Manxome Foe

Looking Glass Series, Book 3

By: John Ringo, Travis S. Taylor

Narrated by: L. J. Ganser

Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

A leading voice in military SF, best-selling author John Ringo teams with real-life rocket scientist Travis S. Taylor for an explosive entry from their Looking Glass series.

Recovering from their first mission, the crew of the Vorpal Blade - humankind's first interstellar craft - is called into emergency action when an alliance gate colony is attacked. Who was the lethal alien enemy? What exactly happened at the colony? And dare the Vorpal Blade's battle-weary misfits engage a potentially superior force?

©2008 John Ringo &Travis S. Taylor (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Not bad,but nothing special.

Starting story lines and then just forgetting about them,its a theme. Just know if you read Ringo,this is what you should expect.

such great books!

I have not Reviewed the first two books as I have been too busy listening once you start the series it is hard to stop

Muuuuuch better than book 2

Better pacing, tighter story, and technical details kept to reasonable levels. Significant improvements that motivate one to continue the series

A fun book.

I enjoyed this book in general. The whole series is a fun bit of fluff Sc-Fi. The reason I wanted to write this review, though, is to pick on a couple of things that annoyed me, though not enough to remove more than one star from the overall picture.

The completely unnessary, tacked-on love story should have just been removed. Eric (Two-Gun) goes back home for a visit and starts catching the eye of this girl. They go on one date, and all of a sudden she's promising to not date other men and to wait for him to come home in spite of the odds against his survival.

Okay, it's not too unrealistic for something like that to happen. Teenage girls (and boys too) often get swept up in their feelings of the moment and all that. But nobody else in the story seems to think it's a little too much. After she receives a message from Eric, Eric's mother asks her if she's going to be her mother in law soon, and she replies "I hope so!".

Seriously? Nobody's saying, "Hey, you two have basically just met each other and been on ony one date! Don't you think you should slow things down a bit?"

And the scenes where she's pining for him and watching a video montage to a song from the war on terror... kind of cringe-inducing. I guess it's just some video that gave the author the feels and he felt he needed to work it in. He should have reconsidered.

By the way, spoiler alert, though not by any means a big one, he asks her to marry him when he gets back and she says yes.

*SIGH*

Also, the dig against France at the end there was completely unnecessary and historically innacurate. It was just the authors feelings on the subject being thrown in ham-fisted.

But like I said, it was an entertaining bit of sci-fi fluff overall. I'm just the kind of guy who loves to nit-pick.

Good Continuation

As good as th first book in this series. Will be happy to read more.

One of the Best Sci-Fi book series....

I have always loved this series. I just wish John Ringo would continue it past book 4. If i had a complaint there would just be one, the made up sci-fi cuss word?!?!?!? Oh well.

Farscape had it, Battlestar Galactica had it.... why not the Looking Glass Series lol.

More Action Packed

A vast improvement over the previous 2 books. This one was packed with action in the second half.

Like the others it started slow, but the quantum physics technobabble was far more subdued in this one.

Like many other reviewers, my main complaint is the love story. It was cringey, fast, and shallow.

Also, as other reviews have stated, he tends to drop stories and characters for seemingly no reason. What happened to Mimi and her alien/angel friend from the last book? Or what about the Philippino dude for the first half of the book?

Either way, a much better effort. I'm looking forward to the last book.

Best book I have heard in a long time.

A wonderful blend of military SF with the right mix of drama, epic space battles and gallows humor. Great pacing and excellent writing keep me engaged throughout.

Manxome Foe

looking Glass series #3, great in print, awesome to listen to... As I re-read this series it just gets better

Gripping Story Line, Hilarious in Spots

Really fun story line, excellent suspense building, and some honestly laugh-out-loud scenes. I don't laugh out loud at books, but so far there have been scenes in each book of this series that have made me roar. I even enjoyed the battle scenes although military fiction is not usually my cup of tea. Quirky and odd and hilarious - a very satisfying respite from reality.

Note: I think this series is Christian friendly but not preachy, however there is a fair amount of pseudo-cursing and some coarse talk among the soldiers in the story - enough to be realistic (realistic? It's a flying submarine!) but not overdone. Still, sensitive readers should take this under advisement.