Oh John Ringo, Review!

Hi,

So when you're desperate for reading material...you're desperate for reading material.

And in the company's "lending library" there was a bunch of later-series Honor Harrington books and the first couple of Posleen War books by John Ringo. I thought Honor was ok and didn't feel like skipping to a later part of the series. So I went with Hymn Before Battle.

Um...cripes.

So aliens show up to offer us advanced tech in exchange for having us wipe out the Posleen. All the other sentient beings in the galaxy are genetically pacifistic except for the Posleen who are, literally, eating the rest of them for lunch. So humans get to jump into the fray. If they don't, well, Earth is third in line on the conquest front and a few billion Posleen are on the way.

Advanced tech means power suits and hand-to-hand combat. Well, ok, they've got rifles and stuff so there's a fair amount of shooting. The Posleen are mostly drones with a few God-Kings leading them. No starship combat (even though a few kinetic strikes from orbit would certainly put a dent in the hordes of ravenous Posleen). A fair amount of sci-fi name-dropping. Geeky IT nerd with a killer physique saves the day. It's also weird how there's a complete techno-fetish married to this gutsy warrior spirit thing going on.

I can't really recommend it. It's not...awful by my standards of awful. You just have to be really really into the genre to enjoy it. Most people won't.

later
Tom

Oh John Ringo, Review!

Hi,

So when you're desperate for reading material...you're desperate for reading material.

And in the company's "lending library" there was a bunch of later-series Honor Harrington books and the first couple of Posleen War books by John Ringo. I thought Honor was ok and didn't feel like skipping to a later part of the series. So I went with Hymn Before Battle.

Um...cripes.

So aliens show up to offer us advanced tech in exchange for having us wipe out the Posleen. All the other sentient beings in the galaxy are genetically pacifistic except for the Posleen who are, literally, eating the rest of them for lunch. So humans get to jump into the fray. If they don't, well, Earth is third in line on the conquest front and a few billion Posleen are on the way.

Advanced tech means power suits and hand-to-hand combat. Well, ok, they've got rifles and stuff so there's a fair amount of shooting. The Posleen are mostly drones with a few God-Kings leading them. No starship combat (even though a few kinetic strikes from orbit would certainly put a dent in the hordes of ravenous Posleen). A fair amount of sci-fi name-dropping. Geeky IT nerd with a killer physique saves the day. It's also weird how there's a complete techno-fetish married to this gutsy warrior spirit thing going on.

I can't really recommend it. It's not...awful by my standards of awful. You just have to be really really into the genre to enjoy it. Most people won't.

later
Tom