Live Free or Die By: John Ringo
This book is the first book in the Troy Rising series. I suppose you could say it is an alien invasion story, and you would be right, but you would also miss the point because the best part of this book is the way that humanity springs back and keeps moving. While the book has some events that are pretty terrible, The book doesn't get very depressing because it moves so fast. I had trouble putting this one down because I just couldn't wait to see what happened next.
As with many John Ringo books this one goes over the top in terms of carnage, and the main characters are nowhere near as bothered by it as they should be. This tendency in his books is both a strength and a weakness because it keeps the books from being depressing, but lends them a somewhat unreal air and can make suspension of disbelief hard at times.
The major plot device of this book is a warp gate that is dropped off in our solar system by some mysterious aliens who then move on to the next system on their schedule. The first race through the gate, the Galtun, are friendly enough and Earth thinks that a new age of interstellar trade is coming. Then the Horvath show up, Drop some rocks on major cities, and take over the world. To begin with they are largely absent but demand rare earth minerals as payment for not destroying more cities. This all changes when Tyler Vernon discovers by accident that maple syrup is highly intoxicating and addictive to the Galtun traders that occasionally make their way to earth. The Horvath naturally try to muscle in on this new product, but due to the nature of maple harvesting have some issues. Vernon Manages to bring in the Galtun government to protect his maple syrup company, and bring a measure of protection to Earth. Using this foothold to getting galactic currency Vernon embarks on a quest to not only make himself rich, but remove the Horvath boot from humanities neck, by expanding into asteroid mining among other things. The Horvath however are not willing to simply let things go. In the end it becomes a race between Vernon's secret plans to free his people, and the Horvath's secret plans to subjugate them forever.
This book will appeal to military science fiction fans, and people who enjoy stories where humanity escapes Earth. There is quite a lot of fighting in the book however, and as I mentioned earlier Ringo tends to put terrible events into his books and then downplay them.
This book can be purchased in print or as an Ebook at www.amazon.com.
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