Customer Reviews

Vorpal Blade (Looking Glass, Book 2)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

John Ringo and Travis Taylor team up again to bring out a sequel to Ringo's 2005 Sci-Fi/action novel Into the Looking Glass. Thanks to the events in the first book the door has been opened for space exploration on a new scale as faster than light travel is now possible. So in order to scout out the neighborhood and protect against possible invasion by the alien Dreen, the humans and their allies cobble together their first faster than light spaceship: the Vorpal Blade.

The Ship was a former U.S. Navy nuclear missile submarine and now through alien technology, human ingenuity, and a lot of duct tape and bailing wire it is ready for its maiden voyage. Familiar characters Dr. William Weaver and SEAL Chief Adams are joined by a mixed bag of scientists, naval personnel and force recon marines (now the space marines). Their mission takes them to a number of different worlds and through encounters with aliens both friendly and hostile.

The book is a return to a more classic feel for sci-fi, with real monsters, aliens and strange worlds. Ringo's ability to write engaging military and small unit action stories combines well with Taylor's "techy" side, to give the reader a combination of action, adventure and science based-science fiction. The book especially shines in that it doesn't just depend on the monsters and aliens for tension. The very nature of travel on the first faster than light ship provide intense and often amusing segments to the book. The crew must deal with everything from gravity issues, to possibilities of space viruses to, the question of where in space is the best place to get a drink of water and more. All of this handled with a mix of ingenuity, luck and elbow grease.

As is the case with many of his works, real life rocket scientist Taylor brings the scientific side of the story to life for the readers. Concepts and theories are explained as they are encountered and this gives not only a realistic feel to the whole experience, but it also makes the reader feel a bit smarter for having read it. Ringo also brings his touch to the story with great attention to the details of the military aspects of the book. He helps cover everything from the practical (what kind of gun is best for killing armored aliens) to the political (which branch of the military will ultimately be responsible for the space program) with a lot of insight and humor.

Over all Vorpal Blade is an exciting, fun book to read. The story is fast paced enough to keep the reader going while at the same time not skipping many of the little details. Ringo and Taylor work well together and their combined work plays well to both of their strengths. Of course Vorpal Blade leaves a number of loose ends, but regular readers of the pair know that the prolific Ringo often crafts stories that require more than one volume to be told. That being said, Vorpal Blade works well as a stand alone book, but it leaves the door open for more adventures to come. Pick up a copy of John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor's Vorpal Blade by today and please keep your hands inside the vehicle until the ride comes to a complete stop!

I thoroughly enjoyed this; John Ringo does good space opera, with all the classic elements but updated and with a more thoroughly worked out background. He also does character quite well, particularly certain types of characters -- he understands soldiers, for example, which it is painfully obvious some writers don't.

I really enjoyed Through the Looking Glass. Great premise, great writing, and wonderful plot and characters. This sequel was not so well written, not so well plotted, and lost a lot in the telling. I'll take more time reading through the next book before buying. Love Ringo, and read all his stuff with Weber, but this was not one of his finer efforts.

This is an OK book - stylistically I'm betting Ringo wrote very little of this - the bits he did write are head and shoulders above the rest tho.

For the most part this sorta plods along - while the first book never really stops moving until just before the end (and I'd swear they ended it like that so there wouldn't be sequels - but surprise!) this just strolls along until it gets where it's going, which is of course nowhere since it's the beginning of a series or whatever, so it cliffhangs.

Anyway, it's not a bad book - like most of Ringos work that he turns over to his buddies to work on it's got a decent base but the work that's being built on that base is pretty pedestrian.

Before reading Vorpal Blade I recommend all prospective readers to read Ringo's Through the Looking Glass. This is essential reading to fix the characters' roles in their mind. Forearmed, this story is brilliant! Is this the way we first move out of and into the universe? I frequently think we don't think outside the square enough. Ringo makes this acceptable and palatable. And has enough talent to make it a bloody good read.

If I had a criticism, there are not enough survivors. After 35 years of soldiering, survivors are essential. Some of those killed in Looking Glass would have been major assets to give the next victims some idea of where they wqere heading for and for passing on wisdom. Solsiers have survived most wars and they are usually the better people for it.

May the Vorpal Blade have many other fabulous journeys to he stars,

Imagine Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand's badly educated love child writing novels with a crayon: one dimensional "competent man" characters armed with common sense, intuition-based science and plenty of heavy weapons careen down an essentially plot free narrative line greased with dialogue that combines quantum physics gabble and brave soldier boy BOO-YAH lingo in equal measures. If bad writing was a crime Ringo and Taylor would be doing life without parole. However, we can be grateful for one thing and that is: someone is writing books without pictures for 14 year old boys. For those readers, this one may be a flippin' good read. All others need not open the cover.

I noted at the end of the book that the author peruses the Amazon reviews. If you read this Mr. Ringo I say to you, "hello".

I loved the first book, it was a good mix of technical speculation and tons of non-stop action. The second book was much like a long loading screen for Halo. You're looking at the box cover and the graphics and can't wait for the action but it doesn't come for a long time and then its way too short and unsatisfying when it gets there.

4/5ths of the book is a long drawn out speculative theorizing that the Author refers to as "hard SF". Unfortunately when you are starting with an object that is not understood such as the little alien black box that serves as the ship's drive and then build technical explanations from there you might as well call it "magic". "See we have a magic box and with it we can do xyz technical jargon". Finally some action comes along, all the new equipment and characters that have been so built up for 400 pages get plucked off rocks and smashed by an octopus. woohoo. Then they encounter an enemy that is somewhat like the dreen, who we all love and there is a somewhat satisfying battle sequence. over the last 100 pages or so.

Mainly due to the first book I am going to try the next in the series, hopefully it involves less single god-like humans such as Weaver who apparently is the only human smart enough to do anything with the magic box technology. "When I am not building spaceships, astronavigating them, I am fighting expertly on the ground, and churning out inventions like a composite of Edison Einstien,and 4,000 research assistants. I am mainly looking for balance in the action/technical. It is clear that Mr. Ringo probably enjoys writing technological speculation more than any other part of the story. Most readers that love hard scifi, like it for its close orientation to reality. This book is speculative to an extreme mainly because its starting points, the looking glasses, the warp drive, etc. are basically magic. and the author saying once we have this magic we go from here. You may do as you please Mr. Ringo but all I'm asking is for a little more fun along the way.

Recap of the series: Book one, or Into the Looking Glass, is the TV show Stargate except rated R for violence and extended war scenes. Another way of putting it is DoD meets DandD (Department of Defense meets Dungeons and Dragons).

Book two, Vorpal Blade, is Star Trek with a platoon of alien-killing Klingons on board who get to really be Klingons. Okay, they really are not Klingons, they are Recon Marines and Special Forces troops trained into space marine/powered armor super-trooper status. The ship, the first of its kind from earth and their alien allies, goes where no (earth)man has gone before, the science staff on board takes surveys and studies of new planets found, and when danger appears, instead of the captain talking his way out like some PG-rated TV prime time show, sometimes the Klingons, er, space marines get to strut their stuff, unlimber their heavy weapons, and go all out urrah on the badniks.

The story isn't all phasers set to kill. There's the tediousness of space travel, surveying empty planets, endless training, and those familiar with military life will recognize the type of humor pulled on the unsuspecting new guy on the crew.

Vorpal Blade has a good dose of science in the story telling. I was impressed by some of the technical details of space combined with the realities of how a space ship based on a nuclear submarine would function in that environment.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, have already reread it, and loaned my copy to others.

I liked this novel. It's a sequel, so most of the characters were familiar. A few things were not satisfying. The girl and alien "Tuffy" were always there to provide the deus ex machina. Like you'd expect from the middle novel in a trilogy it raised some story questions that we'll have to buy the next installment for answers. Nevertheless, the story stands on its own.

It felt like the writing was a bit rushed: In military SF, it seems customary to get to know the cannon fodder before they're slaughtered and some of those who died had not been not properly introduced. Mere quibbles these.

The evil aliens from Looking Glass don't appear. In their place are non-sentient aliens who haven't figured out that humans aren't prey.

What's best about Vorpal Blade is that you get the vibe of a bunch of dedicated people serving together on the first human starship who don't know what they're doing and have to feel their way forward. And in this novel that generally involves ascertaining the right caliber gun.

The brainiac teen girl Mimi and Tuffy, her alien "familiar" (for want of a better term), clearly play a bigger role in this story than Ringo and Taylor let on. The human characters know that Tuffy represents a very powerful player behind the scenes with its own agenda, but they seem incurious about its identity and what it wants, especially given the Pentagon's famous paranoia about security. While Mimi solves a problem here or there in the plot, towards the end of the novel she effectively disappears even though she and Tuffy somehow factor in keeping the human species safe from the Dreen and possibly other threats. I almost have to wonder if they wrote in her character (from the first novel "Into the Looking Glass") as an afterthought, then didn't bother to show how she held up after surviving the Vorpal Blade's horrific voyage.