Vorpal Blade

Looking Glass Series, Book 2

By: John Ringo, Travis Taylor

Narrated by: L. J. Ganser

Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

One of the unquestioned masters of military science fiction, New York Times best-selling author John Ringo teams with real-life rocket scientist Travis S. Taylor for this action-packed sequel to Into the Looking Glass. The alien Dreen are still a terrifying menace across the galaxy, but Earth has a new weapon - the first human warp ship. Aboard the Vorpal Blade, America's tough-as-nails Force Recon Marines seek the Dreen, hoping to bring the fight directly to them.

©2007 John Ringo &Travis S. Taylor (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"... deals with the arcane mysteries of quantum mechanics, lending ... an absurdist twist appropriately reminiscent of Lewis Carroll." - Publishers Weekly

Awesome

Loved it. Sci-fi at it's best. The narrator did a great job. Timing voice inflection he does it all . I truly recommend this audio book .

Made up curse words?

I’ve gotta be honest, the made up curse words just about ruined it. Every single time, it was like hearing a needle scratched across the record - it was jarring and annoying and took you out of the story.

Alas.

He constantly mispronounced Submariner, COB, and other terms.
Huge pauses not only at book chapters, but in the story line also.
Some areas of performance was disjointed, tech issues or him is uncertain.

great book

fun continuing of the series. Lots going on as the travel around the local star group, meet interesting aliens, and kill them. . .

Classic Ringo, humorus, but at times frustrating

The frustrating part is the replacement of the F word with Guck and Muck. Yes its a bad word, but these are US MARINES and it is the way the actual book says it. Stop with the silly language change. The narrator is great, but if it was a change made by him for personal reasons, then I'm sorry, but find another narrator that will read the book the way it was written!

Great but has some quirks.

Any additional comments?

Good book but fake "bad words" were over used. I read a post talking about this issue but dismissed it as whineing. When the Marines were talking or yelling you would hear "Holy gunk!" and a couple other words over and over. Marines while deployed may use foul language. Get used to it. If real words can't be used then I understand. Bottom line, omit false words or use real ones.

Excellent performance for a fun ride.

I've always enjoyed this novel, and I found that
the narrating served it well. Looking forward to hearing the rest.

the narrator, LJ Ganser, did an excellent job with rendering voices that were unique for each character.

Great except for pronunciation issues...

Seriously fun story. I just wish the narrator would learn to pronounce certain words correctly.... Insanely hard to stay immersed when certain mispronounced words jerk you right out of it....

A sequel that goes in a completely different direction.

This was well done. Took the characters and premise from book one then did a hard 90 degree turn to the left and straight on towards morning. The good news is that this was an excellent story and held true to the characters. The bad news is that the plot laid out in the first book is only tangential to the plot of this book. Kind of like when you get a new album from your favorite band and they have tried to enter a new genre of music, say country to rock. I found it well written, thoughtful and fun.

Performance continues to be excellent. One of the top performers, he makes this an audio drama instead of just reading the news. (Sound engineering catches some breathing, but that is me being very nitpicky and is not very noticeable.).

Fun SF story with strong military elements

This is the second book in the Looking Glass series. The first book grabbed my attention since it started with the destruction of the University of Central Florida, and I used to live in that area.

There's a bit of a time gap before this second book. The story focuses on the first interstellar ship and it's voyage. Lots of action and suspense, with good science fiction extrapolated from our current knowledge.

The weak part of the story is their willingness to risk the single interstellar ship and the small company of people. Dr. Weaver is a unique expert, and I doubt the government would put him in danger.

In some ways, this story reminded me of the classic Skylark series, by E. E. "Doc" Smith.