The Hot Gate by John Ringo
The Hot Gate is the third novel in John Ringo’s TROY RISING series. This series started off well with the first half of the first book, Live Free or Die. Then Ringo’s protagonist, Tyler Vernon, turned out to be an outspoken Nazi-sympathizer and TROY RISING plummeted. The second book, Citadel, was better, but still not good enough to recommend. (Please see my reviews for specifics.) I began reading the third book, The Hot Gate, hoping that things would continue to improve, but only because the publisher sent me a free review copy.
Unfortunately, the story regresses in book three. I read most of The Hot Gate, but couldn’t finish it. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this review because chances are that you’re not reading this unless you’re thinking about reading The Hot Gate, which means you probably have enjoyed the series so far. If that’s the case, you’ll like The Hot Gate a lot better than I did.
The story continues to follow Dana, the pilot introduced in Citadel. Dana has been transferred to a new battle station where she’s in charge of a crew made up of Latin American and Muslim recruits. Uh-oh. Immediately you should wonder (or suspect) what John Ringo’s going to do with this. Not surprisingly, he proceeds to stereotype and insult the entire Latin American culture (as if it is one entity) and the Muslim culture, too. The Latinos are sloppy, lazy, stupid, emotional, liars, thieves, womanizers, and obsessed with machismo. The Muslims freak out about the way the women are dressed. I could give examples of all this, but I really don’t want to spend any more time writing about TROY RISING. Besides all this annoying stuff (which makes up most of the plot), the story was boring.
I should mention that a lot of readers like the TROY RISING books. The first two books, especially, get high marks at Amazon and Goodreads. I am an educated patriotic conservative white suburban Protestant who doesn’t see herself as especially “sensitive” and not particularly worried about “political correctness,” but these books offended me.
Troy Rising — (2010-2011) Publisher: First Contact Was Friendly. When aliens trundled a gate to other worlds into the solar system, the world reacted with awe, hope and fear. But the first aliens to come through, the Glatun, were peaceful traders and the world breathed a sigh of relief. Who Controls the Orbitals, Controls the World. When the Horvath camw through, they announced their ownership by dropping rocks on three cities and gutting them. Since then, they’ve held Terra as their own personal fiefdom. With their control of the orbitals, there’s no way to win and earth’s governments have accepted the status quo. Live Free or Die. To free the world from the grip of the Horvath is going to take an unlikely hero. A hero unwilling to back down to alien or human governments, unwilling to live in slavery and enough hubris, if not stature, to think he can win. Fortunately, there’s Tyler Vernon. And he has bigger plans than just getting rid of Horvath. Troy Rising is a book in three parts — Live Free of Die being first part — detailing the freeing of earth from alien conquerors, the first steps into space using off-world technologies and the creation of Troy, a thousand trillion ton battlestation designed to secure the solar system.
Tyler Vernon is not an outspoken Nazi sympathiser. Cite the line where he sympathises with Nazis.
Dana was NCOIC for a group of South American shuttle crews, she was not in charge of any Muslims.
Neither the South Americans nor the Muslims were stereotyped.
The Muslims were explicitly stated to be from one of the most fundamentalist Islamic regions in the world, with many being former Taliban members. They were good fighters, with explosives expertise, which is why they were recruited to be Marines.
The only South Americans we meet were all upper class. We hear their opinions of lower class South Americans, that’s it. They have been placed in jobs they do not believe they are worthy of them. This is the same class structure that existed in European countries before the 1900s, and upper class people in those times would have reacted the same way if put in the same situation. Would you accuse Bernard Cornwell of stereotyping white people?
Honestly, I’m not sure you actually read the books.
Words fail. I can’t imagine what else might offend you. Great series, bizarre and ridiculous review. Especially the ‘Nazi sympathizer’ comment.
Just saw you like Jack Vance. Me too. Surely he offends you somewhere though?