John Ringo's "Posleen War" books

[Lurks-no-More]

Ie. "Hymn Before Battle", "Gust Front", "When the Devil Dances". There's probably a fourth book coming in, but I haven't seen it yet.

What's you opinion on them?

I find the first and second books pretty good, despite some oddities (ie. the interstellar, multi-species alien civilization with no mass-production capabilities or just about any military technology). And Posleen, although somewhat cliched "idiotic horde of monsters" aliens, are the sort of enemy you like to dislike.

Third book was something of a failure, in my opinion; there seems to be a slight slide into "America über alles" mentality that doesn't really appease to me, a non-American reader.

If anyone has read the fourth one (assuming it's been published), care to comment?

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I'm not familiar with his work, but I've seen a newly-released hardback by him that has a CD-ROM bound in. The CD-ROM contains (among other things, I assume) a d20 game based on his books. I haven't gotten a chance to buy it yet, but I'll pick it up eventually. Baen released the latest in David Weber's Honor Harrington series, which had a CD-ROM that contained all of the Honor Harrington books in various formats, plus artwork and a couple of essays (but no d20 game, or even a starship combat game, unfortunately).

 

[Atridis]

One of the things that I enjoyed in Harry Turtledove's "World War" series was watching the humans develop creative tactics to attack the advanced-tech aliens. At first, "A Hymn Before Battle" appeared to be setting up the humans for the same sort of brains-vs-brawn combat, but it didn't follow through.

I admit that I've only read the first book in the series, but I was disappointed with the combat. I kept thinking that these "soldiers of the future" were less well equipped and less imaginative than our armed forces today. The technology was disappointing; while the hitting power, rate of fire, and effective range of the weapons were 1,000 times greater than what we have today, they were essentially just wicked cool, direct fire small arms. He did provide a reason why air power wasn't practical, which puts a serious crimp in contemporary tactics, but how about a battery of mine-laying MLRS? What about an FAE laid in the enemy's path? (Well, okay, that's sort of what they ended up doing, but it was by accident.) I expect that a battalion of army engineers with the right equipment could give the Posleen a harsh education in the foolishness of human-wave attacks (Posleen-wave attacks).

I also felt like I'd read it all before. It seemed very much like a re-make of Heinlein's "Starship Troopers", without offering much that was new or innovative. It had potential, but I felt a little cheated at the end.

 

[drnuncheon]

The fourth book is out - it's entitled Hell's Faire. It and When the Devil Dances were originally going to be one book, but 9/11 and other factors intervened.

I think the first two were the best - if they had a fault, it's that the author seems just a little bit fanboyish about his favorite bands (and webcomics)

 

[Rackhir]

I admit that I've only read the first book in the series, but I was disappointed with the combat. I kept thinking that these "soldiers of the future" were less well equipped and less imaginative than our armed forces today. The technology was disappointing; while the hitting power, rate of fire, and effective range of the weapons were 1,000 times greater than what we have today, they were essentially just wicked cool, direct fire small arms. He did provide a reason why air power wasn't practical, which puts a serious crimp in contemporary tactics, but how about a battery of mine-laying MLRS? What about an FAE laid in the enemy's path? (Well, okay, that's sort of what they ended up doing, but it was by accident.) I expect that a battalion of army engineers with the right equipment could give the Posleen a harsh education in the foolishness of human-wave attacks (Posleen-wave attacks).

Well, I think rockets probably weren't effective for much the same reason as the aircraft weren't. Too big a thermal signature and probably got nailed by the God King's Saucer weapons. At least that's how I suspect he would rationalize it, but it is a weak point in his technological set up. He never really did explain why artillery rounds didn't suffer the same fate as missiles and such. Though artillery rounds do typically travel at much higher velocities than most missiles. Still, I think he mostly threw that sort of thing in there for the tactical complications. It was implied at least that their inability to stop artillery shells was one of those "Alien Blindspot" things, where they had simply never thought of such a thing and thus had no counter to it. Also the Powered armor suits did eventually switch into carrying much more of the artillery style weapons. Even modifying suits to be little else other than mobile artillery.

Tactically the Posleen were much more difficult to fight than I think you give them credit for. Remember a substantial number of individual soldiers were equiped with weapons that would trash an M1 in one shot and this is out of hordes of hundreds of thousands. So a lot of our traditional methods of dealing with wave attacks don't work, since they involve things like armor and air power. The Posleen also move at much higher speeds than humans, especially over rough ground. Remember that the human forces in the first book were basically told nothing about the kind of enviroment and enemies they were going to be fighting in, hamstrung by many incompetent leaders and improperly trained (if they got any).

Also, don't forget the lessons of Korea . The chinese units which had essentially no armor, artillery, air support or heavy weapons still managed to thrash and almost cut off a number of US units. Their lack of "baggage" meant that they could traverse the hills and mountains, where as the mechanized forces of the US were restricted to the roads that had to go around many of the hills and mountains and water barriers. So basically, if you are in sufficiently rough terrain, attack with total disregard for your life and have overwhelming numbers then you can beat nominally "Far superior" units. This is one of the things that cost germany the war on the eastern front. As one Panzer commander put it, "We had a 10 to 1 kill ratio vs the russian tanks, but there was always that dammed 11th tank."

The other things you mentioned re: FAEs (more mines really) and engineers do in fact make up several MAJOR reasons that humanity was able to hold on to the earth, after the Posleen invasion. Though they were hardly in a position to drive them off the earth and most countries were wiped out.

 

[s/LaSH]

One important thing to realise is that Ringo wrote the books and designed Posleen capabilities for a very specific purpose. He writes (I think in the afterword to Hell's Faire, but as I read the last 3 books in a yellow-drenched row, I'm a little hazy) that, back in the 80s, he was struck by the idea that a good, traditional Aliens Invade Earth scenario doesn't work - sensible aliens sit at the top of the gravity well and have so much advantage there that we lose. Bang.

So he designed an alien menace that could actually be fought on vaguely fair terms. I surmise that further books in the Legacy of the Aldenata will explain where the Posleen come from (as everyone knows they're bioengineered), but apparently we'll be getting a rest on the lizards for the next few stories.

I liked 'em, personally. It paints a very realistically unflattering image of some aspects of the US Military, and on the whole it seems fairly well-reasoned, even to a New Zealander like myself. (And politically, NZ!=USA.)

 

[Purple]

I'm not familiar with his work, but I've seen a newly-released hardback by him that has a CD-ROM bound in. The CD-ROM contains (among other things, I assume) a d20 game based on his books. I haven't gotten a chance to buy it yet, but I'll pick it up eventually.

If you buy Hell's Faire from the Baen website webscription, you can download the CD .iso file (about 400MB) and extract the game from there. I just downloaded it and glanced through the included RPG. I didn't read much, but it has information on playing most of the races in the books, and a lot of info about equipment. Let me know if you have any questions. There are also a lot of others on the CD (I think something like 20 other books, some audio files, and some fan fiction on the Posleen).

As for the last book, I thought it was pretty good. I didn't like how short is was, but I could understand that it really should have been the last part of the third one. I'm glad that I got it with the webscription, as I would not have bought the hardcover for that little material.

Lee

 

[Shadowdancer]

QuikLink Interactive, which handles the T20 game, announced a couple of months ago it has a license to do a d20 sourcebook for John Ring's "Posleen War" universe. I doubt that is the d20 game mentioned that comes with the hardback -- I wonder what it is.