Into the Looking Glass

Looking Glass Series, Book 1

By: John Ringo

Narrated by: L. J. Ganser

Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's Summary

Formerly of the 82nd Airborne Division, New York Times best-selling author John Ringo brings unmatched authenticity to his military science fiction.

When asubatomic physics experiment causes a massive explosion, interdimensional gateways open in Florida - and aliens pour out. Some intend to bring Earth to its knees. Others seem willing to help, but will annihilate the planet if Navy SEAL Command Master Chief Robert Miller can't stop the menace from spreading.

©2005 John Ringo (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic Reviews

"This thoroughly enjoyable ride should appeal to techno-thriller fans as well as to military SF buffs." ( Publishers Weekly)

Great space opera, but a warning ...

The first thing to say about this book is that it is great. John Ringo, as usual, does a terrific job in creating a story that has a good plot, reasonable and likable characters, a sense of humor and reasonable closure. There is some hard science and the terminology may be too much for some, but I found it reasonable in light of the things that were being done at the time. The narration is very, very good and I found no technical flaws with the production. All in all a great and enjoyable read. If the second book in the series was also by John Ringo I would have already bought it.

But that is the problem. Subsequent books in the series are listed as being by John Ringo and Travis Taylor. I assume this means that John Ringo has created the characters and, perhaps, the plot and given it to someone else (in this case Travis Taylor) to do the writing. I have not heard this book so perhaps I am not being fair, but I assume this is the reason for the drop in ratings for the second book. John Ringo's style is distinctive and he writes in a way I find enormously entertaining, but having someone else write subsequent books means that I generally plan to only read the first book in such a series.

Can't say it any better than "Mike from Mesa"

April 2019, I just finished this book. I think Mike said it first and better than I can.
I enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. John Ringo is a fun author to listen to.
Please Click on "HELPFUL" to Mikes review, if it is helpful.

Like Mike I will move onto book number 2.

Totally cool

This is just such a great adventure, with so much humor and I have to say nifty ideas. I loved how although religions were mentioned, with this story line being very scientific, it did not intrude in either a positive or a negative way. I loved how the main character was a scientist with a thought pattern that could have gotten him gelded and no idea how to fire a gun.
I do have something to point out, I haven't really read huge amounts of SciFi recently however i have noticed that the Southern Hemisphere doesn't seem to exist on these worlds. Can perhaps new/old Authors take note?

Mediocre story

I didn't like the book much. The story itself is quite predictable. The book lacks much human relationships and you have nobody to empathize to. You have a main hero who is a kind of super human: a physics genius who doesn't need any sleep and quickly recovers from major injures received when fighting off alien invaders in breaks from his scientific discoveries. All other people in the story serve minor roles and generally exist only as a background to show off the main hero's awesomeness. There are many parts of the book which do not make much sense. Couple examples come to my mind: you have humans and aliens learning magically each other's languages in a matter of days. Ok, I could buy that aliens are super smart or have means to help to learn new languages but there is no way it would be possible for humans. Another example is that book is way too USA centric to the point of stupidity. I mean you have an alien invasion which affects whole world but the way book describes the world's reaction to the events one could think that Earth consists of USA, France which could be just another state of USA, Middle East which role is to be a place where bad evil terrorists lurk and maybe a couple of small unimportant countries who only capable of complaining about the way USA handles the situation.

Other than a little slowdown in the middle...

If you're looking for a military science fiction book - that's what you'll find in this book. It's not a terrifically written novel, by any means, and there's a lot of the author's political opinions interspersed throughout, but there is also a lot of aliens getting blown up, humans getting blown up, and saving of world(s) being done.

It does fall into a bit of a slump/slowdown near the middle where Ringo seems to be trying to make too many scientific/political points and lost track of the fact that he was writing a military sci-fi, not a treatise on religious belief or Middle Eastern politics. The book does pick up again after this, but there is a lot of anti-Middle East "commentary" from about 1/3 of the way in to the very end of the book (and it's very noticeable in the final chapter and epilogue). If you don't agree with his politics, this section might even border on being offensive.

But if you can accept his political views, it's a strong, mostly action-packed, military sci-fi story with a plot that is wrapped up in the end. The narration is very good. I'll be reading the others in this series.

It's along the same lines as David Gunn's Death's Head series or Steakley's Armor if you're looking for read-alikes.

Way different...

This series is very hard to rate for me. I think I've "read" everything Ringo has written when it comes to Sci-Fi (and Pseudo-Fantasy), but this series, while obviously "Ringo-Ish" was just different from what I'm used to. I bought the book some time ago, and within the first 3 hours I had to put it down as "Just too plain silly to finish". Recently I tried listening to it again during a "Book Slump" when I couldn't find anything that seemed to catch my eye, and this time I just gutted-on through it.

At the finish, I immediately came to Audible and bought book 2... and then book 3, and just now got book 4.

The Books have some "just plain silly parts" scattered through them, and a Metric TON of quips and quotes from just about every major Sci-Fi movie made, but I walked away from each book wanting to continue on with the series ASAP, and I found myself with my ear-buds in while working around our ranch, and I also missed a lot of sleep listening to the books in bed... Can't ask for much more than that I guess!

Better than expected

I was not expecting too much from this one, so I was pleasantly surprised. Once you get past the "BS factor" it's a pretty fun story, if not too intellectually demanding.

It's OK, but not very memorable

This book probably appeals to fans of Michael Bay and Uwe Boll films. There's not much in terms of content or character development. Nor is there much exploration of the world that the author is trying to describe. The depiction of alien species is handled with the scientific understanding of an eighth-grader, and the story complexity follows along the same lines. If you want a world to capture your imagination, you wont find it in Looking Glass.

i enjoyed this one

i think i just like john ringo. he is better written then any of the SW stuff. not as drawn out as PFH. so i enjoy the pace between listening to long saga. the man loves suites. if you listened the the posleen series your gonna see that he likes the suites, at first the narrator was reading a bit to fast and turned me off a bit. but he won me over i like the guy who reads ringos other books better but he is good.

Interesting and imaginative story

I very much enjoyed this book as with most of John Ringo's writing. I didn't care for the condescending attitudes towards Christians but I have to assume that came from his partner in this book since I haven't noticed it in his other work. I appreciated the physics details and the reasonable way they were introduced.