The Hot Gate: Did Not Finish

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.

Release date: May 3, 2011 | Series: Troy Rising. The Big Showdown with an Alien Empire, to Keep the Earth Free—and Maybe Free the Galaxy as Well. The fight to free the Earth from alien domination began in Live Free or Die, and continued in Citadel. Now Tyler Vernon, and his troops aboard the gigantic battle station Troy, face a desperate battle with the forces of galactic tyranny. And the very survival of the Earth and its people is not all that is at stake. The galaxy itself must choose to live free or die—and if the tyrants win this battle, darkness will fall across the galaxy for millennia to come.

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.