War is an Orphanage: Jason Wander, left orphaned at age 17 by an attack from an unseen alien enemy, must fight his own demons before he can fight Earth’s. Jason starts off on a self destructive streak that leads to being expelled from school, through foster homes and finally to an appointment with a no-nonsense judge. As the world begins falling apart, Jason is given the choice of so many others, from an earlier time in American history: join the Army or go to jail. This decision leads to an odyssey of adventures that takes Jason Wander from the pits of despair to the heights of victory. In the spirit of Johnnie Rico and Starship Troopers, Robert Buettner crafts a story that is as much about a young man coming of age as it is about fighting alien creatures.

1. Orphanage(1 April 2008 - Reissued), the first volume in the "Jason Wander" series.

Mankind’s first alien contact tears into Earth: projectiles launched from Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede, vaporize whole cities. Under siege, humanity gambles on one desperate counterstrike. In a spacecraft scavenged from scraps and armed with Vietnam-era weapons, foot soldiers like eighteen-year-old Jason Wander-orphans that no one will miss-must dare man’s first interplanetary voyage and invade Ganymede.

2. Orphan's Destiny (1 April 2008 - Reissued), the second volume in the "Jason Wander" series.

At twenty-five, General Jason Wander has fought and won man’s only alien conflict. Now, after long years in space, he’s coming homebut to what? Earth’s desperate nations, impoverished by war damage and military spending, are slashing defense budgets. There’s just one problem with this new worldwide policy-the first alien invasion was merely Plan A.

Suddenly, the real assault begins: Earth is attacked by a vast armada of city-sized warships. To block their invasion, mankind has only one surviving craft and a single guerrilla strike forcea suicide squad led by Jason Wander."

3. Orphan’s Journey (1 April 2008 - Reissued), the third volume in the "Jason Wander" series.

In the years since the last Slug War, Jason’s command style hasn’t made him any friends in the Army. Now, in an effort to keep him out of trouble, the Army has sent Jason to the vast, Earth-orbiting resort called New Moon. At the core of this enormous space station is a starship, a relic from the last war.

When a test run of the ship goes wrong, Jason, along with a handful of others, will be torn from orbit and thrust into space. Now, stranded on an alien planet, Jason realizes that not only are his friends looking to him for rescue, but an entire planet sees him as their only hope.

4. Orphan’s Alliance (28 October 2008), the fourth volume in the "Jason Wander" series.

Humans have been discovered on the Outworlds. And the Army decides to send emissaries. Emissaries like Jason Wander. As intraplanetary conflicts rage around him, and the personal stakes get ever higher, Jason finds that playing planet-hopping politician can be harder than commanding armies. When united mankind squares off to battle the Slugs for a precious interstellar crossroad, Jason will discover that the most dangerous enemy may be the one he least expects.

5. Orphan’s Triumph (coming 26 May 2009), the fifth volume in the "Jason Wander" series.

Jason Wander is ready to lead the final charge into battle. After forty years of fighting the Slugs, mankind's reunited planets control the vital crossroad that secures their uneasy union. The doomsday weapon that can end the war, and the mighty fleet that will carry it to the Slug homeworld, lie within humanity's grasp. Since the Slug Blitz orphaned Jason Wander, he has risen from infantry recruit to commander of Earth's garrisons on the emerging allied planets. But four decades of service have cost Jason not just his friends and family, but his innocence. When an enemy counter stroke threatens to reverse the war and destroy mankind, Jason must finally confront not only his lifelong alien enemy, but the reality of what a lifetime as a soldier has made him.

Orphan's Legacy Series

In March, 2011, Baen Books, distributed by Simon & Schuster, will release Overkill, Buettner's sixth novel and first in a new series, which reportedly will include at least three books.

The new series is said to follow on to the Jason Wander books. From the publisher's description:

"At twenty-three, Jazen Parker has completed his Legion hitch a hero. But in four months, he’ll have a price on his head. Worse, he’s lost his past, and he can’t find his future. Worst of all, he’s chosen to search for them on the deadliest planet known to mankind."

Critical opinion

The Washington Post and Denver Post favorably compared Buettner's debut novel, Orphanage, to Robert Heinlein's 1959 classic Starship Troopers, to which, the author has written, Orphanage is a deliberate literary homage. Other critics have compared Buettner's books favorably to the work of "Golden Age" science fiction writers Poul Anderson, Andre Norton, H. Beam Piper, L. Sprague deCamp, to recent writers Joe Haldeman and John Scalzi, and to such diverse artists as Miguel de Cervantes, Monty Python and P.G. Wodehouse. Buettner was nominated for the Quill Award for Best New Writer in 2005.

Commercial performance

Buettner's first novel, Orphanage, made numerous bestseller lists, including Barnes & Noble's overall paperback Top 50 and the Locus Magazine paperback Top 10. Orphanage was nominated for the Quill Award as best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror novel of 2004. Orphanage's publisher (which changed its name from Time Warner Aspect to Little Brown Orbit) reissued Orphanage in April, 2008. As of June, 2008, the book was in its sixth printing. Orphanage has been translated by foreign publishers into Chinese, Czech, Russian and Spanish, was published in hardcover by the Science Fiction Bookclub, and as an ebook in various formats. Orbit also markets the Jason Wander series in a separate edition geared for the United Kingdom market. The rest of the series is believed to have performed similarly to Orphanage.

Style

All five books in the Jason Wander series are told in the first-person viewpoint and distinctive voice of the protagonist, Jason Wander. They follow his coming of age and growth from misfit soldier to maverick general during a decades-long interstellar war. Buettner said in an interview that "Writing generation-spanning space opera through a single, first-person-viewpoint character is like painting the Death Star with a toothbrush."