Live Free or Die (Troy Rising, Book 1)

Live Free or Die starts as a First Contact story. An alien race visits our solar system and "builds" a Gate for interstellar travel to and from our system to other Gates in the galaxy. The captain of the ship informs us that alien races, both friendly and hostile, can now travel to and from Earth using the Gate. The action starts during the subsequent five years when first a "friendly" race (the Glatun), engaged in interstellar commerce, arrives using the Gate. They are followed a few years later by a more predatory race, the Horvath, who use trade the same way the Mafia uses a protection racket. They destroy three cities, Mexico City, Shanghai and Cairo, to demonstrate how mean they are and then demand all of the stocks of Earth's heavy precious metals, mainly gold and platinum, as payment for the Horvath "protecting" Earth from hostile aliens.

Enter our hero, Tyler Vernon, who is struggling to survive in New Hampshire amidst the worldwide depression caused by the Horvath stealing Earth's precious metals. Tyler is an entrepreneur and seizes the opportunity when he meets a Glatun free trader at an SF convention. Just asking the question, "What could he sell the Glatun that would be valuable to an advanced alien race?" starts something big for him. How big was determined by a second question, "How could he become the indispensable source for that export item?"

As anyone who has traveled to New Hampshire knows, the motto for the State is "Live Free or Die." It's on every license plate. Tyler and a bunch of his neighbors take that philosophy seriously. What starts out as a commercial venture eventually turns into the war for Terran independence from the Horvath and Tyler Vernon leads the fight as the richest man on Earth from trade with the Glatun. How he manages to drive the Horvath from our solar system while saving Earth is a great start to multi-volume epic story. Don't worry, there is no cliff-hanger at the end to ruin the pleasure of an uplifting novel of human courage and ingenuity.

Ringo is writing SF the old fashioned way on a grand scale. The book harkens back to the best science fiction of the 1950's and 1960's. There is no ambiguity about who are the good guys in this story.

Live Free or Die cannot be pigeon-holed as a space opera. First, the book is about the importance of one indispensable man. Tyler Veron solves the practical economics of humans leap-frogging from NASA era technology to star-travel. If I tell you how it would be a plot spoiler, but it's great. The emphasis on the indomitable human spirit give a realism to this novel. Some things we must do or die trying. Second, Ringo cares about getting the science right, especially in how humans would exploit the raw materials of the inner solar system to build a space-faring civilization.

Historians in academia these days treat the great man theory of history with great distaste. So the fact that Charles Martel led the Frankish forces to victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 to stop the Islamic conquest of Europe is not supposed to be important for today's history students. Similarly, a student should not hold his breath waiting for a lecture on King John III of Poland ("John Sobieski") breaking the Siege of Vienna on September 12,1683 against a huge Turkish army. Sobieski was the acknowledged military genius of his age. He had a career of military victories that were the impetus for his being elected King of Poland. His leadership ended the threat of a Turkish military conquest of Europe.

The lessons we used to obtain from history are now being taught in the pages of science fiction novels.

LFD is a straightforward shoot-em-up, with all the subtlety and nuance of a rock through your window.

I enjoyed the first half, with our hero Tyler Vernon the only person *both* smart enough to figure out what the aliens want *and* ballsy enough to claw his way to a standoff with the bad guys. Exhilarating.

The second half degenerated into a snarled-up knot of engineering acryonyms and perfunctory space battles. No suspense to speak of; the outcome is never in doubt, except for engineering details like how fast to spin molten space rocks to get the effect you want.

Still not a bad yarn as long as you remember another reviewer's advice that Ringo's "doing it all with mirrors" and just let it carry you along. A good airport read.

I'm giving it three stars rather than four because Ringo makes no effort to make the aliens, well, alien in any meaningful sense. They come across to me as humans wearing funny-looking foam headgear. The good aliens are Americans in space and the bad aliens are Soviets in space. (No kidding - he describes the Horvath as "communalist" at least twice). There's at least one first contact between an alien and a human that to my ear reads like a Happy Days scene with Fonzie and Ritchie horsing around in the garage ("toss me that wrench, wouldya?").

The most interesting character in the whole book, humans and aliens included, is an old New England farmer who believes everyone who lives in a city is a "Revenuer" and everybody from south of New Hampshire is a "Reb." I'd like to read more about him!

I don't mind the "culturally insensitive" stuff except that it sticks out like a sore thumb. When done properly, that kind of material becomes a backdrop or context which helps explain where the protagonist is coming from. In LFD it's too often just enumerated statements where Ringo is telling, not showing (black women find it easy to get government jobs; women are stacked; it would be funny if blonde women were made to be always sexually promiscuous; 'minorities' are poor and lazy; the destruction of most cities in the world would have the silver lining of killing most lawyers). For me it just interferes with the storytelling. I'd much rather have those things emerge from the flow of what makes Tyler Vernon tick.

In the end this book is for me a guilty pleasure - fun and fast to consume, but doesn't stick to your ribs.

This is a review of the three books: Live Free or Die; Citadel; The Hot Gate.

Aliens attack Earth. The cowardly Americans and their closest allies quickly give up and it's up to the heroic darker races of the planet, to the Latin Americans, the Africans, most of the Asians, to save the species. The aliens attack with a virus that kills most blond people. The swarthy humans counter-attack and invite the remaining Americans to fight for Earth, but first the Americans have to be taught how to fight properly: they must abandon their stupid and crass commercialism, their instinctual reaction to put profit before the good of humankind, and only then they'll be worthy. Some Americans will learn, others will become traitors.

No, Ringo didn't write this caricature of Anti-Americanism. I just did. But he wrote almost exactly the same thing in three terrible books, only some of the details are different: Aliens attack Earth. Most of humanity gives up, but not Tyler Vernon and, eventually, not the US. The aliens destroy metropolitan areas, killing most of the voters of the Blue States, leaving thus the field open to the Red States to take over (bad aliens, but thank you for the favor, wink, wink). Now that the pinko-lefty-peaceniks have been murdered, the US and Vernon go on the offensive. The aliens use a virus that manages to kill the poor and unwashed masses of the world (I'm not making this up), leaving the clean and well-off mildly bothered. An important aspect of the virus is that it gives blonde women an "in-heat" period and renders contraceptives useless. Result: blondes, horny blondes everywhere! Scandinavia and Germany with nine kids per blonde woman! Remember, tens of millions of "liberals" and billions of poor, dark people have died, but Earth's output bounces back effortlessly (not to mention that Earth's people are now a lot whiter) thanks to good ol' American ingenuity and the right genes. Ringo makes the despicable Aliens responsible for what his main character, Vernon, describes as a good thing: kill off humanity's excess baggage and everything will be just fine. It's a repugnant philosophy, but one that the author truly embraces by the end of book one.

Book Two is incredibly boring, although not as blatantly racist as the first one. Almost no battles, just page after page of the life of two good American specialists on board the Space Station Troy that Vernon built. The humor is flat, the politics are militant Right-wing. The aliens show some promise of being interesting, but then the book ends. And after the end there is a eulogy, but more on that later.

Book Three outdoes the previous ones in everything, except on the insistence that making just blonde women go into "heat" is good for humanity: here, the virus is presented as a blessing in disguise, as in thanks for the horny blondes and for the hundreds of millions of white babies that will save humanity, but the education of those always pregnant girls has been negatively impacted. It's a drag to read this book: slow, no battles except at the end, no character development unless one takes a few South American soldiers who have to learn to be less macho jerks and more super-efficient North American professionals. Ringo bothers to write a few words in Spanish and he manages to get either the grammar or the context wrong every time. It's just Norte, not Norté with a fake emphasis on the "e." It's America del Sur, not "del Sud." Still, this last book pretends to show how "all" (emphasis is Ringo's) Latin American nations are. And he can't even get a few words right. Some expert.

Ringo rules his universe like a stupidly hateful and blundering god. He presents his politics with a sledgehammer. He probably thinks that subtlety is a French word. Just like so many extreme conservative Americans as of late, he seems to hate the French. He despises "liberals" to the point that their extermination by the aliens is described openly as a net positive. He's worried about the demographic bomb that faces the White race, so he has his aliens kill off the darkies and turn the blondes of the world into baby-factories. He's careful to say that the bad aliens are horrible because they've murdered billions of humans, but if you read the books you realize he's not sorry at all: this is a dream come true for him. He obviously knows nothing about the Spanish language or South American Navies. Hint, Mr. Ringo: Chilean sailors and officers do wear a name tag on their uniforms. Don't you use Google Images? It's not hard at all.

As a Chilean I must admit that Ringo is absolutely right about what would be Chile's contribution to any interstellar war effort: close to zero. Maybe some highly trained troops. It's fun that he included Chile and other South American nations in his sci-fi novel. It's sad for my adoptive country, the US, that he did so with such self-righteous ignorance and venom because it reflects poorly on the education Ringo received. At the end of Book Two there is a eulogy for the author's mother: heart-felt, beautifully simple, well-written, political but not reeking of hatred. That is the best part of the entire trilogy. That is where my only star goes.

Live Free or Die (2010) is the first SF novel in the Troy Rising series. It is loosely based on the Schlock Mercenary webcomics by Howard Tayler, but is a prequel to that series.

Like the webcomics, it all started with aliens bringing a gate to other worlds. Earth doesn't even have a way to reach the Gudram Ring, much less use it to explore the galaxy (and beyond). And then the rapacious aliens arrive and extort tribute under the threat of kinetic weapons.

In this novel, Tyler Alexander Vernon is a short man who has a hobby of creating SF webcomics. He worked as an IT manager until his comics started making more money. Then the Gudram Ring appeared and science fiction seemed outdated by current events. His wife got a divorce and he is reduced to dwelling in a cabin in the woods of New Hampshire and working four part-time jobs.

In this story, Tyler is cutting wood when Mrs. Cranshaw calls again to harass him about her firewood. He promised it by next Sunday, but the old woman wants it earlier. They settle on four in the afternoon on Sunday and then Tyler gets back to work.

While working at Mac's Market, Tyler is asked to work an extra shift on Saturday. He has a convention gig on that day, so he begs off. He meets an Glatun at the convention and discusses trade. They make an appointment for the alien to test some samples and then try the nonpoisonous items.

The Glatun go crazy over maple syrup. It is a strong intoxicant for them and they offer a pickup load of superelectronics for six barrels of the syrup. After the trade, the freighter crew go home and become rich off those six barrels.

Tyler becomes an instant multibillionaire and engages an attorney to buy land with sugar maples as well as distilleries to refine the syrup. Then the Horvath try to force their way into the trade. The President of the USA uses American troops to gather maple syrup for the Horvath. Those involved in this trade within the USA and Canada are very stubborn people and a Maple Syrup rebellion starts over this issue.

This tale soon brings war from the Horvath and then their allies the Rangora. At first, only Earth is subjected to bombardment. Then the war spreads to the Glatun. Tyler uses his billions to build space fortifications.

The author has been compared to Heinlein, but in this story he is beginning to resemble E. E. "Doc" Smith. The space structures are not yet as large as the mobile planets in the [[ASIN:1882968093 Lensman]] series. But just give him a few more volumes.

Like both Heinlein and Smith, the author has created some believable aliens. Maybe too believable, since the Glatun seem to have the same sort of problems as humans. Moreove, the Horvath act much like the prewar Italian fascists in Ethiopia and the Rangora resemble the Soviets.

The President of the United States in this novel does not have a name. He is a stock character, a collaborationist much like Marshall Petain of the Vichy government. Instead of building shelters and evacuating the cities, he has American armed forces trying to tap sugar maple trees.

This novel concludes with many loose ends. The next installment in this series is [[ASIN:1439134006 Citadel]]. Read and enjoy!

Highly recommended for Ringo fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of huge space structures, high energy weapons, and despicable aliens.

-Arthur W. Jordin

Forgetting about political orientation (I'm rather right wing so this author should appeal to me), this book is pure drivel. Poorly written, totally unrealistic (even for sci/fi), utterly predictable, based on old aliens-addicted-to-common-earth-substance theme. Don't waste your time or money. Tried to finish hoping for some originality, but trashed it after 1/4 way through.

I have to say the book has enjoyable parts which allow you to forget the really disturbing parts... until you get to one. I didn't expect this much libertarian views by a well-read author. This is my first book by Ringo but either he was trying very hard to create a character with extreme conservative views or he actually believes in what he wrote. I am hoping for the former because latter is very saddening. e.g. justification of death of millions because they are not Christian or don't live in the right area of the world. Even Fox news is mentioned in positive light a few times. All this would not be too disturbing if there was some context to it in the story.
I have other problems with the book including sloppiness in writing. No character development other than the main character. I gave it two stars because I believe despite all the issues there is a story underneath that some might enjoy.

If you're looking for a space opera featuring the good guys (Earthlings, of course) beating the bad guys (lizard beings, quite natch), then you'll like "Live Free or Die" by John Ringo. Just try to ignore the poor editing, grammatical errors and cumbersome phrases scattered throughout. Or, better yet, wait for the paperback.

Tyler Vernon (or was it Vernon Tyler?) goes from being an unknown New England wood chopper to King of the Universe in a nifty 402 pages. With a main character reminiscent of Johnnie Goodboy Tyler from Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth," Ringo's Tyler (or was it Vernon?), is confronted -- along with the rest of us Humans -- with the inconveniences resulting from an alien "gate" technology similar to that found in Peter Hamilton's "Pandora's Star." It's not a bad premise.

Ringo throws in enough technical mumbo-jumbo to keep this book off of the "Men's Fiction" shelf. Maybe a little too much, actually. If all the jargon about BDA's, VLA's, UNG's, SAPL's, and whatever other gizmos he's dreamt up tends to confuse you, just remember he's doing it all with mirrors, and try to move along. If you are a stickler about such details, make some notes on the fly-leaf to remind you what the abbreviations are, and refer back to them as needed.

"Live Free or Die" manages to lay the groundwork for future entries in this series. I've been leery of serial sci-fi since my eyes rolled back and got stuck in my head after reading "Blood Brothers of Gor" a few years ago. I never could go on to Number 19. The "Area 51" series by Robert Mayer (as Robert Doherty) didn't help.

But if it's mindless escapism, written with a dry sense of humor, and the promise of a sequel you'd like, I'd give this book a thumbs up. It's not going to take home a Hugo, but it'll keep you off the streets for a couple of days.

In this book we get rid of the poor people in the US as well as the Mideast and Africa. We also eliminate the "liberals" in big cities all over the world. The "hero" lives in New England and after screwing others in the region, takes it upon himself (and a few friends) to save what is left of the human race. After the elimination of the liberals as well as the poor of the world, we see no downside at all. The hero and a few friends proceed to save the rest of the world (especially the blondes, hail Adolf H).

The author embeds all kinds of scientific mumbo-jumbo into this right-wing polemic to disguise his intent. As someone who has loved SF for many years, this is an abomination.

I can't begin to tell you how disappointed I am after hearing and reading such good things about Mr. Ringo's writing. I usually view the political intrigue and back room dealings as a necessary part of the plot, so I only focus on it insomuch as needed to understand were the story is leading me as the reader. For the first few chapters Mr. Ringo had me thoroughly engrossed in his story and rooting for Tyler Vernon, but then around chapter 5 everything changed. Mr. Ring began to force feed the reader his conservative views. I can't abide by that, not to say that my views aren't conservative, just that I am quite capable of formulating my own views and don't like being told how I should or shouldn't think.

There are so many points that I would like to address from this book and I am only a third of the way into the book. It would be a long post here, and I don't think this is the forum for such a rant. Just let me finish with, if you agree with killing the many to preserve you narrow view of the world this book is for you, if you don't give it a pass.

This book must have been ghost written by Newt Gingrich. It takes pot shots at communists (alien communists), gays, blacks, women, the government, anyone who lives in a city, and the list goes on.

It's too bad; I could have enjoyed a fun shoot-up-the aliens sci-fi adventure, but this book was ruined by unnecessary political posturing. Doubly ruined for me, since Ringo's politics apparently lean completely opposite from mine.

Thank goodness I borrowed this from the library. I'm relieved not to have wasted any money, and happy not to fatten Ringo's wallet with disposable income he might donate to the tea party.