blog/content/reviews/books/live-free-or-die.md

+++
title = "Live Free or Die - John Ringo"
date = 2021-10-22

[taxonomies]
tags = ["books", "reviews", "john ringo", "scifi", "books:2021",
"published:2010", "stars:1"]
+++

[GoodReads
Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6713634-live-free-or-die): 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. When the Horvath came
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.

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{{ stars(stars=1) }}

You can say there is something wrong with a book when you have two parts in the
title, one positive and another negative, and you start wishing the protagonist
would get the later.

For a story, it starts really well: It's not "humans conquer space", it is "the
first contact with another species happens on Earth". So, it is interesting how
human dynamics change when this happens at our door.

But the thing focus on a single guy, who suddenly discovers something a merchant
species gets highly interested and that's when the story goes downhill. First,
the guy gets a bunch of money. Then it corners the something he figures out,
practically creating a monopoly -- most of the stuff belongs to him, and the few
others that have that something are really his friends. It gets to the point
that he starts complaining that nobody else is doing what he is doing. He bought
everything, left just a few scraps to others and then complains that nobody is
trying to do what he did. Genius.

Also, the story age pretty damn bad, specially since, right now, we are facing a
virus that is killing a lot of people. In the story, there is something like
that, which can be cured with some care -- basically, people have to use
disinfectants to kill some parasite, which can be somewhat painful. And then our
"hero" proposes that the parasite is actually a good thing, 'cause it would
solve the problems with government pensions and most people that will die are
those that do not care or are too weak or not smart enough. The fact that he
says all this with a "Sadly" in front of it makes nothing to save his
reputation.

And that's basically why, not even by half of the book, I was choosing that the
hero would take the later part of the title, even if that meant that all
humanity would be lost. 'Cause that guy doesn't deserve to be a "hero".

I see that the book is part of a series, and even if I still have hopes that
later books will paint him as the villain, I have high doubts that that would
happen.

Even if the writing style is good to read and you can churn chunks of the story
in fast pace, the whole is enough to make you want to punch a fictional person
in the face. Hard.

PS: Oh, there is another point to the hate for the protagonist: After a few
cities were completely obliterated by said Horvath, the protagonist starts
building a space force along with NASA but requires pilots to get augmentations
and he comes with "I hope the government will pay for the augmentations after
all the taxes I'm paying". Sure, asshole, the government has to make the thing
that will make him more money (he's basically building a space station, which he
plans to sell to the government); fuck the build of hospitals and roads and
schools and what not what were destroyed when three cities turned to dust. Fuck
the population, all you want is the government to work for *you*. That attitude
just adds to the general sense of privilege this guy feels toward everything
else. So yeah, sad he didn't die.