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.

Hugely Entertaining

While I couldn’t help but eye-roll at some deliberate negative comments against Liberals and “Pussy Socialists” this was a great listen. Mark Boyett gives a stellar performance and the story itself kept me riveted and I made many excuses to drive places to keep on listening. Book 2 is downloading now and I’ll get it going pretty quickly.

SF with realistic realpolitik

I've read hundreds of SF books, but there are just a handful of series that really stand out in my view. David Weber's Safehold, Richard's Fox's Ember Wars saga, Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen, Craig Alanson's Columbus Day, and Asimov's Foundation & Empire are head and shoulders above most series. This is one of the few that I think could credibly be compared to those series. The performance could be a bit better, with more differentiation between voices of individual humans and aliens, but the storyline is interesting, the battles engaging, and it's refreshing to see a brazenly conservative point of view reflected in the main character, especially as other contemporary authors fall all over themselves trying to cater to trendy personal preferences and political trends that add nothing to the stories.

The hard science of this book also appeals to the techies among us. Where most stories require some quantum leap from ancient artifacts or freely given alien help or just jump several centuries into the future to explain tech advances that are beyond the edges of present science, this book lets us have trinkets and junk from advanced aliens and we have to figure out the rest ourselves. Can't discover how to make ultra advanced energy shields? What's not to love about 1km thick steel armor derived from a 1950's SF classic?

That the aliens will initially only trade us trinkets and junk, their own empire's state of decay, and the testy relations they have with their own former client races are also a refreshing change from the usual, hence the title of this review. Just because an alien civilization is very advanced doesn't mean it can't have any problems of its own. Ringo's treatment of the alien civs reminds me a bit of Craig Alanson in that respect.

Thrilling 😁

Second time I listened to this book and it's still one of the best I've read.

Good, bad, and audiobook.

What did you like best about Live Free or Die? What did you like least?

There was a lot of neat science, and much of the basic plot was interesting. It was laid out in a way that provided plenty of time for events to unfold, but still provided drama. On the downside, there seemed to be an extra helping of description and plot-setting, to the point where I was bored. Multiple times, I turned the audiobook off and switched to music instead. As a result, it took me probably twice as long as it should. This is the only book out of the 40+ books I have gotten from Audible that I turned off. Also, I was a bit surprised at how single-minded the protagonist/author is about many cultural elements and societal aspects. There is a thing (I will not say what, since it might be a spoiler) that kills all people apart from those with blonde hair, and makes all the remaining females (only blondes remain) to make them... eager to reproduce. Aspects of the plot seem very sophomoric, but that one more than most.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I rarely say this, but I think it could have either been about 50% shorter, and/or it be the first part of a book, with the second part being Citadel (which is the second book, and is about as long as the first).

Have you listened to any of Mark Boyett’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but I would be willing to.

Any additional comments?

Even now, I am still undecided about whether to give book 2 a shot. I really enjoyed about 50% of Live Free or Die, and I have heard from friends that the series gets better from there. There are so many other good books, it may have to wait for a while.

Enjoyed the story line and characters

John Ringo has fun with his characters and make them interesting. I will read more of his books

loving it

not just a good story but a guiding light to humanity and a future in space.

For Better or Worse: Ringo Channels Heinlein.

I like this book.

I have given a 5 star rating because it does exactly what it promised in the first few minutes: to discuss politics, war and relationships.

I will note that I am sucker for the Heinlein homage that seeps through Ringo's writing in this novel. If you like Robert Heinlein's classic characters Lazarus Long or Jubal Hershaw, you will like Ringo's Tyler Vernon. However, the converse sentiment also holds true, you will likely see in Tyler Vernon the same audacious (maybe even arrogant) attitudes found in Heinlein's writing which alleges that bureaucrats are the single biggest danger to humanity (even more than the dreaded "liberals").

I will note that for the record, the author takes creative liberties with many (read most) of the details regarding space exploration, political/economic philosophies and the suffering that comes with Alien Domination. While I accept that current literary theory holds that authors only tell the stories they themselves believe and as such Ringo must see himself as Tyler Vernon, I will note that the same criticism has been labeled at Heinlein. I would say that if all you hear or read in the character of Tyler Vernon is a fictional caricature of the ideal "rugged individual," you have only seen one dimension of Tyler Vernon.

As a work of Science Fiction, this is not a book that reads like a technical manual nor is it filled with in-depth or vivid descriptions of milieu, environment and setting. Yet careful listening to the words will demonstrate that the relative unimportance of details is a central theme in the life of Tyler Vernon.

At the same time, it must be noted that Ringo is not Tom Clancy. I say this to note that Ringo does not bury you in minute details simply to prove the expertise of his characters or his own depth of knowledge and extensive research. Ringo implicitly requests his readers/listeners accept his authorial fiat on the subject of details in order to tell us a new twist on an old story.

Laugh out loud funny

John Ringo is a great Sci Fi writer. All his books have humor, and historical insight applied to future imagined. To top it off Mark Boyett is the best narrator I've heard yet. This is a great book and hopefully part one of a series. The aliens are funny as hell without trying. The novel ideas for using crude brute force engineering to achieve sophisticated goals makes this a must read.

Tyler Vernon to the rescue!

This book kicks off the Troy Rising series with the standard Sci-Fi scenario of mankind's first contact with aliens. As is often the case, things don't go well for Earth as we are outclassed both technologoically and militarily when the Horvath come to claim our resources. Earth's governments have no recourse but to comply to the demands and Earth becomes a subservient planet.

Enter Tyler Vernon into the story and things start to change. Tyler Vernon not only steps up to save Earth but he also saves this entire series of books. He is an interesting, opinionated character that isn't willing to allow Earth to remain slaves to the Horvath. Any time the book (and series) focuses on Tyler Vernon and his plans it flies by and is a joy to listen to.

There are, however, lulls in each of the 3 books in the series so far where Ringo spends way too much time on boring subjects. In the first book it is the difficulties of mining in space with a "laser", in book 2 it is ship maintenance and welding in space, and in book 3 it is the culture clash faced by the Latin American military in space. Each of these are important to the overall story, but could have been addressed in far fewer pages. The bloat fills the gaps between the interesting parts of the story related to Tyler Vernon and the fight for humanity's freedom.

Mark Boyett does a decent job with the material, although he is forced to repeat "Tyler said" thousands of times due to the way the book is written. He is also a bit dry in his overall reading.

If you are willing to take the good with the bad then give the Troy Rising Series a shot. It is a 5 star story arc stuffed with boring periods that drag it down to 3 stars.

Loved it.

I've been a Ringo fan for a long time, and this was definitely one of my favorites. Great plot, excellent writing, and I just could not stop listening.

There is a little bleed over from some of the stuff in the last centurion, (political philosophy, not plot or content) but it didn't bother me.