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.

Loved the main character!

What a refreshingly different plot! I’ll never look at maple syrup in quite the same way again! LOL! Mostly, though, I totally loved the main character’s “can do” attitude!

Mark Boyett is one of my favorite narrators, and I am looking forward to the next book in this series! Well done, John Ringo!!

Not for me

Interesting science but a bit too political for my taste. There were bits of the story that couldn’t decide how serious to take themselves which pulled me out.

Republican Physicists in Space!!!

This is actually solid and creative sci-fi. A few of the reviews I read accuse the book and the author of racism but I think this is going way too far. The story is basically about Republican physicists saving the world. Even as someone who is very politically progressive I enjoyed it immensely. The conservative stuff is not hidden, the author just throws it right out there and in that way it's almost funny. The good guys are heads of corporations who are trying to save humanity despite government interference/regulation. There's a bunch of little digs in the vein of "if we can just keep the damned government off our backs" and even a slam on space-environmentalists ("we've trashed our own planet enough...")

That said I didn't find any of this overbearing and in reality the author is probably correct that first contact with alien species would not dry up all the hundred year old political squabbles on earth.

Alot of this book is concerned with the size/scope/power requirements of spacefaring. I bring that up to say that despite the levity of the dialogue it's actually pretty hard core sci-fi. Those hoping for laser battles or light-saber fights will be disappointed by this novel. The major battle scene reads almost like a physics textbook.

Overall this is a fun read. The narrator is excellent, he does some voice modulation for different characters but does not go to the ridiculous lengths to which some are tempted.

amusing yet sci-fi

Great book. Great narrator. The story was detailed and engaging with out going overboard with endless sci-fi technicalities that can give you a headache. The author does a good job of creating just enough levity to make the main character serious but amusing. Looking forward to the sequels.

Great Book

I loved this book. Good Story line. Can not wait till book 2!

One of the best sci-fi books of a generation

Excellent narration, and one of the most compelling sci fi stories I have ever read. This is Heinlein level sci fi, and my third listen to this series. John's other series are more fun if you want a good laugh, but this series brings to life a world you can imagine being real. One series that goes in my top ten list!

Funny as heck

I was unsure about buying this, but it was christmas day and I was like "hell, its John Ringo, how bad can it be?"

I wasn't expecting it to be so much fun. Its laugh out loud funny in a lot of places, I remember the first time Tyler meets the aliens in their ship the most. Just funny as heck.

The start of a great ride!

What a great start to a great ride through this series! Ringo is one of the leading names in Sci-Fi, especially when it comes to "Military Sci-Fi". Sorry for the length of the review, but I'm kinda writing for all three books currently out in the series.

In Book 1 the people of Earth breath a sigh of deep relief when the first star-faring civilization that comes through our new "Gate" is friendly... Another alien culture has dropped an interstellar-capable "Gate" in our system, without caring whether we want it or not, or caring whether we can defend ourselves from whomever/whatever may pop through at any time, or not... The Gate is a portal to our system that can be used by every hostile space-faring race out there, and we can't shut it down, or block it off! The relief is short lived though, and pretty soon Earth starts taking a beating (Though I have to say that one of the "Alien Plagues" is quite nice if you're a guy ;)! The main character, Tyler Vernon, is like a lot of people who are just trying to survive by searching for something, ANYTHING, that one of the Hyper-Advanced Alien races may want badly enough to trade some of their very old "Junk technology" for.. technology that they basically shovel out of their scrap heaps... Still, that "broken, obsolete, junk" Technology is WAY ahead of Earth's best technology, and many Earth-Based companies will pay a fortune for the scrap-tech in hopes of reverse engineering it.

Tyler Vernon offers up a lot of common items from Earth for potential trade, and hits on one substance that one alien culture LOVES... He keeps the secret of what the substance actually is long enough to get just slightly ahead of the trading curve, and from that shaky and tenuous start, he keeps "Trading Up" by selling the Alien's scrap-tech to Earth Companies, and then using the money to always have a near monopoly on the next thing the Aliens want badly. When the Aliens find that the near-addictive item is very common, they try to get all of the product in the area, only to find out that Tyler has bought all of the local stocks of it. When the Aliens try to get the USA's supply of the stuff, they again find that Tyler owns it... When they go to the Root-Source of the substance... You guessed it, Tyler and a few of his neighbors have bought every scrap of land that produces it. But then Tyler has to fend off not only Aliens, but also fight the governments of Earth who try to move in and take the product from him by force... the Aliens and the Army both find out that what seems like it should be simple to produce, isn't as easy to produce as it seems, especially not while simultaneously fighting a guerrilla war with Tyler and his neighbors!

But Tyler has MUCH bigger plans in his head... he just needs to stay ahead of the curve long enough to learn to acquire and use Alien technology, His own growing fortune, and his own smarts and bold thinking, to steadily build up forces and equipment that can make Earth's enemies wish they'd never seen our Gate!

The cool thing about Ringo's many many books is that you can almost always tell when and where he's recently gone on vacation, and you get a glimpse of his latest "real-life" interests and hobbies, because he works the knowledge he's gained, and places to which he's traveled, into the storylines of his books... And John Ringo churns out some books! He seems to always be working on 4-5 (or more) books at the same time! A few years ago at Dragon*Con in Atlanta I was joking around with John and his wife out by the pool at one of the several High-End Hotels that hosts Dragon*Con, and I jokingly asked him if he was finally falling out of his habit of releasing "only" 4-5 books every year.. his wife said, "Cut him some slack, he's released ELEVEN books in the last year alone!" You can often find John out at the pool in the evenings during the convention, surrounded by a crowd of Sci-Fi Fans and Military Vets (Many disabled vets), talking "Military" and "Sci-Fi"... He's not out there "just talking to fans with feigned 'Patience' ", he talks with people for hours with obvious "ENTHUSIASM"! The man has an INCREDIBLE knowledge of even the most obscure bits of details and trivia about nearly everything Military related. On top of everything else he has going for him, he's also your basic "nice guy"!

I'm waiting for Book 4 in the series now... John said he kinda wrote himself into a corner with Book 3 of this series, but he has no doubts a solution will come to him... I hope it comes SOON!!! It's an Awesome Series and storyline! The plots and twists just keep hitting you, rapid-fire!

Great, very original.

Good book,great story,however,the series last/third book is horrible. You've been warned. Ringo gets bored and wants to share it with you as the series ends in the third book.

WOUNDERFUL

Me, my grandson's and great grandson listened to "TROY RISING SERIES" three times. What more can one say?? We are waiting for one more in this series. SOON. Please