The Hot Gate by John Ringo

The Hot Gate is the third in the Troy Rising series by John Ringo. The story principally follows the life of one of his previous characters, Dana Parker, through the next set of challenges facing the people of Earth in their war with the Rangora and their allies. Dana starts out with a milk run, shuttling a group of precocious youngsters to the battlestation/asteroid, Troy, a publicity stunt to name the fourth station soon coming online and encouraging Earth's best and brightest to consider careers in space. She crosses paths once more with Tyler Vernon, the most powerful man in the Solar System, and their relationship grows just slightly.

Dana's next assignment is to a portion of the fleet where the South American nations have done most of the staffing, whose state of readiness is far short of ideal. Her assignment is to straighten out some maintenance and morale issues. Typically for her, she bulls ahead where angels (or Anglos) fear to tread, and she makes some powerful enemies on the political side while doing so. The Suds, as they are called, have major cultural issues at the root of the problems, and being told by a woman how to do their jobs doesn't go over very well.

When a problem crops up with one of the AIs, Granadica, that is responsible for "fabbing" many of the parts that go into the Fleet, Vernon gets a brainstorm and attacks the problem himself. He drags Dana into the middle of things, as she has a habit of treating all of the AIs in the Solar System as "just folks" and he has a hunch that she can help him get to the bottom of things. In the midst of resolving that problem, some of Dana's political problems also get resolved, and she and Tyler grow, again, a bit closer. Tyler doesn't have many friends, mostly just sycophants and users, and Dana's natural instinct to treat everyone as "just folks" draws him to her in a special way. Nothing romantic, really...yet.

When the Rangora violate ongoing peace talks with an attack, it will take everything Tyler and Dana, and the rest of Earth's forces can muster to defeat them once more. This novel delivers quite well on the promise of the first two.

One good quote, where I think Ringo and I see eye-to-eye:

Vernon said, "I tried never to talk down to my kids when they were growing up. Treat them as adult as you can and they learn to be treated like adults. It kind of pisses them off when teachers and such don't, but kids adjust remarkably well."

I tried to take that approach rasing my kids. Seems to have worked, they're both fully functional, competent adults.

Citadel by John Ringo

Citadel is the second book in Ringo's Troy Rising series, and in a way it breaks the mold set in the first. Most of Live Free or Die takes place from the point of view of Tyler Vernon, the man who successfully opens up trade with the Glatun and organizes the Earth resistance to the Horvath. Now, Ringo introduces a couple of new characters so that we can get a better perspective of what's going on with the man-made planetoid, Troy, as construction on a war time footing predominates this book.

The Horvath were smacked around pretty hard at the end of LFoD, and are most likely off licking their wounds somewhere, but the Rangora empire which gave the Horvath most of the fleet that Troy wiped out have decided that the Terrans must be dealt with sooner than later, so their punitive fleet, more modern and powerful than the Horvath's, is on the way. Ringo also introduces a couple of characters on the Rangora side of things, so that we can see what their high command is thinking, as each of a series of space battles falls into place.

On the military side of things, we get Engineering Apprentice Dana Parker, a bright young woman who is part of the space navy. Fresh out of the academy, she experiences a crash course (sometimes literally) in maintaining and repairing the space vehicles used by the fleet, and as a coxswain, or pilot. On the civilian side, there's Butch Allen, a member of a poor family with fourteen children, who takes the opportunity to go to Troy as an apprentice welder. He survives the hazing rituals of the existing crew and the rigors of training and working in microgravity and hard vacuum, to become an integral part of the construction and later salvage operations as succeeding fleets sent by the Rangora are reduced to their component pieces and used by the Earth fleet for their needs.

The Rangoran characters are possibly the best of a bad lot. Most of the high command consistently underestimate the fighting ability and technological level of Earth, but Major To'Jopeviq and his political officer, Lieutenant Jith Beor, are prone to a more realistic assessment of the odds. This puts them at odds with most of their colleagues and superiors, but in the end they are justified in a Pyrrhic fashion.

Most hard science fiction and military buffs will probably really enjoy this novel, as it explores the possibilities of applying new technology to an old endeavor. I know I did. Waiting eagerly for Troy Rising III.

Live Free or Die by John Ringo

The first novel in Ringo's Troy Rising series is just chock full of big ideas. In the near future, an alien race installs a gate to other worlds at the outskirts of the solar system, and humans are afforded the opportunity to explore the galaxy without the downside of relativistic effects. On the other hand, our solar system is now open to all comers, and it doesn't take long before the bad guys show up.

The Horvath, for no readily explained reason, are militaristic and expansionist, and they quickly seize control of Earth by dropping large rocks on several major cities, and threatening to do the same to others if humans don't give them want they want - heavy metals. It seems the gold standard still reigns in outer space, in a manner of speaking.

There is, however, a race of friendly-er aliens called the Glatun, who have a society based in a large part on trade. They show up to trade with Earth for anything that's left over after the Horvath take their tribute. Most of what we have to trade is quite primitive by their standards, so we don't have a lot of leverage in negotiations.

But Tyler Vernon, a jack of all trades, discovers fortuitously that maple syrup is an extremely intoxicating, nearly addictive substance for the Glatun, and begins a covert trade with them. After he trades a pickup truck load of 55 gallon drums to them for a large quantity of extremely advanced computer circuitry, which he then sells to technology firms around the world, he becomes wealthy enough to corner the market in maple syrup, triggering a standoff with the Horvath, who decide that it should all belong to them, as Earth's rightful masters. The Glatun decide to intervene, to keep the maple syrup flowing, and the Horvath's perceived power over Earth diminishes somewhat.

Vernon has a plan to rid Earth of its alien overlords, and he moves rapidly to secure an alliance with major Glatun trading concerns, and to buy more alien technology to build the military strength the Earth needs to confront the Horvath, and later their allies the Rangora. Along the way, Ringo introduces some novel approaches to asteroid mining, battlestation construction, terawatt lasers, and a host of other sci fi goodies.

The pace of the book is a little odd. Ringo spends a lot of time following some events in vivid detail, then jumps ahead weeks, months, or years at times to the next scene. Victories over the Horvath forces, in some cases, seem to come way too easily, but perhaps mankind is just assumed to be so warlike by nature that defeat is inconceivable.

Overall, it's entertaining, and a fun read. Looking forward to the next installment.

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