Into the Looking Glass

I tend to compare all SF with the movie "The league of extraordinary gentlemen". That movie had an extraordinary plot with a lot of fantastic happenings and I totally hated it. This book also has an extraordinary plot with a lot of impossible stunts but I loved it. The difference (apart from one being a movie and the other a book) is that this book mostly presents the fantastic action in a realistic setting and with a good portion of self distance. And with tongue in cheek humour. The protagnist calls himself a high tech redneck, which just happens to be true. But instead of making the gun loving redneck thing into a classic hollywood stereotype you get the opportunity to both laugh at and with the redneck portion of the cast. The antagonist species is a blast, anybody that loved Aliens will surely love this! The book has a lot of pop culture SF-references. I enjoyed them but I guess some readers might be irritated with them. Some other reviewers considers them rip offs. And also be warned, there is some (not much) political commentary of a very conservative nature. Towards the end there is also a bit of commentary about the war against terror that probably will give the more liberal readers hickups. The only thing I have to say against this book is that it does make some small errors, a 600 megaton nuke would for example hardly scratch the earths surface, no less blow it apart. And most of the bad language is "bleeped" out with other words. It's not really a problem, I do understand what "Grapp off" means. But I don't really understand why JR chose to have such languages included at all. If you chose to have your characters doing some bad language you might as well go the whole nine yards, otherwise you can just skip it entirely. To sum it up, if you liked Aliens 2 you will most probably like this! And if you also liked Starship troopers (the book) you must get this one! One last note, this was the first book that I downloaded and read in my Iphone. I was a bit sceptic at the format at first but it read like a charm on the phone!

This takes the idea of alien partnership in intergalactic war to a whole new level after Posleen. Much improved.

This book is a perfect example of mixing a bit of science and fiction one gets a product that is greater then the sum of its parts. The science is compelling for us amateur undergraduate physics students which always makes at, least for me, sci-fi more interesting. Actual its no surprise considering the co-author has an alphabet soup of physics credentials. Then there is the action that builds up into an explosive finale. This is no surprise considering the literary background of the second co-author. There are few names that when they appear on the cover, you need to look further. If you want action and sci-fi, you pretty much know that if there is a combination of John and Ringo on the cover you will not get disappointing. While I grew up on Heinlein and Pournelle, I am now living on Ringo. There are no lags in the books, the suspense behind the enemy builds up and ends in the right fashion. If you are in a mood for good easy read, this is it. This is the type of book that when you open it, you do not stop reading until you have finished it and realize that you were up all night reading to see how it all wraps up. All in all a typical Ringo 5 star effort.

Into the Looking Glass (2005) is the first SF novel in the William Weaver series. One Saturday morning on a calm, cool spring day, the University of Central Florida campus was disturbed by a 60 kiloton explosion. The university grounds and beyond were enveloped in a fiercely bright light and a huge mushroom cloud rose into the sky. In this novel, troopers of Charlie Company, Second Battalion, 53rd Brigade, Florida Army National Guard, are performing maintenance when the flash catches their attention. Those who remember their training drop to the ground and put their arms over their heads. Others run into the armory. Specialist Bob Crichton is comparing protective masks on hand against the inventory lists and making internal comments about the folly of the average trooper. Sooner or later the riffs are going to use nuclear, biological or chemical weapons against them and those without protective garments are going to die. As glass begins to shatter around him, suddenly the chances of dying seem to be imminent. He dives under his desk, clamps his hands over his ears and listens to the big windows in the armory crashing to the floor. After the shockwave passes over the building, Crichton climbs out from under the desk and starts organizing the company to respond to a nuclear attack. Then he sets up a radiological station. His instruments do not detect any increase in background radiation and there isn't any evidence of an electromagnetic pulse, so the explosion probably had not been caused by a nuclear weapon. Moreover, it did not appear to have been caused by a meteorite strike. Meanwhile, satellites noticed the flash and categorized it as a nuclear explosion; a FLASH priority message is sent to the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. The President of the United States has a phone conference with the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of Defense. The Army Chief of Staff reports that the local NBC specialist does not believe the explosion to be either nuclear or meteoric in origin. In this story, Crichton finds a dark sphere at the presumptive center of the explosion. A military survey team discovers that the sphere is penetrable, but instruments sent through the interface do not report back any information. A trooper is sent through and returns to report that the other side is a close-knit tropical forest. While the central interface is being explored, aliens come through another gate and attack an old couple. The 911 operator has a conversation with the wife while her husband is firing a shotgun at the invaders. When the phone goes dead, the Orange County Sheriff's department sends a SWAT team to investigate. They find the new interface, but the aliens also find them. The contact grows into a large scale battle, with tanks fighting against oversized rhino-like aliens throwing balls of fire. Then a recon team on the other side of the interface fires on a strangely shaped creature. The resulting expl

That was my impression when I finished this novel. Other than that, perfect. It starts with a bang, about 60 kilotons, and goes on from there, as a physics experiment gone wrong ends up opening multiple "gates" to other worlds. Some of them connect to hostile aliens, and earth is fighting for its life against invaders with superior technology, physical and biological. Meanwhile, there's a little girl that lived when she should have died; an alien something that looks like a stuffed toy, communicates telepathicaly, and can taser those who mess with it; "the Charge of the Redneck Brigade;" a more or less friendly alien species; talking cats; Cthulhu; and a phycisist in the middle of everything because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time -- or was it the right place? Lots of fun, and the start of a new Ringo series. Fans of military SF can't go wrong with this one. And if you're not a fan of military SF, try it anyway for the characters, humor and ideas.