Live Free or Die

I've been a long-time Ringo fan as a guilty pleasure, but I gotta say, this is the absolute WORST science fiction book I have ever read (and I have read, at least, a thousand such tomes). Imagine Ayn Rand, Friederich Nietzsche, and Robert Heinlein interpreted by Sara Palin writing science fiction. This is sci-fi porn for the Tea Partier crowd, and generally packs the same intellectual heft of that crew. Ringo's work finally jumped the shark with me when the protagonist's alien counterpart calls his own (the alien's) government a bunch of "socialist pussies." The bad aliens are pretty stupid and reminded me of the Judoon from the contemporary Dr. Who BBC series - powerful rhino headed morons. The good aliens are portrayed as a bunch of show more dithering liberals who abhor war and have abolished the alien military draft. In fact, all aliens are pretty stupid, incompetent, and obtuse. If you want to read some "guilty pleasure" Ringo that actually works, seek out his "Tuloriad" works (and come to think of that, he had some co-authors that probably reigned him in).

I do enjoy Ringo when he is at his most outrageous, but this comes across as calculated to pander to the Fox News crowd (and Fox News comes across as the voice of reason in this book to no one's surprise). Billions of people are killed, scores of cities are obliterated, and earth's economy chugs along without missing a beat. In fact, the world economy gets better since all those poor welfare cheats living in the cities were destroyed.

This is a train wreck of a book which I was able to easily finish, but I'm a fan of truly bad art (e.g., Battlefield Earth, the movie). If they ever make this book into a movie, I recommend Ringo contact John Travolta. show less

John Ringo is definitely a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you have a rather thrilling action scifi writer, on the other hand "Oh John Ringo No!"

Never let it be said that John Ringo ain't a nerd. This book is basically a love letter to Schlock Mercenary, where right after a bad first contact puts Earth under the heal of not very bright imperialist aliens, an out of work scifi web comic author lucks his way into finding the single Earth product that actually sells off-world, and parlays that into bootstrapping an orbital military industrial complex.

The characterization is a lot of fun, if you can look past the frequent pointless jabs at liberals (really John Ringo, what did we ever do to you?), and I actually like the logistics of show more bootstrapping up past Kardashev Type I civilizations, but I'm not sure about Ringo's space mirror array fetishism. Here, space mirrors are basically industrial and military magic that only humans have discovered in millennial of interstellar civilization. And there's a battle, which we win due to petawatts of archimedian solar death rays, but the solar mirror fetishism is even less fun than David Weber's missile salvo fetishism. Well, we'll see where this goes. show less

A Stargate is set up in the Solar System and a race of benign traders show. Then the Horvath who destroy three cities and demand tribute. One man decides to take them on and, of course, does so. A fun near-future military fiction which includes a lot of scope, plenty of action, and an appealing overachieving hero in Tyler Vernon, the vengeful American entrepreneur. Look forward to reading the rest of this series.

Авторът е странна птица.

От една страна е от дъртите либертарианци, анархо-капиталисти, палео консерватори, каквито бяха много фантасти през миналия век, преди днес да изникнат като гъби разни изгъзяци с лилави коси. В случая с тази книга, Джон Ринго възхвалява горските събирачи на кленов сироп, живеещи на путка си майна в канадския север, които спят с пушката под леглото и не цепят басма на никого, особено show more на разни извънземни колонизатори-събирачи на данъци.

От друга страна, човекът просто не е особено добър писател. В смисъл, може да минава за средно ниво (и предвид темата на романа и политическите си убеждения, даже за добър) автор на фантастика през 80-те и 90-те, но аз не съм тийнейджър отдавна и колкото и претенциозно да звучи, в литературен смисъл вече не пия ариана в парка, макар тогава да го правех с кеф, а вече имам вкус за по-хубаво уиски в по-хубаво заведение. show less

If this book was a piece of candy, it would be one of those Harry Potter Jellybeans. The ones where you think you're going to bite into a delicious apple flavored treat, only to spit out a wad of artificially booger-flavored goo.

This was my first John Ringo read, and I had no idea about his oddly placed yet overly angry political rants. I loved the rest, but his propagandist message and method is so off-putting for me.

This is very typical John Ringo. Set in the near future, aliens open a gate to our Solar System for us to use, but there is a catch - anyone can use it. The first civilization to come through are traders but we have little they want and our technology is very inferior to theirs. The second civilization to come through demands all of our heavy metals and destroys cities to prove they are serious. Enter Tyler Vernon. He discovers a substance that the trading aliens want - maple syrup. He cleverly arranges a near monopoly on syrup production and gets a cut of all trading. How he does that is the New Hampshire state motto - Live Free or Die. He then sets out to lift Earth's technology level and build a defense against the invaders. The show more technology and action are great, as usual. There's a few small problems here. Would today's NH syrup farmers really prefer to die before giving up their freedom? That's ignoring the problem that there's significant maple syrup production in other states. The other problem I have with this - Mr. Vernon makes himself the richest person in the world and single handedly sets out to save the planet. What are the other billionaires doing? They'd be involved one way or another. Same thing with the other countries. Its a fun read, but you have to ignore a few flaws in the basic premise. All that being said, in the prologue Ringo admits this is a rip-off of a webcomic that he enjoys, so it shouldn't be a surprise that this is a bit simplistic. show less

Very readable, has some really interesting ideas and could perhaps have been a favourite of mine if it hadn't been for the unnecessary racism, sexism and the eugenics. The lead characters are opposed to a situation involving eugenics in a major plot strand, but apparently only because the baddies are going about it wrong.

Now I get this is the characters, and not necessarily the authors opinions, but I don't think he is a skilled enough author to have a protagonist present a controversial opinion without the reader going "hmmm".

All that and using a genocide to set up a particularly unfunny blonde joke.