glen Cook

Shadowline -- The Vendetta In Space... had started centuries before "Mouse" Storm was born... with his grandfather's raid on the planet Prefactias, the blood bath that freed the human slaves from their Sangaree masters. But one Sangaree survived-the young Norbon heir, the man who swore vengenace on the Storm family and their soldiers, in a carefully mapped plot that would take generations to fulfill. Now Mouse's father Gneaus must fight for an El Dorado of wealth on the burning half of the planet Blackworld. As the great private armies of all space clash on the narrow Shadowline that divides inferno from life-sheltering shade, Gneaus' half-brother Michael plays his traitorous games, and a man called Deeth pulls the deadly strings that threaten to entrap them all. -- Glen Cook

The Shadow Ops Series by Myke Cole

Control Point -- Army Officer. Fugitive. Sorcerer. Across the country and in every nation, people are waking up with magical talents. Untrained and panicked, they summon storms, raise the dead, and set everything they touch ablaze. Army officer Oscar Britton sees the worst of it. A lieutenant attached to the military's Supernatural Operations Corps, his mission is to bring order to a world gone mad. Then he abruptly manifests a rare and prohibited magical power, transforming him overnight from government agent to public enemy number one. The SOC knows how to handle this kind of situation: hunt him down and take him out. Driven into an underground shadow world, Britton is about to learn that magic has changed all the rules he's ever known, and that his life isn't the only thing he's fighting for. -- Myke Cole

The Confederation (Valor) Series by Tanya Huff

Valor's Choice -- Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr was a battle-hardended professional. So when she and those in her platoon who'd survived the last deadly encounter with the Others 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-Conderation world of the Silsviss, she was ready for anything.

At first it seemed that all she'd have to contend with was bored troops getting into mischief, and breaking in the new Second Lieutenant who had been given command of her men.

Sure, there'd been rumors of the Others--the sworn enemies of the Confederation--being spotted in this secor of space. But there were always rumors. The key thing was to recruit the Silviss into the Confederation before the Others either attacked or claimed this lizardlike race of warriors for their own side. And everything seemed to good to be going perfectly. Maybe too perfectly... -- Tanya Huff

Dune by Frank Herbert

Dune -- A planet of harsh deserts, subtly shifting sand tides and overwhelming storms ripping across the bleak landscape.

Dune -- A forbidding world where water was more precious than the rarest jewel, and men went in fear of the awesome shai-hulud, huge sandworms that dwarfed even interstellar spaceships.

Dune -- The nexus of a galactic plot encompassing more worlds and more lives than even the treacherous star-noblemen who had spawned it could guess and where ultimately would arise the Lisan al-Galib, the savior foretold in the prophecies of a tormented, angry people ripe for bloddy revolt. -- Frank Herbert