Boundary's Edge compared this work to Tom Clancy's Ryanverse. A reviewer for Space.com wrote about The Shattered Skies calling the book "military sci-fi at its finest". Writing for FanFiAddict, its reviewer called The Cruel Stars series utterly fantastic and wrote "Birmingham really finds new ways to keep the plot fresh and explore different, strange scenarios despite the crew being on a ship in the void that is space." Another reviewer wrote that the book has "absorbing conflicts with high stakes and believable antagonists, complex characters with rich relationships and effective emotional depth, and Birmingham’s magnificent world building" while avoiding the flaws in the first book of the series.The Shattered Skies was nominated for a Dragon Award for the 2022 Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel. This is Birmingham's first major literary award nomination. Works Non-fictionHe Died with a Felafel in His Hand (1994), The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco (1998), Leviathan: The Un-authorised Biography of Sydney (1999), How to be a Man (co-authored with Dirk Flinthart) (2000), Appeasing Jakarta: Australia's complicity in the East Timor Tragedy (2001), Off One's Tits (collection of articles & essays) (2002), Dopeland: Taking the High Road through Australia's Marijuana Culture (2003), A Time for War: Australia as a Military Power (2005), How to be a Writer: who smashes deadlines, crushes editors and lives in a solid gold hovercraft (2016), Stranger Thingies: From Felafel to Now (2018), On Father (2019), Fiction Axis of Time Series Weapons of Choice (2004), Designated Targets (2005), Final Impact (2006), Stalin's Hammer: Rome (2012), novella, Stalin's Hammer: Cairo (2016), ebook only novellaStalin's Hammer: Paris (2016), ebook only novellaStalin's Hammer: The Complete Sequence (2017), , all three novellas (Rome, Cairo and Paris) have been repackaged as a single volume An untitled work, beginning this history's WWIII, has been announced on John Birmingham's blog. The Disappearance Series Without Warning (2008), After America (2010), Angels of Vengeance (2011), The David Hooper Trilogy (also known as Dave Vs. The Monsters) Emergence (2015), Resistance (2015), Ascendance (2015), The Protocol for Monsters (2016), ebook only novellaSoul Full of Guns (2016), ebook only novellaThe Demons of Butte Crack County (2017) (Anthology) A Girl In Time SeriesA Girl In Time (2016), The Golden Minute - A Girl In Time Novel (2018), End of Days SeriesZero Day Code (2019), Audible AudiobookFail State (2019), Audible AudiobookAmerican Kill Switch (2021), Audible Audiobook The Cruel Stars Series Novels: The Cruel Stars (2019), The Shattered