Live Free or Die

Troy Rising, Book One

By: John Ringo

Narrated by: Mark Boyett

Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

Beginning a New Series by a New York Times Best-Selling Author.Will the People of Earth Bow Down toAlien Overlords—or Will They Live Free or Die?

First Contact Was Friendly

When aliens trundled a gate to other worlds into the solar system, the world reacted with awe, hope and fear. But the first aliens to come through, the Glatun, were peaceful traders and the world breathed a sigh of relief.

Who Controls the Orbitals, Controls the World

When the Horvath came through, they announced their ownership by dropping rocks on three cities and gutting them. Since then, they've held Terra as their own personal fiefdom. With their control of the orbitals, there's no way to win and earth's governments have accepted the status quo.

Live Free or Die

To free the world from the grip of the Horvath is going to take an unlikely hero. A hero unwilling to back down to alien or human governments, unwilling to live in slavery and with enough hubris, if not stature, to think he can win. Fortunately, there's Tyler Vernon. And he has bigger plans than just getting rid of the Horvath.

Troy Rising is a book in three parts—Live Free or Die being the first part—detailing the freeing of earth from alien conquerors, the first steps into space using off-world technologies and the creation of Troy, a thousand trillion ton battlestation designed to secure the solar system.

©2010 John Ringo (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Really not for me.

I liked about half the story. I've no doubt that the narrator's excellent job reading helped me finish, but there are a few things that bug me.

1) *he said*
This is everywhere. To the point where it started to bother me. I understand that it's necessary in some places, but this was overkill, almost like a bad script.

2) Action?
As much as I enjoyed space entrepreneur Vernon Tyler, I kind of hated space fighter wing-it king VT. The action always felt lacking and nothing felt exactly earned in the end.

3) Aliens.
this is used as "motivation" more than once and felt lazy. I hate "space names" a lot and extra races always feel like another nationality could do the job better to make for a more interesting story. This isn't unique to this book but fairly common to the genre. Probably why I don't care for it. Everything is just a little too convenient.

Otherwise, the Vernon carries the lead well, even if most other characters are never really more than people to fill archetypes. Maybe if you like this kind of thing, then good for you. if not, it won't rock your world.

Classic John Ringo

John Ringo tells a great story. while simultaneously leaving the reader/listener both entertained and more informed. Next story, please!

So good!

Awesome book. everything about it was outstanding! Very entertaining and enjoyable. Storyline was outstanding. Highly recommend.

Interesting story, not sure about the physics.

initially it was hard to follow, different than reading. good story though, wish the story has more time points.

Enjoyable

One of the better science fiction books that I have read in a while. Great narration. Moving on to next book.

Great story...but

Way too Atlas Shrugged. if you could ignore the adolescent libertarian nonsense. it's a great idea for a story. unfortunately, the author lets his free state or politics get in the way of telling a great tale. I did finish it and would have bought all of the rest of them if he just wasn't slamming his adolescent political view down your throat while you listen.

Mildly entertaining

Story held promise however with that said the entire series seemed whitewashed in a attempt to remove strong emotional content and I don’t understand why. Maybe a attempt to appear more PC? Author worried about offending so reached deep for blandness? I didn’t return any of the three but I won’t be looking to Ringo for good entertainment.

Different perspective of a familiar story

It's a fairly (these days) common story of first contact and Earth bootstrapping for war. As many others have said, it's HEAVILY biased from/towards a conservative/Republican/libertarian mindset, but this does give it a bit of novelty if nothing else. Honestly, most political bends presented in this type of story tend towards a strong leftward lean. IMHO, the better stories are written with as little strong politics as possible and the best are written with *characters* representing a *wide spread* of political positions, just like the real world. So, this story isn't the better or best, but isn't better or worse really than it's left-heavy counterparts.

All that being said- this book (and presumably series) *is* heavy on right-wing rambling and tangents, so be ready for some teeth grinding if you're a typical sci-fi fan, given the typical political leanings of such people. I will say, though, that with this book being written in 2010, it's far more libertarian/traditional conservative than today's prevailing batshit crazy "Republican" Trump/QAnon mindset. As an example, the science and engineering is pretty slapdash and succeeds as often due to luck and happenstance than procedure, but it *is* science and *is* pretty accurate, for the most part. There's an interesting moment involving a plague that only really endangered those "too lazy and, let's be honest, stupid" that *really* didn't age well, as a second, somewhat morbidly humorous example.

All in all, if you're strung loosely enough to not rip your hair out over politics, it's a decent story from a novel viewpoint.

Firewood Cutting Sci-fi comic writer saves the world

Nice matchup of Deep South and New England rural cultures that fight against tyranny both on earth and in space.

Real Depth. Very entertaining. Technical. Thought Provoking.

A classic. It's a very very well-thought-out technical syfy story about first contact. Pretty cool, very smart hero. Rising to the occasion. Great, admirable, down to earth quirky characters. Peppered with humor. Very consistent. 98% of the story has the good guys in our solar system. Quite difficult to lie down such in-depth descriptions technically and keep it palatable and entertaining, I would not of believed it if I hadn't listened to it and liked it. Astrophysics, dynamics, materials science, chemistry, aerospace, electro-optics, economics, VLSI, AI. Some other reviews indicated it was heavily biased politically, but I only noticed a couple of sentences that were consistent with the historical U.S. Constitution-centric positions of farmers vs “city folk”… I thought it was realistic and appropriate there. The title is appropriate for their struggle here. I would expect that if and when any subjugation attempts would occur in real life independent patriots, good farmers of "dragons teeth" would lean on the legal constitutional roots, so it works well here. No bigotry or sexism herein, either. Stating a woman is “stacked” to another dude in private isn't sexist. If you think it is then you obviously have never worked in, unfortunately, traditionally, male dominated fields. lol I would give it a PG rating, like Star Wars, no swearing. Maybe name-calling once, in the face of death but no carnage. A couple tragedies but generally positive and uplifting overall. Truly enjoyed it.