This week’s roundup of the newest release in science fiction features a daring interstellar raid against an ancient superweapon, a time-lost crew of scientists forced to build a spaceship in Viking Europe, an Emperor’s struggle to find a long-lost temple full of supernatural secrets, and more.

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Dauntless (Blood on the Stars #6) – Jay Allan

The pulsar…an ancient weapon of unimaginable power, one that threatens the Confederation with total destruction. The Union is preparing for the final invasion, one that cannot fail with the great artifact at the head of their fleet. The clock is ticking quickly toward midnight.

There is a chance to avoid annihilation, a small one. The Confederation has its own ancient device recovered from the Badlands, a stealth generator. It is not as powerful as the pulsar, but it just may be enough.

The generator can hide a single vessel, so Tyler Barron and the crew of Dauntless reunite to take their aging battleship once more into the breach. They will go to the Bottleneck, the system where the Union is preparing the final assault. They must sneak around the vast forces of the Union fleet, into the heart of the massively-defended system, and somehow destroy the pulsar.

The fleet will be with them, all the might the Confederation can muster, but success hinges almost entirely on Dauntless’s desperate attack. And, even if Barron and his people succeed in their mission, they will be trapped behind the enemy fleet, cut off and alone.

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Devastator (The Warp #2) – Jason Cordova

The Warp is perfectly safe, its creators claimed.

After the events which took place one year before, the last thing Tori Adams wanted was to go back into The Warp. She enjoyed college and the challenges it brought. She had no desire to set foot into the virtual reality realm ever again. Life moved on, and The Warp changed for the better as improvements were made.

The Nexus was a new login realm that allowed for gamers to avoid being stuck in-game for too long. The alpha testing had gone fine, but when the open beta testing began for the Nexus, it turned on—and stayed on. Nobody could explain it, and WarpSoft did everything in their power to shut it down. Unable to investigate from without, they asked Tori to go back in to find out what was keeping the Nexus online. She’s convinced it’s nothing more than a computer glitch. WarpSoft agreed with her, but…

What if something—or someone—far more dangerous was behind it?

There was only one way to find out.

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The Dream of the Iron Dragon (Saga of the Iron Dragon #1) – Rob Kroese

It is the year 2207. After a decades-long war with an alien race known as the Cho-ta’an, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable and the human race has been driven to the brink of extinction. Humanity survives in a handful of colonies scattered across the galaxy, connected by hyperspace gates. Things look dim for the human race when the crew of a scientific survey ship comes into possession of an incredibly destructive “planet-killer” bomb left behind by a long-extinct alien race. But as the ship travels through a hyperspace gate to deliver the bomb to the alliance command, a fluke warping of spacetime send them 1300 years into the past.

Stuck in 885 A.D., its engines damaged, the vessel crash lands in a snowy, mountainous region and the crew is beset by a band of people wearing primitive clothing and wielding weapons made from iron and wood. The newcomers finds themselves embroiled in the local politics, and soon join a group of locals fleeing the tyrannical rule of a king named Harald Fairhair. But Carolyn Reyes is not content merely to survive. Knowing that humanity’s future depends on repairing their ship, she determines to complete their mission. Thus begins a decades-long effort to build a craft capable of returning to space—a ship that will come to be known as the Iron Dragon.

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Fires of Oblivion (Survival Wars #4) – Anthony James

Captain John Duggan rots in his cell, facing execution at the hands of his captors. Having discovered the secret which the Ghasts wished to remain hidden, he is left powerless to find answers to the questions which will determine the future of the Confederation.

Elsewhere in the Garon sector, the Dreamers have been putting their own terrible plans into action. They possess the power to destroy entire worlds from unimaginable distances.

Whilst humans and Ghasts descend once more into war, the biggest threat of all puts in motion a chain of events which will result in a hundred billion deaths if left unchecked.

John Duggan and his crew are forced into a position where they must end not just one war, but two. The Space Corps’ most accomplished officer will be reunited with humanity’s most powerful weapon in a race to forge peace when a return to conflict seems inevitable.

Standing above all else is the seemingly unstoppable Dreamer mothership, which Duggan must face if he is to succeed against the longest of odds.

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Flagship Victory (Galactic Liberation #3) – David VanDyke and B. V. Larson

Commodore Straker faces new enemies as neighboring interstellar empires decide his New Republic is a growing threat. A two-front war develops, and the Liberator must face both the Mutuality and the Hundred Worlds.

Even as the fighting rages, the mysterious Opters are on the move. They make a diplomatic effort to reach out to Straker—but can he trust the Hive Masters? Will they help, or stab him in the back?

FLAGSHIP VICTORY is a thrilling tale of warfare and adventure among the stars.

“Engrossing space opera with all the right ingredients! Love, sex, interesting aliens, betrayal and combat. What more could we ask for besides the inevitable sequel?”–Amazon Reader Review

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Imperator – Jason Anspach and Nick Cole

Warrior. Slave. Survivor. Emperor.

As a crumbling Galactic Republic falls to the relentless assault of a merciless foe, so begins the rise of an enigmatic emperor intent on saving a corrupt galaxy-spanning civilization from itself… and from something much darker that lies beyond the reaches of the known.

Just as the reins of power fall into his iron-fisted grasp, an assassination attempt by a hidden cabal within his own inner circle jeopardizes every plan he has set in motion for his Dark Legion, his Imperial Navy, and his ultimate conquest of the stars. But the assassins have no idea who they are actually dealing with… or what he has become.

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Mech Legions: The Complete Trilogy – Michael G. Thomas and Nick S. Thomas

The Nazis and their allies won the war, but peace in the twenty-first century is proving much harder to keep. It’s twenty years since the failed British Mutiny left London a burnt-out husk. A reminder of the new world order that covers most of the globe. Yet even in this dark time there are rumours of growing resistance movements deep inside North America. The patriotic freedom fighters of New York City have the willpower to succeed, but what can they do against the unending numbers of Reich soldiers that occupy their defeated nation, and their monstrous walking machines of war, known as Landships?

‘Mech Legions’ is the brand new science-fiction series by the bestselling authors, Michael G. Thomas and Nick S. Thomas. The box set includes the complete full length novels Battle for New York, Winter War and Killing Fields.

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Quantum Mortis: By The Book (Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted #1) – Vox Day, Steve Rzasa, Matvei Daniilovich

Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower is a ruggedly handsome military policeman who hates aliens. Fortunately, as a member of His Grace’s Military Crimes Investigation Division – Xenocriminology and Alien Relations, he gets to arrest a lot of them. Sometimes he even gets to shoot them.

But while he doesn’t like aliens, Chief Tower does very much like Detector Derin Hildreth of the Trans Paradis Police Department, who is unmistakably human. So when Tower has the chance to investigate the mysterious murder of an alien on the streets of Trans Paradis with her, he’s not about to miss the opportunity. Especially when their mutual investigation just might give him the excuse to shoot an alien or three.