A Hymn Before Battle

This was one of the Baen Free Library books that I read a long time ago and was sort of surprised to really like. A lot of it is inside-baseball military jargon that I find surprisingly fascinating, and the rest is pure jingoistic shoot-'em-up fun. The setup is sort of perfect - the aliens are almost completely unrelatable and therefore cause no one shooting them any moral qualms (they eat everything, including their own children!) they're tough enough to require a great deal of blowing up, and dumb enough to allow themselves to be blown up with easy-to-follow tactics. Mike O'Neal, the main protagonist, is a ridiculous author-insertion fantasy (massively strong, super intelligent, tremendously competent, absurdly brave, married to a hot show more ex-military ex-stripper, and, naturally, a scifi writer.) It's sort of charming how perfect he is.

Pure brain-rotting fluff, this book. show less

This is the debut novel by John Ringo, a former solider turned author a la David Drake. Unlike Drake’s works, Ringo is able to weave grand strategy into a story with compelling tactical level battle scenes. At the beginning of the book we discover that the Earth is within the borders of a peaceful Galactic Federation. The representatives of which have arrived to inform us of this happy circumstance and gift us with technology that will end famine and disease, stave off old age and give us interstellar flight. There is just one catch; there is another civilization out in the stars and its…less friendly. In fact, the Posleen are on a drive to wipe out all other intelligent life in the universe. And Earth is smack dab in the way of the show more slow moving scourge that’s expected to arrive in 5 years. So the Federation has an offer we can’t refuse: help them defend the worlds already under attack and they will bring us up to speed technologically so we can defend ourselves when it’s our turn. You see, some where along the last few thousand years the Federation has forgotten how to fight and they noticed that we see to have an aptitude it that regard. Well, I won’t give away any of the plot details, if you are a fan of alien invasion stories, this is a definite must-read. No big morals, no big proclamations about pseudo-morality and philosophy that seem to pollute so much of modern fiction. Fair warning though, this novel is the springboard for a series that is four books in this plot line and two other related ones so far. So the beginning is a little confusing as we get a lot of people and plots thrown at us. But then things take off like a bat out of hell. show less

Humankind is tapped to kick galactic ass and chew bubble gum, but they're all out of bubble gum.

When mankind is first contacted by alien intelligences, the shit is about to hit the fan. A galactic federation of non-warlike races is being overrun by an insatiable newly discovered race, and mankind has been elected to be the cannon fodder to counter this threat. New technology is infused into the human industries, but there is a price, and all is not as it seems to be.

A great romp of battle and adventure, with some hints and implications that will develop in later books.

A decent army biased sci-fi war epic. The alien Posleen show up and start kicking butt all over the galaxy, opposed by the humans, with some help from more advanced alien species. As usual, they recruit humans because we're violent and vicious and stubborn, but it looks bleak when the Posleen invade earth in superior numbers.
The Posleen have suspiciously simple tactics, and Ringo obviously dislikes our current reliance on air power, but this was still fun to read.

Another "fun to read" author of military science fiction. Ringo puts a lot of detail into military encounters in this book/series, yet the book doesn't end up being terrible dry by any means. Lots of action, very gritty, highly recommended for ex-military (or current for that matter) sci-fi readers.

I mean good god, look at the fucking cover. I should have brown paper bagged it because I was so embarrassed to read this thing in public.

I read it because of all the rave reviews I've seen about it on the internet, and I was expecting it to be a really fun space opera. It has its moments, but it's really just a run of the mill trash novel fraught with all the tropes of the genre. And whoever designed the covers to these books should be dragged to the streets and shot. Look at the one for "Gust Front," which is the next book in this series. It might be the most ridiculous cover I have ever seen in my entire life.

Another one of those books i couldn't put down. The premise was an alien race conquering worlds on the way to earth. A non aggressive alien race helps earth with the promise that they would supply the solders. Followed a young officer in learning about the alien technology and using it to turn the tide during one of the first big battles