Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, Insurrection
I think these books have some of the best and coolest depictions of interstellar war and space battles I have ever read. If you accept the premises - naturally occurring "warp points" (wormholes) in orbit a few light hours out around stars and reactionless "drive fields" which mess with inertia allowing ships to move at 0.05-0.1C and missles to move at 0.9C - it seems incredibly consistant and realistic. I especially like the way the writers constantly remind us of the scale of the battles. Most battles take place over light-seconds, "mines" are actually mobile missiles they leave floating on automatic because exploding a few hundred miles from the target would be useless, and lightspeed delay a big deal when it comes to coordinated attacks around a system.
One thing I've noticed: although these battles are incredible in a book, if you ever tried to show it on TV there would be nothing to show - the nearest ships are never closer than a few hundred miles, and the missiles are moving at almost the speed of light. It would either be ship... ship... FLASH-nomoreship or looking at the crew's tactical displays. You just can't do that on TV.


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