Citadel

The continuing story of a Gazillionaire and his dream to make humanity safe from ANY alien oppression really delivers, though I think Ringo needs to simplify the rank system of some of the enlisted personnel in some instances. But overall, that one nit pick on my part never slowed my devouring of this story.

This book was great. I loved the character development and I think one of the characters that was being developed was not worth while and for the most part was fringe to the main plot but it wasn't bad and gave a perspective on how things looked from the outside. When I purchased the book I was worried that the author had moved away from the main character of the previous book and that wasn't the case, though he wasn't the focus anymore he was still tied to the story line in a very effective way. This is not something I have seen done in books to any good effect.

The book wrapped up or rather didn't wrap up the story line but left it open ended, knowing that there was another book coming out made this less irritating but I still feel that most major plot threads should be wrapped up at the end of the book with sub plots left open ended for continuation. The first book did this nicely. This one didn't wrap up everything as well.

Overall if you liked the first book you will love this book.

I enjoy everything John Ringo writes, and this book is no exception. Interesting, well-developed characters, believable technology, and smooth transitions between the various sub-plots all add up to a book that is hard to put down.

Another great - and funny as hell - Ringo space war book. Earth vs the space squids and even more evil space lizard overlords. Finishes up nicely - no cliff-hangers, but the reader still wants more. Already started book 3, and looking at Ringo's website, 4 will still be a while - if ever. Plus we have even more BDO's (big dumb objects...)

Great follow up to the first book and the continued development of human resistance to extra-solar interference by aliens and buildup of the earths defenses. The third continues with the concept, really looks like it needs at least a fourth book to wrap everything up. Though Ringo has not returned to this story line but has moved on to new book series. Wish he would truly finish up an idea before he gets distracted with another one.

Enjoyable read, but it sometimes felt like trying to decode a bowl of acronym soup.

My main complaint is that it just wasn't long enough. I wanted MORE, more depth, more detail, more of fewer acronyms. ;)

On the nit-picky side, shortly after Butch's introduction, in a conversation with his Apollo roommate Nate, there are several typos, specifically wherein his name inexplicably changes to Dutch, then Nate (Butch, I suppose) asks Nate (Nathan) a question. This doesn't seem to happen again, but it is annoying.

Once again John Ringo comes through with a mix of solid physics, great characters and rousing military action! This is Space Opera at it's ultimate peak.

Believable villains and politics on both sides of the conflict made for total page turning absorption by this reader, the hackneyed term "can't put it down" definitely applies to this book and it's prequel.

Can't WAIT for "The Hot Gate"!

The book is a very good continuation from John Ringo's book "Live Free or Die". It starts a little slow due to character development. But once it lifts off, it becomes a roller coaster ride that absolutely takes your breath away. I enjoy reading military science fiction. For me this book will have a permanent place on my book shelf. Can't wait to start "Hot Gate".

That's RIGHT! This book is a HASSO (Highly Addictive "Sciency" Space Opera)!!!

It is the second book in the Troy Rising series that has the potential to out do Edgar Rice Burroughs (Barsoom series) and E. E. "Doc" Smith (The Lensman series) in both volume and quality!

What has it going for it?
o Big Space Opera with Hard Science
o A positive view of human can do spirit
o Historical approach to Sophant behaviors
o A plausible near future divergence given the McGuffin of a 10 km diameter warp-gate plopped into our Solar system
o Homages and literary Easter eggs for those weary enough to catch them
o Realistic space battles and use of space marines
o Wonderful character development of both human and alien sophonts!

A small warning to those few SciFi readers that believe Keynesian Economics works or Karl Marks is just misunderstood... the series doesn't support these flights of fancy.

The Series started with another HASSO, Live Free or Die: Troy Rising I, and book three, The Hot Gate: Troy Rising III, is taking preorders... I am hoping for an early release!

Buy it for yourself and your friends... but label it Danger: HASSO read at your own risk..

Once again John Ringo comes through with a mix of solid physics, great characters and rousing military action! This is Space Opera at it's ultimate peak.

Believable villains and politics on both sides of the conflict made for total page turning absorption by this reader, the hackneyed term "can't put it down" definitely applies to this book and it's prequel.

Can't WAIT for "The Hot Gate"!

The book is a very good continuation from John Ringo's book "Live Free or Die". It starts a little slow due to character development. But once it lifts off, it becomes a roller coaster ride that absolutely takes your breath away. I enjoy reading military science fiction. For me this book will have a permanent place on my book shelf. Can't wait to start "Hot Gate".

That's RIGHT! This book is a HASSO (Highly Addictive "Sciency" Space Opera)!!!

It is the second book in the Troy Rising series that has the potential to out do Edgar Rice Burroughs (Barsoom series) and E. E. "Doc" Smith (The Lensman series) in both volume and quality!

What has it going for it?
o Big Space Opera with Hard Science
o A positive view of human can do spirit
o Historical approach to Sophant behaviors
o A plausible near future divergence given the McGuffin of a 10 km diameter warp-gate plopped into our Solar system
o Homages and literary Easter eggs for those weary enough to catch them
o Realistic space battles and use of space marines
o Wonderful character development of both human and alien sophonts!

A small warning to those few SciFi readers that believe Keynesian Economics works or Karl Marks is just misunderstood... the series doesn't support these flights of fancy.

The Series started with another HASSO, Live Free or Die: Troy Rising I, and book three, The Hot Gate: Troy Rising III, is taking preorders... I am hoping for an early release!

Buy it for yourself and your friends... but label it Danger: HASSO read at your own risk..

John Ringo is hands down my favorite author. With such a prestigious position comes a great deal of responsibility. This means that A) I buy every single one of his books and B) I'm more critical of him than any other author. My favorite work of his would be the Legacy of Aldenata, specifically Gust Front. My least favorite of his works is Live Free or Die. I can understand how some people are inclined to the more technical aspects of hard science fiction, but I'm not one of them. That being said, I view Citadel as a vast improvement over Live Free or Die. There is still plenty of science but there is also a good but more character development.

The main protagonist of the first book, Tyler Vernon, takes a back seat in this edition. In his place we are introduced to Dana and Butch as well as some supporting characters. Dana is a strong willed female in the "new navy", not an easy accomplishment given that she has contracted Johanssen's Disease due to the Horvath attacks in the first book. Dana is a tough and sympathetic character at the same time, having lost family to the war and faced personal challenged to get to her current position as an engineer residing on the Troy. Butch is less compelling but still interesting enough, and both characters give perspective from a lower point of view on the human hierarchy than multi-billionaire Tyler Vernon.

Another good addition is the inclusion of a POV on the side of the enemy. In human vs. alien stories it is always interesting to see humans from a different angle and insight into Rangoran society is an extra bonus. This is a brief part of the book but a benefit to the reader for sure.

There is of course action, done as only Ringo can do it. Enormous space battles, high powered laser beams, volleys of missiles, and the like. Basically the cover art is a true representation of the world Ringo has crafted.

Citadel is a fantastic book, diehard Ringo fans will be pleased and anyone interested in some hard sci-fi and a good ol' fashion space romp are bound for a treat. I am eagerly awaiting the third and final entry in the series!

AFTER READING LIVE OR DIE FREE I COULDNT WAIT FOR THE NEXT BOOK,AND CITADEL WAS WORTH WAITING FOR. PLENTY OF NEW CARACTERS AND NEW ENEMIES. IM SURE THE THIRD BOOK WILL BE EQUALLY GOOD,CANT WAIT. JOHN RINGO NOT ONLY HAS ANOTHER HIT SERIES ON HIS HANDS BUT IS RIGHT UP THERE WITH DAVID WEBER.

I received this book just before a short hospital stay. It was NOT conducive to a good rest. I could not put the darn thing down! And the sequel isn't due to May! John, PLEASE tie yourself to your keyboard and pump it out! And, heaven help me, consider a follow up trilogy.

The second volume of the Troy Rising series gets more interesting as Ringo brings us into the POV of two people trying to survive in the new world introduced in Live Free or Die. We follow Butch as he becomes a technician working in outer space to build the infrastructure for humanity’s defense against the aliens (specifically the great space battle station, Troy) and Dana who is in training to become a pilot. I quickly got to like these two characters better than the hero of the first book (who doesn’t appear again until later in this novel). It’s a different look at the same universe, but where Tyler Vernon works principally with the massively big picture, Butch and Dana let us see life as normal people live—the kinds of jobs we might have grown up striving for in those circumstances since all of us can’t be CEOs. This was my favorite book of the trilogy.

Originally posted at FanLit:

Citadel is the second in John Ringo's TROY RISING series. The first book, Live Free or Die, had an interesting plot that was totally derailed by John Ringo's intrusive and ugly political views which seem closer to neo-Nazism than anything else. So why did I read Citadel? Only because the audiobook publisher sent me a free copy and, out of a sense of completion, I wanted to review it for FanLit. I was prepared to hate it.

Fortunately, Tyler Vernon the Nazi is only a secondary character in Citadel. The plot mostly follows two new recruits who are joining Earth's space defenses on Troy, the hollowed-out asteroid that Vernon built as a battle station. Dana is a pilot who's got some mad flying skills. Butch is a welder. Interestingly, to me at least, Butch was trained in my hometown on Florida's "Space Coast," so Ringo won me over a little when we spent some time there and he accurately portrayed the area.

Most of the story tells of the mundane events of life aboard Troy for Dana and Butch. They spend time welding, flying, swimming, shopping, eating, and getting tattoos. They are likable characters, but they just aren't very interesting and they don't even have a good sense of humor to make the dull parts more lively. Things finally pick up when the aliens called the Rangoras decide to make war on the Earth's allies, the Glatun. Then we actually get to see Troy in action, and that's kind of cool.

Fortunately, since there is less of Tyler Vernon in this book, there is less of his politics, but it does at times rear its ugly head -- jibes at the president and the French, for example, and long discussions of what America's role in the war should be. There are also several instances of John Ringo's annoying habit of describing the breast size of every female we meet (usually using the word "stacked"). And then that stupid thing about the blondes in heat. It seems that now blonde women are constantly pregnant because they can't control themselves. What, they've never heard of a condom? There are a few things like this that just make no sense and seem like Ringo's personal wish fulfillment. I won't even mention the sister porn. Yuck.

So, overall, Citadel was not as exciting as Live Free or Die, but it toned down the obnoxious politics. The trade-off makes this a less annoying book, but still not a good one. I can't recommend this series, but if you want to try it, I suggest the audiobooks narrated by Mark Boyett. He does a good job with what he's given.

This is the second volume in a series which blends elements of First Contact, Space Opera, and military SF.

Originally described as one book in three parts, the three volumes of the "Troy Rising" series published to date are

1) "Live Free Or Die (Troy Rising)"

2) This book, "Citadel" and

3) "The Hot Gate (Troy Rising)."

The books are best read in that order. At the end of the third instalment there are lots of possibilities for further books in the series and I hope Ringo will pursue them.

Mankind's first contact with aliens was friendly and almost an anticlimax. A race of traders, the Glatun, arrive in our solar system and set up a "gate" which can be used by themselves, mankind, or any other star travelling race to travel between this system and other star systems.

Unfortunately, having provided our system with a gate on the off chance that we would have something worthwhile to trade, the Glatun did not at first find that we had anything enormously valuable. So at first there was no enormous benefit to our contact with extraterrestials.

And then the gate in our system went from being of little benefit to an enormous disadvantage when a second alien race, the Horvath, sent a warship through it, dropped rocks from space which obliterated three human cities as an initial warning that we should do what we're told, and demanded all the heavy metals humans had available as a "contribution" for their "protection," or they would drop more.

Earth's governments had little choice but to agree, leaving the planet effectively at the mercy of the Horvath.

But in the first book a former Science Fiction publisher called Tyler Vernon had a few ideas on how to get the Horvath off Earth's back, and was willing to stand up to anyone, human or alien, to do it. And some of his ideas were very big ideas indeed ...

At the start of this second book Tyler Vernon, more in spite of earth's governments than because of them, had seen off the Horvath, though not before they had unleashed a whole raft of nasty things on humanity.

Among other things Tyler has turned an asteroid into a gigantic battlestation called the Troy. The main viewpoint characters in this book are two new crew members assigned to the Troy, one as an engineer and pilot, one as a space welder.

And they are going to have an interesting time. Because seeing off the Horvath was a much easier task for the Troy and its' crews than the next challenge. A much more powerful race than the Horvath, called the Rangora, has decided to conquer first the Glatun and then, almost as an afterthought, the fledgling human race.

But the Rangora, for all the power of their military machine, have underestimated how peaceful people can fight when forced to defend themselves. The Glatun are traders but they may be able to give the Rangora more of a fight than they bargained for. And if the Rangora high command have underestimated the Glatun, they may get an even worse shock when they come calling on Earth ...

Which is just as well. Because if this Troy is defeated, there won't be anyone left to write the epic ...

In my opinion the "Troy Rising" series is the best thing John Ringo has written, even ahead of his Council wars series which begins with "There will be dragons" or the first four books in his "Posleen" universe. Strongly recommended.

Very entertaining read. Ringo manages to maintain quality in this second book of the series.
The plot stays the same. Earth is oppressed and in great danger having won its initial freedom from alien oppression. Earth continues to prepare for anticipated invasions.
In this book Ringo shifts the focus and develops secondary characters - a welder and an eventual pilot (read book to see why I say 'eventual'). With this one gets the sense of work and the grand scope of the space projects from the toils of the little folks. Ringo eases back into the big picture mostly seen in the previous book in this series, does an excellent job of starting to link the little folks with the big movers & shapers, and also manages to better link government actions with the efforts of the private sector than done in book one.
Ringo continues with his strength - character development and humor - while also developing the plot.
At the end of the book the stage is set for space opera on a grand scale (and I like well written space opera) in the following book. If Ringo chooses to go in that direction. He wrote this book so well that he has options.
In summary, this is a very entertaining book. It definitely would enhance an day spent waiting in airports - the gold standard of my book reading judgements these days. Ringo plays to his strengths well and maintains a high quality standard in this second book in the series. I rated this a 4 mainly due to the high standard the author has set in previous books. This is not the top level of work that Ringo has produced in the past but it is very, very good reading.