Chris Bunch and Allan Cole have written some fine fantasy and SF both together and separately and this is a welcome reprint from 1982 of this set of four novels chronicling the adventures of Sten, a tough military type whose battleground is a distant future galaxy.  In this first story he starts life at the bottom of the pile - a child of migrant workers (Migs) on the hellish factory world of Vulcan (no, nothing to do with that Vulcan), which is reminiscent of 1984.  An explosion kills his family and Sten is determined to find out what caused it, as it the Emperor himself.  A misdemeanour gets Sten sent to a worse place but there is no holding this man and soon he is drafted into a highly satirically described army which has the ring of truth about it (read the authors' bios) and yet more adventures.

This is a book so packed with incident that if you read a doorstop-sized novel after it you might feel like sending its author a copy of Sten to show them how it can be done in the hands of masters.  I can't wait to read the other three!