Andreas Rosboch's Blog, page 54

Unto the Breach (Paladin of Shadows IV) – John Ringo

The fourth book of the series has Mike and the Mountain Tigers has them recovering a WMD from nearby Chechnya.

This is arguably the best in the series. It starts a bit slow, but the last 150 pages or so are one long battle with more excitement and fast moving twists than you can shake a Keldara axe at. At the end, some secrets are revealed. And Mike is broken psychologically. Very nice.

Choosers of the Slain (Paladin of Shadows III) – John Ringo

In the third book of the series, things really start to heat up. Ringo takes us on a scenic tour of the white slavery movement in Eastern Europe as a senator "hires" Mike and his Mountain Tigers retainers to find a girl caught up in prostitution and slavery. The subject matter is quite awful but such is reality.

Ringo is really hitting his stride here with great action scenes and development of the characters. This book also inserts some interesting interactions with senior officials of various states. As with the earlier books, I couldn't put it down.

Kildar (Paladin of Shadows II) – John Ringo

Mike from Ghost is back. While driving through Georgia (the country not the state), our hero is snowed in while in a remote mountain valley. On a whim, he buys the local caravanserai, which also comes with a large farm and most of the valley. He thus inherits the local retainers, a group known as the Keldara. These brew the best beer he has ever tasted, and (of course) turn out to be an ancient warrior tribe. He proceeds to set up a militia to combat Chechen incursions. He is also saddled with a harem of rescued former sex slaves. Storywise, this is more of a set-up book for further novels than anything else.

While Ringo could have continued to write episodic novels about covert operations ad infinitum, he wisely decided to take the character somewhere completely different, both literally and figuratively. Having established that  Ghost is a filthy rich badass former SEAL who likes rough sex and killing bad guys, Ringo decided to make him every man's wet dream.

It all beggars belief more than a little, but Ringo is unapologetic. There's also a strong underlying message of the American Way being superior, especially compared to "ragheads from central Asia". Ringo has written a modern equivalent of John Norman's Gor Books. There is even a reference in the book. I enjoyed reading it and, like the first, it is a real page turner. It won't win any literary awards, but that is hardly the objective. Ringo knows exactly which buttons to press with the average male. Sometimes it borders on the insultingly blatant, but that's fine. This book is actually a guilty pleasure of mine, and I often re-read it when I have nothing else to read. It always entertains.

Ghost (Paladin of Shadows I) – John Ringo

Our hero, Mike Harmon AKA "Ghost", is an ex-SEAL trying to get by. Through somewhat random circumstances, he ends up foiling a terrorist plot to kidnap and torture American college girls. Now rich with reward money, he moves to the Keys. And ends up foiling a plot to place a nuke on American soil. After that, he ends up in Russia, where he… You get the picture. The book is episodic, with three quite distinct parts. Constant are the visceral, brutal, violent action scenes as well as the explicit and kinky sex.

I came in expecting special forces action. And yes, there is a lot of that. Quite good too. What I didn't expect was all the erotica. Which is also good if you're into that sort of thing.

A fun read, but not for the liberal. The hero's views are quite, ahem, "Republican" when it comes to terrorism and how to deal with it. There is in fact, and somewhat unexpectedly, quite a bit of deep thought between the lines.

East of the Sun, West of the Moon (Council Wars IV) – John Ringo

Book four is about a showdown of sorts, as both sides jockey for control of a ship full of fuel coming in from the outer solar system. The fuel is destined for the reactors powering the council's interests. As usual, Herzer is in the thick of it. And oh yeah, there are orcs in space, but nothing much is really made of that.

This may be the last book, but the conclusion isn't unambiguous. The story is rather simplistic. While Ringo is always entertaining, the epic dimension is missing. If you liked the first three books, you'll enjoy this, but I still felt that it was a bit phoned in.

Against the Tide (Council Wars III) – John Ringo

Book three in the series is a dramatic improvement from the disappointing Emerald Sea. Ringo takes us back to the main action of the war, where a battle for control of the Atlantic (ahem, "Atlantis") is brewing. The UFS Navy is in terrible shape, so the Queen sends Edmund (with Herzer in tow) to take over and sort it out before New Destiny tries to invade.

Good, clean fun in other words. Plenty of action, laughs and horrible puns. For example the SEAL team is made up of humans changed into seal-form. If you enjoyed There Will be Dragons, you will enjoy this.

A Martian Ricorso – Greg Bear

This short story is about Mars "the way it once was", with canals and Martians. An expedition with three crewmembers has landed and finds itself in the way of hordes of "Winter Troops", a new breed of Martians that feeds off the remnants of the fallen civilization that created the canals.

Told as journal entries, this story isn't anything special. If it had been any longer I would probably not have finished. it.

Pyramid Scheme – Eric Flint & Dave Freer

A mysterious pyramid appears in the University of Chicago Library. It starts "snatching" people at random. Almost all return within a few hours, dead or nearly so. Then a larger group is snatched. They end up in a mythical version of ancient Greece.

This romp through Greek myth (with a brief detour in Egyptian myth) by a haphazardly composed gang of modern humans is a great deal of fun. The concept is very clever and thankfully the authors don't take the whole thing too seriously. Heroics, adventures and awful puns!

Emerald Sea (Council Wars II) – John Ringo

The sequel to There Will be Dragons has a big disconnect from the earlier novel, as the setting changes and the storyline moves forward a few years between the books. It seems Mr Ringo had an idea about underwater action and aircraft (ahem, dragon) carriers and went with it. It's all good fun for a fast read, but hardly what I would call profound. If you like the other Ringo novels, you'll probably enjoy this one. Dark humor, cool action scenes and likeable characters.

The short story at the end, "In A Time of Darkness", is about one of adversary Paul Bowman's concubines. While it has a part in the macrostory it mostly serves as filler.

There Will Be Dragons (Council Wars I) – John Ringo

This is the first volume in Ringo's vision of a fallen utopia. Mankind is free of want and ill-timed death. People can do what they wish with their long lives. But there is trouble in paradise. The council that rules the "Net", the information system that provides for mankind, has fallen out in factional disputes that lead to war. Mother, a watchdog AI, does not interfere very much after the fall, but certain restrictions apply. For example, the amount of explosive force that can be applied is limited, making firearms well nigh impossible, as well as high energy industry. Society is back at a very early industrial level. The struggle in the beginning is just survival. but the war is far from over…

Great fun and entertainment in Ringo's trademark style.