Book Review: Charge to Battle, by Nick Ryan
This was exactly what I was looking for.
I’m normally a historical fiction reader and I write 19th-century military novels. I decided to reward myself after finishing a Franco-Prussian War book by reading something contemporary.
I’ve recently become fascinated with modern mechanized warfare, especially how it compares and contrasts with the mounted warriors of the 1800s I write about. I was particularly interested in Stryker and Bradley armored personnel carriers. I found this book after some searching, and boy was I happy I did!
Charge to Battle is an absolute action-packed romp through the opening scenes of a speculative World War III. Nick Ryan certainly knows his stuff and if you read the acknowledgments at the end, you’ll see he had a lot of help from those on the inside.
The setup feels quite familiar although this book was written before the Russo-Ukrainian War. In Charge to Battle, the Russians have begun the reconquest of their lost empire. They quickly roll through the Baltic States and are now driving toward Warsaw to take back Poland.
NATO has been caught with their pants down. They scramble to meet the challenge, rallying their thinly spread troops to protect the Polish capital. A small force of American Strikers and Polish militia sally forward to harry the Russian advance in a desperate attempt to buy the allies time.
It all comes down to a bridge that the Stryker force must cross without air support, as all air assets are concentrated at Warsaw. The Russians are dug in deep and ready to contest every inch of the crossing.
Sergeant First Class Tom Edge leads his mechanized cavalry platoon of four Strykers to recon the bridge. With him are a company of green Polish troops mounted in KTO Rosomaks, which are their version of the American Stryker. However, Sergeant Edge and his soldiers find themselves in the heart of a desperate, bloody battle as the Russians defend the bridge to the death.
As I said before, this is an action-packed novel which spends most of the time in detailed battle scenes. Nick Ryan is a master of this. He’s also good at explaining how the weapons and vehicles work and the tactics using them. Still, I found myself looking things up, mostly because I was fascinated and wanted to see what they looked like.
If you want to see how a modern conventional battle would play out between equally advanced adversaries, this is a great book and it is only one out of eleven in a series.
The series is called Nick Ryan’s World War 3 Military Fiction Technothrillers. The novels are about 50,000 words and take place in this imagined but very realistic war. The books are not sequential, so you can start with any one. They each feature a different window into the war and different technologies. One book is about submarines, another is about fighter jets, and so forth.
Honestly, I was just going to read the one about Stryker armored personnel carriers but I might have to read more now that I’m hooked. They’re all rather short so it’s easy to burn through one in less than a week.
If you want a realistic look into what a modern conventional war might look like among highly advanced equals, I think any of these books would give you a good taste. Great job, Mr. Ryan. I look forward to reading more.
Check out Charge to Battle here:
Check out my latest novel here:
…and get the pre-order Kindle special for only 99¢/99p or your local equivalent of my newest novel. It’ll $4.99 when it comes out April 16, 2025.
