Books: Ending The Year

[woodwardiocom]

Live Free Or Die by John Ringo

Nominally a prequel to the webcomic Schlock Mercenary, this novel is set in the near future, when aliens calmly trundle a stargate into our solar system, set it up in Earth orbit, and start charging fees to use it. The first people to use it are another group of aliens with a warship who 'gate in, destroy Shanghai, Mexico City, and Cairo with k-kill weapons, and start extorting all of our heavy metals. Our hero is one clever New Hampshire resident who figures out how to gain traction in interstellar society, and take back our skies. Full of reasonably hard science and dry wit, and I quite enjoyed it. Though, well, the author, and the main character, seem to have political views where they agree with the Democrats about social issues, disagree with the Republicans about everything, and then call themselves "conservatives". Ah-hmm. Oh, and, the thing with blondes waffles over the creepy line, just a bit. Regardless, recommended.

HP 1-6

In the wake of the seventh movie, I went back to re-read the Harry Potter books. It's my second time for most of them, and I just finished book 6. I'd forgotten A) how fast her prose matures, B) how ingenious she is at pulling bits out of the first three books to weave into the following ones, and C) just how damn good and readable they are. And, "I am handsome enough for both of us, I theenk!" remains one of my favorite lines.

The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert

I'd forgotten how much Herbert's later work consists of people talking about talking, without actually saying or doing much. Didn't finish, not recommended.

Comments

[mbarr.livejournal.com]

The 1st book was more fun than the 2nd, I thought. I did see an E-ARC of Citadel, and am looking forward to the 3rd book, if there is one... but #1 just seemed to have *more* in it..

But yes, Live Free or Die was fun :)

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

If you're liberal on social issues and conservative on financial issues, choosing "conservative" to describe yourself is kinda arbitrary, yah?

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I think you're confusing me. You're a liberal conservative, but you call yourself a conservative?