Book review: Live Free or Die

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

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+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.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+{{ 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.