Live Free or Die

Troy Rising, Book One

By: John Ringo

Narrated by: Mark Boyett

Beginning a New Series by a New York Times Best-Selling Author.Will the People of Earth Bow Down toAlien Overlords—or Will They Live Free or Die?

First Contact Was Friendly

When aliens trundled a gate to other worlds into the solar system, the world reacted with awe, hope and fear. But the first aliens to come through, the Glatun, were peaceful traders and the world breathed a sigh of relief.

Who Controls the Orbitals, Controls the World

When the Horvath came through, they announced their ownership by dropping rocks on three cities and gutting them. Since then, they've held Terra as their own personal fiefdom. With their control of the orbitals, there's no way to win and earth's governments have accepted the status quo.

Live Free or Die

To free the world from the grip of the Horvath is going to take an unlikely hero. A hero unwilling to back down to alien or human governments, unwilling to live in slavery and with enough hubris, if not stature, to think he can win. Fortunately, there's Tyler Vernon. And he has bigger plans than just getting rid of the Horvath.

Troy Rising is a book in three parts—Live Free or Die being the first part—detailing the freeing of earth from alien conquerors, the first steps into space using off-world technologies and the creation of Troy, a thousand trillion ton battlestation designed to secure the solar system.

©2010 John Ringo (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

John Ringo is in my top 5

Very well told story. My favorite aspect of John Ringo's style is his witty dialogue, not only is the story meaningfully progressed but nearly every conversation is intriguing, except for the technical explanations. I appreciated the explanations but I got lost in some of them.

If you like John Scalzi, you will definitely like John Ringo.

The narrator is phenomenal as well. You can tell within about ten seconds if a narrator is good and this guy is well above par.

Classic Sci-Fi, Heinlein style

This book reads like it's from the golden age of sci, aliens vs humans with cold war style politics. It's very much in the style of Robert Heinlein, a very technical writing style with a lot of explaination of the physics of what's going on. It seems like it should be tedious with so much technical writing, but in Ringo's skilled hands, the story just flows.

The main charactrer, Tyler Vernon, reminded me of Heinlein's Lazarus Long. The same cranky angry attitude and drive to suceeed completely. The narrator captured the feel of the book perfectly.

Other reviewers talk about latent racism/sexism, but it's far tamer in that regard than the sci-fi classics that clearly inspired this book.

Good!

Not really into sci fi, but this book got me hooked on his series. Can wait until the next installment comes out!

OMG! What a great story

Never have I been so captivated by a book that before I was even done with the first book, I was on here buying the rest of the series (that is currently available). This book is one of the few that I can say keeps you interested from start to finish. A great read / listen.

Simply Awesome

This is just great, everything just about falls into place just perfectly and results in a great story I cant wait to listen to again in a year or so, after I listen to the other 2 books that follow this one - First of all, I listened to this so I have no idea if names are spelled correctly, but you should be able to figure it out

So I watched something on National Geographic on 5-22-11 called "When Aliens Attack" and the author of this book is on there and the show was sorta along the lines of the beginning of this book, so look for that if you can find it

So an alien gateway comes into the Sol system (thats Earth) by some aliens that send these around to systems to establish contact and trades and stuff like that, but bad aliens can come out of it, and they do - the Horvath

What happens is that by chance a Sci-Fi writer turned lumberjack/grocery store clerk/jack of all trades because of a lack in sci-fi as a things people care about after actual aliens come, Tyler Verden by chance discovered that maple syrup was like really strong alcohol for the Glatoon and trades it for this realy powerful computer chips that are worth millions, over night he becomes the richest person in the world and basically takes over everything not government controlled (and some that is)

Tyler builds a really cool space laser called the SAPL (Solar Array Pumped Laser) or like Tyler puts it "Super Ass Powerful Laser" and it takes light from the Sun and points it onto VDA's (Variable Distributed Arrays) or again Tyler's name "Very Dangerous Array" and other really cool acronyms

So this turned into one of the best books I have ever read/listened to, I have only one complaint and thats that it is to short - it jumps months and even years between chapters, and it would be cool to experience that stuff - I think it could have been 10-15 hours longer even, there are 2 more books that I have just started on and I hope they are just as good

Highly recommended, its more like 6 out of 5 stars

Good stuff, had me laughing too.

Would you listen to Live Free or Die again? Why?

No, can't listen or watch many things more than once. Though this was a great story that worked on all levels.

Who was your favorite character and why?

The main character Tyler Vernon is a vey likeable and normal guy and goes from having nothing to doing great things.

Which scene was your favorite?

My favorite scene had to be all the planning that went into building his syrup empire...muhahaha!

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

There wasn't much that moved me, but it was every entertaining and i couldn't stop listening.

Any additional comments?

Can't wait to listen to the second and third books.

Fantastic book! Loved this.

An Excellent Book! Listened every available minute and looking forward to the next in the series said to be released this 2011. Thanks for this John and hope Mark Boyett narrates the squeals.

really like the book wheres the marines?

in another series by JR he has this funny quirky cool guy scientist which i really liked. he does another oddball guy in this one which makes you really like this character. i like the way the characters come together i thought some of the plots where really fun, i just really like JR books the narrator takes a second to get used to he is a bit fast but hes diffrent then the guy who normally does JR work. i hope you get the book and enjoy as much as i did

Space Opera for fun and profit.

What did you love best about Live Free or Die?

There is no real depth to this story, no great ideas to live by, really nothing of socially redeeming value but was it ever fun. Just sit back, put your feet up and go along for the ride.

I've listened 4x now. It is one of my all time fav

I have had this book for several years now. It is probably my most repeated book.