Claws that Catch - John Ringo & Travis S. Taylor

Baen, 2008, 463 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4391-3133-2
Read: January 2015, age 36

Book 4 of Looking Glass.  The last one, it seems.  The series does not end here, but the published books do.

In which our heroes get promoted beyond their capabilities.

From the back cover:

It's a rough galaxy out there!  Humans have come a long way since the looking glass gates first apperared and an alien menace turned a motley crew of scientists, sailors, and force recon Marines into battle-hardened space adventurers.  Now with other species running scared, it's up to humans to take the lead and mold a weapon capable of checking the Dreen - a galactic cancer that has so far proved unstoppable.

After an "interesting" couple of shakedown cruises, the Vorpal Blade II is dispatched to investigate rumors of an ancient and powerful civilization.  Any remnant technology would be nice but what the Blade finds is much more than they bargained for.  Worse, the ship is infested by an alien species of scorpion-like arachnoids that has the potential to wipe out a world.

Leave it to the oddball geniuses of the Blade to sort it all out.  And the Dreen are not going to like the answers.

Reactions after the break.  There are probably spoilers.

Overall:
Much less fun than the first three - the first half or so was basically our heroes being frustrated by shipboard minutia and paperwork.  Things did eventually happen in the second half, but then the book finished a small arc, and major things are left unfinished.  And the series is done, as far as I can tell.  Sigh.  This seems to be a recurring thing with John Ringo.

Rating: 2, since the series seems to be done.  3 if it was an installment.

Setting:
I don't have too much to say here.  The setting was adequate, but not anything special after the first few.  Even the big dumb object, christened the "Tumtum Tree" seemed to be designed for no other reason than the Jabberwocky poem.  It was kind of lame, as far as big dumb objects go.

Plot:
Go look for tech!  And boy howdy, do they find it.  And then they hold a rock opera to blow up the invading Zer.. Dreen fleet.  Kind of a stretch.

Characters:
Pretty much the same cast of characters from the previous book - still adequate, and still not a strength of the book.  The newly added folks didn't do much to help the story.

Readability:
There were long boring parts of the book - pacing seemed kind of an afterthought.  Boredom and shipboard minutia are probably very realistic parts of the lives of all the characters, but I don't need to share it all.

Other Opinions:

IGN
I like these IGN reviews.  They're fun.  Not so positive, but fun.