Desert Called Peace and Carnifex

Just finished A Desert Called Peace and Carnifex, by Tom Kratman. I'm going to talk about them as one book, because I suspect Kratman wrote it that way and Baen Publishing decided that a 1300 page book was a bit too chunky for one cover.
It's the tale of a Patrick Hennessey, a military officer whose wife and kids are killed in a 9-11 style terrorist attack; he forms a mercenary legion and dedicates himself to attaining a full measure of revenge.
The story is primarily set on a terraformed planet, but the Terran nations which colonized the place did so by nationality. There are consequently analogs of France, Germany, Spain, China, Japan, and so forth; the protagonist hails from a nation which sounds quite a bit like the United States. and his wife is from Balboa, the local equivalent of Panama. As Kratman says, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. In this case, it rhymes so closely that the reader might be forgiven for seeing it as a commentary on the current War on Terror. Kratman helpfully points out some other themes in his foreword (I mean that "helpfully"seriously. As an English major, I spent a lot of time wondering if authors really intended to say what my classmates claimed they meant).
The bad guys are bad, and some of the good guys aren't all that good. There's lots of violence and some sex, and a bit of each is gratuitous. Did I mention "Lots of violence"? This is definitely not for the squeamish. There are some actions the protagonist takes in his war on terror which may cause you to think "Yeah, we should do that"; and hopefully at times you'll also think "We should never do that."
If you like John Ringo's books, you'll like this. I hear Kratman has planned more books in the series; I'm looking forward to them.