Vorpal Blade - John Ringo & Travis S. Taylor

Baen, 2007, 528 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5586-5
Read: December 2015, age 36

Book 2 of Looking Glass

In which the Ringo superman protagonist steps into the background a bit as a converted submarine gets to play USS Enterprise.  With space marines.

From the back cover:

William Weaver, Ph.D., and Chief Miller, SEAL, are back - and they got themselves a ship!  The former USSN Nebrasksa has been jerry-rigged, using alien technology and good ol' American know-how, into a warp ship ready to visit strange new worlds.  But as everyone knows, the people who really are going to bear the brunt of the "exploratory" mission are the poor Security guys, Force Recon Marines, who are, according to their own lore, "kept in the the dark and fed manure all day."  That is, until the Vorpal Blade lands on an alien planet - Security will get partially wiped out and then load back up again, to protect the scientists and crew another day, another world.


Reactions after the break.  There are probably spoilers.

Overall:
I really hated how all the swear words were subbed out for Adar (alien) words.  Not only was it just irritating (I found myself subbing back in the four letter invectives in my head as I read along, and the dialogue worked a lot better), I find it unlikely that, of all the words in the English language, people would choose those words swap out for less gritty-sounding words.  It was a significant issue, as there were several foul-mouthed people around (and appropriately so) so the maulks and the grappers just kept coming.  And they were always italicized, so they really stood out.

Other than that quibble, the book was a lot of fun.  The superman protagonist took a step into the background, and ceded a bunch of camera time to some somewhat less superhuman characters, and as with Citadel, it worked much better with smaller, more narrowly focused storyline being reported within the broad, sweeping story.

Rating: 4

Setting:
We have lots of settings.  Most of them want to kill the main characters.  They seemed well-conceived and well-described.  In the early story, Earth after a major war/catastrophe plus aliens is one of the main settings, and that worked really well, too.  Other than the fake swear words.

Plot:
We've got a space drive, so let's use it!  A space ship is jury-rigged out of a nuclear submarine, and everyone goes off exploring space, looking for... well, whatever's out there.  It was an episodic plot, moving from one issue to the next.  Some of the episodes were more fun than others, and one in particular was terrible (seriously - you should know that you're going to be short on air and water, and you've got this great hyperdrive, just go back to somewhere where you know you can stock back up.  No need for a horribly dangerous, last-ditch effort to not suffocate or dehydrate by dipping into a gas giant.).  The coolness factor was there, though, and everything was a lot of fun.

Characters:
The main two caricatures... er.. characters were still there, and they hadn't changed much.  But a few other guys - one space marine, one linguist, and the bright little girl with god on her shoulder - added quite a lot to the story.  Still.  Characters aren't one of Ringo's strengths.

Readability:
Much, much better than Into the Looking Glass, this was the style of book I was looking for.  Fun, fast, and light.


Other Opinions:
We the Nerdy
Nicely detailed review.  Pretty similar take to mine.