Vorpal Blade

Written by John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor

Narrated by L.J. Ganser

TO THE STARS—WITH GUNS AND DUCT TAPE

LTC William Weaver, PhD. ("Call me Bill …") and SEAL Chief Miller, the heroes who saved Earth from alien menace in Into the Looking Glass, are back and this time Bill's got hisself a ship! The former SSBN Nebraska has been converted, using mostly shade-tree mechanics and baling wire, into a warp ship, Naval

Construction Contract 4144, ready to go where no Adar, SEAL or academic has gone before!

Yay for the heroes! But who cares for the poor Security guys, Force Recon Marines who are kept in the dark and fed manure all day. That is, until they land on an alien planet, get partially wiped out and then load back up again. It's a dog's life in the Space Marines but somebody's got to save the academics and the universe—at the cost of horrendous casualties.

Ranging in topics from the best gun to kill armored space monsters to particle physics to cosmology, Vorpal Blade is a return to the "good old days" of SF when the science problems were fun, the women were smart, tough and beautiful, and the beasts were ugly. The monkeys are out in the space lanes and ready to rock.

As soon as they find the duct tape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440760761

John Ringo

John Ringo is author of the New York Times best-selling Legacy of Aldenata (Posleen War) series, which so far includes A Hymn Before Battle and nine sequels, the technothriller series starting with Ghost, a dark fantasy titled Princess of Wands, and many other novels for Baen. A veteran of the 82nd Airborne, Ringo brings first-hand knowledge of military operations to his fiction.

[nickhowes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After confronting the Dreen invasion in Into the Looking Glass, a submarine converted into a starship launches a search of the nearby systems to make sure the Dreen aren't attacking through conventional space. Reminiscent of Voyage of the Space Beagle by way of Rambo, the book is an excellent nuts-and-bolts military science fiction tale with a slam-bang finish. As with the best of the series books, it can stand alone even as its predecessor was initially conceived as a standalone.

[karlstar_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In the second installment of this series, the US converts a submarine into a spaceship, using the warp drive device that was conveniently given to Earth in book 1. Now that the Dreen menace is temporarily halted on Earth, the Vorpal Blade is sent out to search the nearby galaxy for signs of Dreen. This books features lots of physics, practical exploration of the dangers of early space travel, and the usual kick butt action of a John RIngo story. Light, funny, but technical and action packed too. I wish there was a little more exploration of the societal effects of all this new technology, but it isn't that kind of science fiction novel.

[sunnysd_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The little black box Dr. Bill Weaver received from the Adar in Through the Looking Glass has finally been morphed from a world-destroying anomaly into a spaceship blaged together from "duck" tape, baling wire and an Omaha-class nuclear sub. Under an ex-fighter pilot captain, the now-commissioned Lieutenant Weaver and a company of Space Marines are headed out on their first survey mission in hopes of finding intelligent life or the Dreen.

This feels like an interim novel - lots of filler, lots of math to make sense of the filler, and a few spectacular battles to make up for the math and the filler. And a real overuse of the word maulk. No objection to swearing, but there are pages where it seems to pop up every third word. And what's with Tuffy & Mimi? Somehow their rush to be present and save the day/world didn't quite seem as critical as the opening sequence leads one to believe it might be. And of course, no Dreen in sight....

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fun story. A literal 'black box' from the first book gets extended into a warp drive and a reason for a new adventure here. New character - Eric Bergstrasser - I like him, too. William Weaver's still there, Mimi and Tuffy come along and so does Chief Miller (I like his existential doubt near the end - gives a good excuse for him to keep coming, too). Oh, and Miriam. Also an interesting character. I got to not liking her by the fourth book, so it's hard to remember how I saw her in this one. But I think even in this one there started to be some confusion between Mimi and Miriam - as in, instead of Mimi pulling some data out of a hat to solve things Miriam did. So just why was Mimi along?
The story itself is relatively simple - first spaceship (a converted sub rechristened the Vorpal Blade) goes out into space and tries to figure out how to handle things out there. Some politics, a lot of interesting cross-service culture clashes (Marines vs SF, sub vs carrier...). Some interesting worlds discovered, though none of them struck me as either wonderful or particularly original. Lots of gung-ho, and Eric "Two-Gun" got to challenge the standard mantra that two-gun mojo is a fool's game. Not bad, not as good as Looking Glass.

[elementaldragon_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The cast of Into the Looking Glass takes off for other worlds in a spaceship cobbled together on a nuclear submarine frame.

New worlds, new conflicts, new allies, new discoveries. Not so much a direct advancement of the plot idea from Into the Looking Glass as a quest of discovery. Theoretically, elements discovered in this novel will be applied to further novels in this series.