Into the Looking Glass (Looking Glass #1)

Into the Looking Glass
Looking Glass #1
John Ringo
Ebook, 288 Pages
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

Still gets 4 stars from me. Could have had a little more action and less eggheads discussing quantum mechanic theory.

But marines, aliens, guns and scientists. Plus Mimi and Tuffy. Just good stuff.

 

• 2008 Review

THE CLAWS THAT CATCH

THE CLAWS THAT CATCH
Looking Glass #4
John Ringo
Travis Taylor
2 Stars
443 pages

the next Adventures of the Vorpal Blade II.

Two Guns is married, Dr Weaver is a sidelined character and Miriam [the genius linguist who hears the voice in the ship] has taken over from Mimi for weird/genius female role. The ship finds a big artifact, and in order to deny it to the Dreen, figure it out. Turns out to be a big, solar system sized entertainment system. They turn it into a weapon to fight the Dreen. And there are some bio-engineered purple crab thingies that turn out to be Dreen eaters. So the Dreen are fought off, again, and the Alliance of humans, cheerick and hexohaurs[or whatever] have a bit of breathing room.

I got this as a free download off of Baenbooks, and I have to say, I am glad I don’t own this in pbook format. What a waste of paper that would be.

Manxome Foe

Manxome Foe
Looking Glass #3
John Ringo
Travis Taylor
Mil-SF
3 stars
463 pages

the Vorpal Blade and crew investigate a lost communications outpost. Stumble upon a new species who are being wiped out by the Dreen. Rescue them and come back to earth with the news that the Dreen will arrive within the next 10 years by spaceship. Bergstresser, aka Two-Gun, seems to be taking over as the main protaganist. No Mimi or anything. 😦 Some things felt very shallow though. Like two-gun getting married. He meets a girl, talks to her for all of 4-6hrs, and when he comes back, they are planning on getting married. It just didn’t seem at all plausible.

I still am disappointed in this series though. The first book was JUST so good, oh well.

Vorpal Blade

Vorpal Blade
Looking Glass #2
John Ringo
Travis Taylor
Mil-SF
3 stars
400 pages

the Vorpal Blade is a converted sub for space travel. Weaver and Miller and Mimi and Tuffi are all on board. The whole purpose of the sub is to explore and look for Dreen presence. They come across a couple of planets, the last which was inhabited.

This book was ok. Not as much action as Into the Looking Glass, and the action that does happen seems to be mainly in the last half or so of the book. I thought Into the Looking Glass was worth owning. This was worth reading. I don’t know if the libraries have any more of the series though.

Into the Looking Glass

Into the Looking Glass
Looking Glass #1
John Ringo
4 of 5 stars

 

Basically take Doom and parts of Starcraft, specifically the Zerg, add in some military hardware jargon and you’ve got this book. Some rogue physicist creates some kind of gate that throws out bosun particles, which allow gates to be opened to other planets. The dreen come through one and we go through another and meet some friendly aliens. The dreen take over planets and suck them dry of resources. The dreen are zerglike, growing creatures for specific needs.

Besides some profanity and some seriously over the top weapon specifications[it IS military scifi though], this was enjoyable. I plan on reading some more in this series ’cause this was a ton of fun.