Strands of Sorrow by John Ringo

 Ringo mentions in the intro to this book that he had intended to end the series with the previous book, Islands of Rage and Hope. I don't recall it seeming to me like a good stopping point at its conclusion, and I'm not certain that this one was much better - still far too much work to be done to clear the U.S. and the world, but I suppose that series could go on longer than the Posleen War, if Ringo had the ambition, or needed the cash, eh?

The leaders of Wolf Squadron make the tactical decision to clear the coastlines of the U.S. focusing on naval bases around San Diego and Jacksonville. We have plenty of descriptions of Faith and Sophia using their zombie killing and helicopter piloting skills to turn zombie hordes into zombie sludge. I think Ringo may have anticipated the Super Bowl's "Like a Girl" campaign quite nicely.

Focus continues to remain on Lt. Faith's conflicts with regular officers and NCOs who don't understand that the world has changed, and that their pre-apocalypse attitudes and tactics simply won't work. We barely see anything from the point of view of the adults in the story, and the girls' mom has done a full Houdini.

Ringo introduces some new characters, just long enough to have them show us some interesting aspect of the process of taking back America, and then drops them, never to appear again.

Hoping Ringo goes back to writing Ghost stories, or perhaps picks up the saga of Troy Rising or Wands. Or, heaven forbid, maybe he's reached that point in his writing where he has nothing new left to say - that would be a pity.

Islands of Rage and Hope by John Ringo

 Too much of the early going in Islands is devoted to the struggle Faith is having with acting as a Marine Lieutenant, being a 13 year old girl, mind you. Of course, after any marine sees her in battle, their respect for her borders on hero worship, so Ringo could have foregone all of this angst and moved the plot along a little more swiftly. The second flaw for me in this book was that the whole plot feels like a big wargame, "if we had to retake the entire world after a zombie apocalypse, where would be the best place to start, given the resources stipulated, etc." When the strategy gaming overwhelms the zombie killing, then you've really lost most of what holds my interest in this series. Third, for whatever reason, Ringo decided that the results of "what happens in the compartment..." would be a couple thousand pregnancies, and combined that with the statistics on pre-modern medicine mother and infant mortality, and devoted a big chunk of plot time to our heroes figuring out how to minimize the damages - the jury remains out at the end of the book.

That said, once things got rolling in the latter third of the book, there was plenty of whack-a-zombie for everyone. We finally get to find out who "Walker" was in his previous life, which is cool, too. I got to thinking about about Ringo's basic premises here, that there would be no land-based cities still active after a zombie plague, and while I get the idea of limiting the Vs in multi POV, here, I think it likely that there would be far more survivors in some of the rural areas, given their lesser dependency on technology in the first place, the lesser population density, and the fact that a ton of heartlanders have thousands of rounds of ammo for the guns to which they bitterly cling.

Anyway, I was glad I didn't pay over $20 to add this book to the collection, but borrowed it from the local library. I'm interested to see where the story goes next, but I hope it goes there without so much ado about nothing, this time.

To Sail a Darkling Sea by John Ringo

 I don't know what anyone else's beef with John Ringo is, but my major complaint is that reading his novels always leaves me short on sleep, after I keep pushing myself past my bedtime - they're just that much fun! Listen, there's nothing earthshattering in the second book in his Black Tide Rising series, it's mostly more of the same, focusing on the next steps in rescuing survivors of the zombie plague on the high seas, and sending the zombies themselves to Davy Jones' Locker (no, not the guy from the Partridge Family, kids).

The POV in this book bounces around a little bit, as we get to know a few new characters, but mostly remains focused on the Smith family, especially Faith, then Sophia, Captain Steve, and very little about Mom Stacey. The flotilla makes its way to the Canary Islands to avoid hurricane season in the Caribbean, and proceeds to liberate a number of boats, destroy massive zombie hordes, and rescue plague survivors. Once hurricane season is over, Smith plans to take the fleet back to Guantanamo and try to clear all zombies from the area, so he can take over the old U.S. Marine base facilities to try to manufacture vaccines for the plague.

He has the full backing, for what it's worth, of the remaining U.S. command authority holed up in the Rockies somewhere, and the full attention of the submarine crews in the Atlantic, who have so far been isolated from the mutated virus which caused the plague, and dare not leave their boats until a vaccine is widely available.

One of the points that Ringo seems to be making here is that there are some people who are simply natural born killers. They are simply not affected by the same sort of weakening emotions as other people, are somewhat sociopathic in certain areas, and are simply able to turn off their fear and wade right into battle. I think he gives the subject some play in the Paladin of Shadows series, as well. Faith is seriously a warrior woman, even at age 13, and her sister Sophia is not all that far behind. Both of the girls are given (earn, really) commissions as officers for the duration of the crisis, and have to learn the skills to lead others who aren't stone cold trigger tigers.

There are some frank discussions of rank and discipline issues regarding any armed forces, post-plague economics, and strategies and tactics for saving the world. We've seen some of this in the Troy Rising series, so this particular series is very much a wedding of two of Ringo's favorite themes.

Lots of battle, some serious partying, and mostly just good clean, though bloody fun!

Under a Graveyard Sky by John Ringo

 A typical Ringo caper, aside from the lack of graphic sex, but there's plenty of grue and gore to make up for it. A synthetic virus has been released worldwide by malefactors unknown, which begins with flu-like symptoms, highly contagious, and proceeds to neurological effects, turning people into naked, shambling, ravening hulks, whose bites are also very contagious, and rapidly the world is facing the big ZA. One family of preppers gets early warning about the onslaught of zombies and rapidly evacuates from the mainland to a sailboat they have purchased in a hurry. The father, Steve, is an ex-special forces Aussie expat, and his wife, Stacey, is a competent engineer (shades of Heinlein's female characters). Their elder daughter, Sophia (knowledge) is a bit on the geeky side, and does a stint as a lab tech for a private entity creating a vaccine for its executives and their families and key personnel, while the younger daughter, Faith, is more of a gun geek, and turns into a zombie killing machine extraordinaire.

I feel like Ringo spends far too much time simply setting the scene for this tale. It starts fast, but then bogs down for a while while he recounts what's happening at the semi-evil megacorporation, the CDC, NYPD, and so forth. Of course, if Steve and his family didn't hang around the harbor and allow Sophia to work with the ex-CDC scientist developing the vaccine, they might not have the information about the methodology to trade later on in the book. There's also a great scene when the family and some security folks go out for dinner at a mafia hangout for one last Italian meal in NYC and end up doing a big Escape from New York routine, cutting their way through the hordes with full and semi-auto weaponry.

Once they're on the high seas, the "meat" of the tale begins to unfold, and we get a glimpse of where Ringo intends to take the series. Not sure why he's taking a hiatus from the science fiction Troy Rising series he was writing, but perhaps he's just cashing in on the zombie craze while it's hot and will get back to it when things cool down. We'll see how the zombie killing action holds up over time before rendering judgement on this one.