Kindle Unlimited is a service that can theoretically provide you with limitless numbers of books for the price of one normal release every month. This is a tremendous blessing for those of us who are fast readers. I pretty much have read every single Red Sonja comic ever written thanks to Dynamite Entertainment putting almost all their comics on the service.
However, what we here at Before We Go want most is good Kindle Unlimited books. As such, here is a recommendation of a bunch of entertaining ones that I’ve enjoyed and can say rise above the dross.
1. Into the Dark by JA Sutherland
Into the Dark is the first of the Alexis Carew novel series. A bit like a YA version of Honor Harrington, they’re stories of a heroic midshipwoman trying to make it in Her Majesty’s all-male Navy in the dangerous colonies. They’re steampunk space opera, which is peanut butter mixed with jelly for me. I really love the main character and the Age of Sail treatment of space opera is something that tickles me.
About Into The Dark
At fifteen, Alexis Carew has to face an age old problem – she’s a girl, and only a boy can inherit the family’s vast holdings. Her options are few. She must marry and watch a stranger run the lands, or become a penniless tenant and see the lands she so dearly loves sold off. Yet there may be another option, one that involves becoming a midshipman on a shorthanded Navy spaceship with no other women.
2. Columbus Day by Craig Alanson
Columbus Day is the first book in the incredibly entertaining Expeditionary Force series. While I would recommend the extremely good audiobook versions, the Kindle versions are still full of hilarious dialogue and ridiculous over-the-top crazy plans by our heroes to protect Earth from the many-many more advanced aliens we encounter. Thank goodness we have a semi-sane AI named Skippy to help.
About Columbus Day
We were fighting on the wrong side, of a war we couldn’t win. And that was the good news. The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon come ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There go the good old days, when humans only got killed by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits.
When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved. The UN Expeditionary Force hitched a ride on Kristang ships to fight the Ruhar, wherever our new allies thought we could be useful. So, I went from fighting with the US Army in Nigeria, to fighting in space. It was lies, all of it. We shouldn’t even be fighting the Ruhar, they aren’t our enemy, our allies are. I’d better start at the beginning….
3. Brutal by James Alderdice
Brutal is a fantastic novel that has all the fun of A Fistfull of Dollars and Yojimbo but with a Conan the Barbarian-esque protagonist heading to a city disputed by two wizards. I really enjoyed the Sellsword’s adventures and have been following the series ever since. There’s plenty of twists and turns with the protagonist and he’s a lot smarter than the people around him give him credit for.
About Brutal
4. The Cape is a Lie by MK Gibson
About The Cape is a Lie
5. Scattered, Smothered, and Chunked by John G. Hartness
Bubba the Monster Hunter is a fantastic tongue-in-cheek series that I enjoy for the pure guilty pleasure of it all. Speaking as an Appalachian, I know plenty of guys like Bubba and if there were actually monsters living in the hollow, then there would no end to ones going out there with a case of beer as well as a shotgun. I’ve had a lot of fun with this series and watching this poor working class hero slaughter his way through vampires, werewolves, and more while trying to make enough money for the local strippers’ tips–well, its like Duke Nukem, Southern style.
About Scattered, Smothered, and Chunked
“Cross Larry the Cable Guy with The Dresden Files, and you have Bubba the Monster Hunter”
“Reminds me a bit of Ash from Army of Darkness”
“Hartness spins another tale of redneck mayhem full of his usual sarcastic humor.”
Ash v. the Evil Dead meets Larry the Cable Guy in this hilarious horror comedy mashup!
He’s the guy you want beside you in a bar fight, so why wouldn’t you want him saving the world? He’s Bubba the Monster Hunter, and he’s here to save the day!
Scattered, Smothered, & Chunked collects ten hilarious short stories and one origin novella about Robert “Bubba” Brabham, ex-Georgia Bulldogs football player and now the official Southeastern Regional Monster Hunter for the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Along with his best friend and tech guru Skeeter, Bubba hunts down zombies, werewolves, vampires, two-for-one lap dances, and beer specials all over the back roads and byways of the South.
Join Bubba, Skeeter, Uncle Father Joe, and Agent Amy Hall of the super-secret government agency DEMON as they rid the world of monsters and make the South a safer place for hard-drinking rock n’ roll loving rednecks everywhere!
