War Stories is a pretty big collection of fiction. You really can't go wrong with 23 action packed tales running the timeline of war from Vietnam and into the far off future. You get a little of everything- horror, conspiracy, science fiction, and fantasy all rolled into one.

I don't think there is a dud in the collection. Some stories ended a bit differently than I expected but it made sense and fit with the story. Some notable stories for me- Ghost Girl by Rich Larson, The Radio by Susan Jane Bigelow, The Valkyrie by Maurice Broaddus, and Invincible by Jay Posey. I could go on but listing all the stories as impressive should be clear with the 5 star rating. A big high five to the editors for gathering a massive amount of talent here too. ( )

Very good: barretta, orsi, nagata, dyer.
Good: Haldeman.
Ok: larson, yoon.
Not that great, bad and very bad: the rest.
So, about half are actually worth reading, which is pretty good for a milscifi anthology, to be honest. ( )

Overall, a great collection of military themed SF short stories. There were a few which had LGBTQ themes (which I think might have been a goal of the collection) shoehorned in, but others with those themes where it actually worked, and others which were exploring other issues. Overall about half of the stories were excellent, which is a great ratio for a collection. ( )

I wanted to like this collection more than I did. I finished it with the feeling that if this was the best that science fiction can do with the concept of war, it was perhaps best left alone. The stories range from near future stories of drone warfare to more fanciful tales of cyborgs and such, some set during conflict, and some dealing with its aftereffects, but I found little here that grabbed my attention. Ken Liu's "In the Loop" was an interesting take on the automation of warfare (if a trifle conservative). I did like the monitoring wasps of Mark Jacobsen's "The Wasp Keepers," a plausible enough take on how Middle Eastern "peace-keeping" might go someday. The best story in the book was Karin Lowachee's "Enemy State," about the lover of a combat-augmented cyborg dealing with posttraumatic stress. Like, say, Cordwainer's Smith "Scanners Live in Vain," it uses bodily alteration partially as a stand-in for the mental alteration war inflicts on those who fight it, and I found it moving in parts.

Too many of the stories strained my credulity, with military technology I had a hard time believing in. I guess this is a difficulty in general of military sf, as contemporary warfare moves increasingly toward drones-- how do we maintain the human element necessary for storytelling? Many stories accomplish this by having the combat drones used human bodies and/or human minds in some integral way, but I often found this hard to buy. The AI in Susan Jane Bigelow's "The Radio," for example, had implausibly few instructions on what to do if separated from her unit.

"Invincible" by Jay Posey had the typical armored suits that go back to Starship Troopers, I guess, which felt a little trite. A few stories used these, so many that the book actually has a section devoted to them, but they began to blend together after a while. Some authors gamely tried to come up with new spins on them, like Carlos Orsi's "In Loco," but I found that story somewhat contrived, to be honest.

War Stories, by various authors is a compilation of war stories (no surprise there), mostly science fiction, and all focusing on the characters more so than the battles. I admit to being unsure about this novel, but after ignoring it for far too long, I finally dove in and was immediately surprised by the character depth and realism these writers display.

You will run the gambit of emotions with this one, and after finishing one short story, you want to immediately tear into the next one as there are no dogs here. Each author, in their own unique way, kidnaps your attention.
This is an easy five star in my mind – something I never do lightly. Just buy the book. You won’t regret it. ( )