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The Weapon #1
Battleborn
On the battlefields of the future, death is not the end for a soldier.
The Revenant Program collects badly wounded soldiers broken by war and converts them into unthinking, unfeeling cyborg weapons. Their bodies are immune to pain, their minds impervious to fear and doubt. All controlled by a neural implant called the Imperative.
They are the ideal force for any mission too deadly or too difficult for normal men. A force that answers to the darkest corners of the military.
But when one of the Revenants awakens, he can only remember two that he must fight, and a code name…Dead Man.
Who was he before he became a Revenant? What are the officers and scientists controlling the program to do with a soldier that can question the horrific orders he’s given?
The more those controlling the Dead Man learn of who he was, they realize they may have turned a monster into something truly unstoppable. And with every memory recovered, the Imperative drives the Dead Man closer to insanity.
The Battleborn is the first in a new series by best-selling military science fiction author Richard Fox, author of the Ember War Saga and Ascent to Empire.
The Revenant Program collects badly wounded soldiers broken by war and converts them into unthinking, unfeeling cyborg weapons. Their bodies are immune to pain, their minds impervious to fear and doubt. All controlled by a neural implant called the Imperative.
They are the ideal force for any mission too deadly or too difficult for normal men. A force that answers to the darkest corners of the military.
But when one of the Revenants awakens, he can only remember two that he must fight, and a code name…Dead Man.
Who was he before he became a Revenant? What are the officers and scientists controlling the program to do with a soldier that can question the horrific orders he’s given?
The more those controlling the Dead Man learn of who he was, they realize they may have turned a monster into something truly unstoppable. And with every memory recovered, the Imperative drives the Dead Man closer to insanity.
The Battleborn is the first in a new series by best-selling military science fiction author Richard Fox, author of the Ember War Saga and Ascent to Empire.
322 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 21, 2024
455 people are currently reading
82 people want to read
About the author
Richard Fox
141 books615 followersRichard Fox is a Nebula Award nominated author, and winner of the 2017 Dragon Award for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy novel, author of The Ember War Saga, a military science fiction and space opera series, and other novels in the military history, thriller and space opera genres.
He lives in fabulous Las Vegas with his incredible wife and three boys, amazing children bent on anarchy.
He graduated from the United States Military Academy (West Point) much to his surprise and spent ten years on active duty in the United States Army. He deployed on two combat tours to Iraq and received the Combat Action Badge, Bronze Star and Presidential Unit Citation.
The Ember War Saga:
1. The Ember War
2. The Ruins of Anthalas
3. Blood of Heroes
4. Earth Defiant
5. The Gardens of Nibiru
6. Battle of the Void
7. The Siege of Earth
8. The Crucible
9. The Xaros Reckoning
Terran Armored Corps
1. Iron Dragoons
2. The Ibarra Sanction
3. The True Measure
4. A House Divided
5. The Last Aeon
6. Ferrum Corde
Terran Strike Marines
1. The Dotari Salvation
2. Rage of Winter
3. Valdar's Hammer
4. The Beast of Eridu
5. Gott Mit Uns
The Exiled Fleet:
1. Albion Lost
2. The Long March
3. Finest Hour
4. Point of Honor
The Terra Nova Chronicles
1. Terra Nova
2. Bloodlines
3. Wings of Redemption
4. Hale's War
Subscribe to Richard's spam free email list and get free short stories set during the Ember War Saga (and more as they become available) at: http://eepurl.com/bLj1gf
Like him on Facebook (best place to reach him): https://www.facebook.com/Richard-Fox-...
Website: www.richardfoxauthor.com
He lives in fabulous Las Vegas with his incredible wife and three boys, amazing children bent on anarchy.
He graduated from the United States Military Academy (West Point) much to his surprise and spent ten years on active duty in the United States Army. He deployed on two combat tours to Iraq and received the Combat Action Badge, Bronze Star and Presidential Unit Citation.
The Ember War Saga:
1. The Ember War
2. The Ruins of Anthalas
3. Blood of Heroes
4. Earth Defiant
5. The Gardens of Nibiru
6. Battle of the Void
7. The Siege of Earth
8. The Crucible
9. The Xaros Reckoning
Terran Armored Corps
1. Iron Dragoons
2. The Ibarra Sanction
3. The True Measure
4. A House Divided
5. The Last Aeon
6. Ferrum Corde
Terran Strike Marines
1. The Dotari Salvation
2. Rage of Winter
3. Valdar's Hammer
4. The Beast of Eridu
5. Gott Mit Uns
The Exiled Fleet:
1. Albion Lost
2. The Long March
3. Finest Hour
4. Point of Honor
The Terra Nova Chronicles
1. Terra Nova
2. Bloodlines
3. Wings of Redemption
4. Hale's War
Subscribe to Richard's spam free email list and get free short stories set during the Ember War Saga (and more as they become available) at: http://eepurl.com/bLj1gf
Like him on Facebook (best place to reach him): https://www.facebook.com/Richard-Fox-...
Website: www.richardfoxauthor.com
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 29, 2024
I thought it was a cool idea but the bulk of the novel is just macho dickheads barking jargon at each other. I don’t care if that’s how they really talk in the military, it’s tedious to read. If you don’t mind/can get past that, then you’ll enjoy it.
September 11, 2024
DNF 30%
Confusing beginning what with bad writing, flashbacks, and an imaginary being. Characters are boring and uninteresting. No emotional investment, so I finally gave up at 30%, end of chapter 7, after forcing l myself to read past 9%
Confusing beginning what with bad writing, flashbacks, and an imaginary being. Characters are boring and uninteresting. No emotional investment, so I finally gave up at 30%, end of chapter 7, after forcing l myself to read past 9%
March 1, 2025
Read if you like: Madness Combat, by Krinkels
To understand Battleborn and its two sequels, you must first understand two facts.
One - it didn't have an editor, but it did have an author (I have read plenty of books that were the reverse)
Two - it's part of a science-fantasy military space opera series but this is about a near-future conflict taking place decades before the robots came to kill all humans.
The result is a generic military fiction story, but unrestrained by such concepts as "convention" and "marketability" and occasionally "spelling", and instead left with the style of a far more fantastical and pulpy affair. In practice it's like a little slice of Warhammer 40k got dropped into whatever the newest defense-planner-approved shoot-em-up story is, and I don't just mean a racist psycopath supersoldier is tearing apart a thousand Red Chinese soldiers with nothing but a knife and encouragement from the voices in his head, I mean that the MIC's top engineers have to write a report to their boss afterwards explaining what his fucking problem was.
I have a love of stories that blur the line between realism and literary maximalism, ones where you can't be sure where it stops aiming for believability and where it gets into outright fiction-for-fiction's sake. I think a mixture of truth and insanity is closer to the lived experience than simply trying to imitate life or consciously avoiding reality. Battleborn, and the rest of the Weapon trilogy, are some of the few works I've seen that do that.
I read this before I read the Ember War, the series that this is a prequel to, and not only can I confirm that it still makes more than enough sense, but I would even recommend you engage with it this way - knowing who many of these characters are would make it easier to guess where things are going next and the fact that this series is kind of schizophrenic is a large part of the charm. I also won't spoil the stand-out story beat in book 1 and the reason why so many other reviewers treat this as a villain protagonist story, but I will say that it's the thing that made me decide I wanted to try the next two books if just so I could support the author after getting a five-finger discount on the first one. Unlike a lot of mil-fic, which is essentially just bro-vets telling each other they're still cool even though they haven't won a war in 20 years, this one actually has something to say about the combat experience.
Battleborn, and the whole Weapon trilogy, is military sci-fi at its most artistically raw and unrefined, not cerebral and not masturbatory but not stupid either, just stuck with the creative pedal to the metal, never more than a few pages away from some new toy or idea.
To understand Battleborn and its two sequels, you must first understand two facts.
One - it didn't have an editor, but it did have an author (I have read plenty of books that were the reverse)
Two - it's part of a science-fantasy military space opera series but this is about a near-future conflict taking place decades before the robots came to kill all humans.
The result is a generic military fiction story, but unrestrained by such concepts as "convention" and "marketability" and occasionally "spelling", and instead left with the style of a far more fantastical and pulpy affair. In practice it's like a little slice of Warhammer 40k got dropped into whatever the newest defense-planner-approved shoot-em-up story is, and I don't just mean a racist psycopath supersoldier is tearing apart a thousand Red Chinese soldiers with nothing but a knife and encouragement from the voices in his head, I mean that the MIC's top engineers have to write a report to their boss afterwards explaining what his fucking problem was.
I have a love of stories that blur the line between realism and literary maximalism, ones where you can't be sure where it stops aiming for believability and where it gets into outright fiction-for-fiction's sake. I think a mixture of truth and insanity is closer to the lived experience than simply trying to imitate life or consciously avoiding reality. Battleborn, and the rest of the Weapon trilogy, are some of the few works I've seen that do that.
I read this before I read the Ember War, the series that this is a prequel to, and not only can I confirm that it still makes more than enough sense, but I would even recommend you engage with it this way - knowing who many of these characters are would make it easier to guess where things are going next and the fact that this series is kind of schizophrenic is a large part of the charm. I also won't spoil the stand-out story beat in book 1 and the reason why so many other reviewers treat this as a villain protagonist story, but I will say that it's the thing that made me decide I wanted to try the next two books if just so I could support the author after getting a five-finger discount on the first one. Unlike a lot of mil-fic, which is essentially just bro-vets telling each other they're still cool even though they haven't won a war in 20 years, this one actually has something to say about the combat experience.
Battleborn, and the whole Weapon trilogy, is military sci-fi at its most artistically raw and unrefined, not cerebral and not masturbatory but not stupid either, just stuck with the creative pedal to the metal, never more than a few pages away from some new toy or idea.
May 25, 2024
Another “The Ember Wars” Prequel
“Battleborn (TheWeapon 1)” authored by Richard Fox, is an unattributed as a prequel to his mostly entertaining & successful “The Ember Wars” series and franchise.
The unattributed as a prequel following an attributed prequel just weeks ago is ladened with flaws, starting fails in proofreading from beginning to end, Loss of Continuity, disparaging & denigrating Christianity’s God, by using Him repeatedly as a swear or curse, and the ‘flesh’ on the skeleton of this “The Ember Wars” backstory prequel’s storyline and plot lines is derived from books and movies, such as “The Dirty Dozen,” “Jurassic Park,” “Universal Soldier” and “Soldier” to name a few.
It’s a mess and a shameful effort by the author.
Read fully via KU with Notes/Highlights on Goodreads.
“Battleborn (TheWeapon 1)” authored by Richard Fox, is an unattributed as a prequel to his mostly entertaining & successful “The Ember Wars” series and franchise.
The unattributed as a prequel following an attributed prequel just weeks ago is ladened with flaws, starting fails in proofreading from beginning to end, Loss of Continuity, disparaging & denigrating Christianity’s God, by using Him repeatedly as a swear or curse, and the ‘flesh’ on the skeleton of this “The Ember Wars” backstory prequel’s storyline and plot lines is derived from books and movies, such as “The Dirty Dozen,” “Jurassic Park,” “Universal Soldier” and “Soldier” to name a few.
It’s a mess and a shameful effort by the author.
Read fully via KU with Notes/Highlights on Goodreads.
August 23, 2024
Ok, first up: This book has frequent spelling mistakes.
This book has a fair number of grammar issues.
Seriously, I think spell check must be an arch enemy or something?
BUT....
It's actually an interesting book.
Great story, pretty original and, importantly, quite Fun.
I enjoyed it, save for the occasional wince at spellings...which then became chuckles and a game of finding more...
Still, it's not a bad book.
Like I noted above, I enjoyed it....and have already snagged the sequel and am about to start it in mere minutes.
I would recommend it - just because the story is so good.
This book has a fair number of grammar issues.
Seriously, I think spell check must be an arch enemy or something?
BUT....
It's actually an interesting book.
Great story, pretty original and, importantly, quite Fun.
I enjoyed it, save for the occasional wince at spellings...which then became chuckles and a game of finding more...
Still, it's not a bad book.
Like I noted above, I enjoyed it....and have already snagged the sequel and am about to start it in mere minutes.
I would recommend it - just because the story is so good.
August 28, 2024
USE AN EDITOR
Wow, did you just run spell-check and submit? This book desperately needs editing. Between missing words, wrong use of words (site used instead of sight), and atrocious mistakes regarding weapons, etc. (she used a snub-nosed pistol and then a sentence later emptied the magazine), I am not even going to get into the plot, characters, and action. About the only thing the author seems to be good at is humor. I seriously question the military background only the author after reading this
Wow, did you just run spell-check and submit? This book desperately needs editing. Between missing words, wrong use of words (site used instead of sight), and atrocious mistakes regarding weapons, etc. (she used a snub-nosed pistol and then a sentence later emptied the magazine), I am not even going to get into the plot, characters, and action. About the only thing the author seems to be good at is humor. I seriously question the military background only the author after reading this
June 5, 2024
Stunning dake at the inside of the mind
Really stunning take. It made me wonder both at the mental strenght warriors and other men have to fight off the temptation, to stay true and nobel. Or to fall and become that monster we all fear of becoming.
Watching our hero struggle with the real world and with his mind was gripping.
And lets not forget those little reveals in between. Followers of Richard Fox will probable guess halfway through.
Really stunning take. It made me wonder both at the mental strenght warriors and other men have to fight off the temptation, to stay true and nobel. Or to fall and become that monster we all fear of becoming.
Watching our hero struggle with the real world and with his mind was gripping.
And lets not forget those little reveals in between. Followers of Richard Fox will probable guess halfway through.
June 22, 2024
Off to a very good start!
It'll be interesting to see where this series goes as it progresses apace.
Based on what I can foresee, this is a direction things may take as the future unfolds.
"BLACK" programs are "BLACK" for very specific reasons, well beyond most any "designations" for such.
It'll be interesting to see where this series goes as it progresses apace.
Based on what I can foresee, this is a direction things may take as the future unfolds.
"BLACK" programs are "BLACK" for very specific reasons, well beyond most any "designations" for such.
June 24, 2024
A different spin on the ember wars
Taking place right at the end and introducing two totally new characters and a side of Ibarra expected but still ruthless. It's not quite 5 starts but 4.5 isn't an option. Enjoyed it enough I'll read the next when it comes out
Taking place right at the end and introducing two totally new characters and a side of Ibarra expected but still ruthless. It's not quite 5 starts but 4.5 isn't an option. Enjoyed it enough I'll read the next when it comes out
June 26, 2024
I didn't think I was going to like this..
But was I ever wrong! Crazy plot concept, but Mr. Fox makes it work.
The research is spot on and you'll love the action too!
Can't wait to read the next one!
But was I ever wrong! Crazy plot concept, but Mr. Fox makes it work.
The research is spot on and you'll love the action too!
Can't wait to read the next one!
August 8, 2024
Holy kimchee!
This is a prequel series in the ember war saga and answers a whole lot of questions. Old names appear before the xaros invasion. This story was excellent. I read this on Kindle unlimited.
This is a prequel series in the ember war saga and answers a whole lot of questions. Old names appear before the xaros invasion. This story was excellent. I read this on Kindle unlimited.
August 15, 2024
Zombie soldier's rule.
Absolutely brilliant sci-fi warfare.
Great characters with realistic situations and lots of action.
Undead berzerker spec ops. Full of action and disturbingly apt for our times.
I look forward to the next one.
Absolutely brilliant sci-fi warfare.
Great characters with realistic situations and lots of action.
Undead berzerker spec ops. Full of action and disturbingly apt for our times.
I look forward to the next one.
June 2, 2024
interesting read
Liked the book, would have been more enjoyable without the vulgar language. I am a Richard Fox fan but this book seemed to have more vulgar language than necessary.
Liked the book, would have been more enjoyable without the vulgar language. I am a Richard Fox fan but this book seemed to have more vulgar language than necessary.
July 27, 2024
Very confusing at first and still a bit by the end but a good read. Not sure quite where the story will go....
August 13, 2024
Battleborn is good.
Beware the red man. A really good story on war, government, what makes people tick. You will enjoy it. Beware the Red Man.
Beware the red man. A really good story on war, government, what makes people tick. You will enjoy it. Beware the Red Man.
November 27, 2024
I give this book 2 1/2 star. Story itself is pretty good, the ideas very interesting, but what was really distracting was all the flashback. I kept getting lost with 3 different time periods. There was even a flashback inside a flashback.
February 28, 2025
Interesting premise. The super-soldier concept is pretty cool. There is a lot of action and the plot was engaging.
May 25, 2024
Half way through and this is exactly what you would expect from Richard Fox. None stop action. 4+ out of 5 stars so far. 4.5/5 Stars great second half, can't wait for the next one.
May 23, 2024
compelling story and writing
I really liked the book. Interesting storyline and interesting way of using the dreamlike flashbacks to grow the character.
Some extra proofreading should be done as there were a lot of writing errors (line of site, …) but it wasn’t disruptive.
Looking forward to the second book.
I really liked the book. Interesting storyline and interesting way of using the dreamlike flashbacks to grow the character.
Some extra proofreading should be done as there were a lot of writing errors (line of site, …) but it wasn’t disruptive.
Looking forward to the second book.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews