SOLVED. Science Fiction: Book where humanity is invited to join an alien alliance before they are ready because humans are aggressive and needed for a war [s]

[Neal]

I remember reading this book series year ago, probably late 90s early 2000s. What I put in the title is the biggest detail I can remember, but I also remember the fight being against these massive ships that I seem to recall being Borg like in shape. Also, no one knew where they came from. The alliance would use nuclear tipped ships to ram the other ships because nothing else could get through the armor, then land troops through the resulting hole. These massive ships would often survive many such attacks and continue on whatever their missions was.

It wasn't a massive alliance like in some series where thousands or even millions of species form a sort of empire, but rather a small group of I think about 4 including humanity. I seem to remember 1 book about the rites of adulthood ritual of one of the specific species' where the juveniles were dropped into a wilderness with basically just their squad and a lot of ammo and then had to survive until they got picked up. They were attacked my millions of native creatures and the ones that lived became adults.

I'm sorry if this isn't a whole lot to go on, but it's the best I can do and it's been driving me nuts for a while now. Thanks for any help you can give me.

[Barbara]

A couple of the points you mention remind me of the the Confederation series by Tanya Huff. The first of the series is Valor's Choice and has elements where the juveniles are dropped in the wilderness.

Other books in the series discuss giant ships and the fact that humans are good at war.

[Neal]

You're right Valor's Choice is definitely the one I was thinking of for the second part, I even remember the cover. Thank you so much, I've been trying to figure this out on and off for a long time now, and you figured it out in less than a day.

Wish I would have found this group earlier.