The Red: First Light

There Needs To Be A War Going On Somewhere:

Lieutenant James Shelley commands a high-tech squad of soldiers in a rural district within the African Sahel. They hunt insurgents each night on a harrowing patrol, guided by three simple goals: protect civilians, kill the enemy, and stay alive—because in a for-profit war manufactured by the defense industry there can be no cause worth dying for. To keep his soldiers safe, Shelley uses every high-tech asset available to him—but his best weapon is a flawless sense of imminent danger... as if God is with him, whispering warnings in his ear.

The Red: First Light was a finalist for the both the Nebula and John W. Campbell Memorial awards, and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015.

"...one of the best pieces of near future Mil-SF ever written. What's so good about it? The action rocks and the characters are engaging as hell. But this isn't just adventure fiction, it's Mil-SF and very well done, straight out of DARPA's dreambook, not somebody's fantasy."    —Ernest Lilley, SFRevu

"The Red delivers intense action, leavened by a genuinely sympathetic portrait of soldiers caught up in battles they never chose. Best of all are Nagata's well-informed representations of future military tech. This is hard science fiction at its finest, full of devices like bionic limbs, exosuits, autonomous drones, and brain implants that are being developed in labs today. But you've never seen them like this, at play in a realistic field of battle, controlled by people you actually care about."   —Annalee Newitz, io9.com

"The Red: First Light is one fantastic speculative fiction novel, from a plotting, characterization, military sci-fi, and thematic standpoint."   —Thea James, Kirkus