The Runes of Engagement

When the portals open between 21st-century Earth and a place that looks like Tolkien’s Middle-earth, complete with elves, dwarves, and orcs, armies in every country dig in, throw the monsters back through the portals, and defend the planet by making alliances with creatures out of a Dungeons and Dragons handbook. One hard-bitten marine sergeant and his squad of newbies and nerds are escorting an elven princess to Manhattan when a dragon pushes them back from the gate and into an epic quest through forests, deadly blizzards, and evil-infested abandoned mines in order to reach an artifact (which will save the day or get them all killed), in a place far wilder than any gamer ever imagined. The novel takes military science fiction and throws it into a fantasy blender with John Scalzi’s “Old Man’s War,” S.M. Stirling’s “Emberverse,” and David Drake and Eric Flint’s “Belisarius.”