Battleforged Chronicles Books in Order

Battleforged Chronicles follows Kav, a mercenary commander whose enormous war machine gives him extraordinary power without giving him much freedom. Chris Fox combines military science fiction with magic in a later era of the Magitech Chronicles universe. The setting takes place ten thousand years after Magitech Legacy, introducing a different period through soldiers who have to survive the missions they are assigned.

Kav's machine is powerful, expensive and not actually his.

In Battleforged, he leads a platoon of Avatars, towering machines made from the bodies of dead gods. Piloting one is more than sitting at a set of controls. The bond with its magitech core allows the operator to experience the machine as a body and resist the spells of ordinary mages. On a battlefield, that makes an Avatar a formidable weapon, but the arrangement behind it is far less glorious than the machine itself.

The Inuran Consortium rents the Avatars to their pilots and keeps them in debt. Kav and his people must accept the jobs they are given, with failure threatening more than a lost contract. Losing their bonded status could mean debtors' prison. That pressure gives the fighting a practical motive: staying alive matters, but so does keeping access to the equipment on which their working lives depend.

The prequel story Combat Drop shows Kav leading a mercenary platoon against the Draconic Alliance on Celifon. Enemy dragons have Avatars too, making the machines a danger on both sides rather than an automatic advantage for his unit. The assignment introduces the series' combination of magical technology, combat and unfavourable odds, with the prospect of an upgrade providing one possible reward for making it through.

Battleforged 2 sends Kav and the Roughnecks to Python under the command of an old enemy. Hostile inhabitants aren't their only problem: the planet's conditions can double gravity for hours at a time. A rumoured Systems Alliance facility offers a possible chance to change their situation, while questions of prophecy intrude on what already looks like an extremely difficult military assignment.

The continuing appeal is the tension between spectacular battlefield power and the restrictions placed on the people wielding it. These soldiers can become something close to gods inside their machines, yet remain subject to debts and orders. Start with Combat Drop for the earlier mission, or with Battleforged for the main series opening, then continue with Battleforged 2. Readers can expect mecha combat, dangerous planets and a commander trying to protect his unit while institutions much larger than his platoon determine where it fights.