great series but where is BOOK 4!

where the bloody hell is book 4!! seriously it's been 7 YEARS!! COME ON JOHN!

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29 people found this helpful

Huh?

The last 20% of the book is very exciting but I'm not sure it is worth the buildup. There seemed to be two (or three?) very disjointed stories within this book and only one of them is interesting. The first story dealt with "Comet" Parker, a very interesting powerful female character dealing with working in a macho Latin American environment. OK, that could have been fairly interesting for a chapter or two, but it goes on and on and on and (amazingly enough) doesn't really reach any sort of satisfying conclusion.
The second story is the massive space battle seems to just happen toward the end of the book and Comet and her storyline mostly fades away. During the battle the story shifts abruptly to Butch, the space welder introduced in prior books, for a bit and then... ends.

I enjoyed the first two books enough that I am OK that I listened to this one and will certainly try out the fourth book - I assume there will be at least one more book as this in no way wrapped up a trilogy.

The narration continues to be first rate and made it OK to just exist in Ringo's universe for a while, but I think one more strike and I might need to close this "gate."

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25 people found this helpful

Culture Smulcher

I have to say that I loved the first two installments in the Troy Rising series but "The Hot Gate" left me seriously dissappointed. One can only take so much discussion about the latino / anglo cultural differences which seem take up several hours of this story line. Listen to the first hour and that last 3 hours and you won't miss anything but the frustration of waiting for a story to develope. Praying that book 4 is better,

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20 people found this helpful

Disappointed

I liked the focus on Comet Parker, but there is only so much Anglo-Latin cultural discussion one can take in a Space Opera. The wave the magic fabber wand to solve problems is also getting tiresome.
Ultimately, an OK 3rd entry in a great series.

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17 people found this helpful

Too Talky

I like John Ringo's books. I especially like the first two Troy Rising books, but this one was just yakkety, yakkety, yak. Oh, yeah right at the end a battle scene that seemed to be done as an after thought and leaves one wondering if the author just got tired of writing it.

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15 people found this helpful

Hot action at the Hot Gate

If you're looking for terrific military sf, John Ringo delivers again. Definitely sets you up for next volume. And the story unfolds into new characters and story lines. Although I kind of miss the hardy New England souls in book one, the new folk make up for the lack. Not for tofu eaters though.

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10 people found this helpful

Third one is a charm

Best and latest in this series. It focuses mostly on the point of view of "Comet" Parker (Space Navy Pilot/Engineer) as she wrestles with a new posting among many other things. There is a great blending of humor throughout. Overall, a well deserved five stars!

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10 people found this helpful

Great series, I hope there is more

Once we got past the social politics of culture clashes, this was a really great read. This book was not a light hearted as the previous two, but the story line was well developed. Tyler Vernon is now one of my hero’s. The book seems to open ended to be an ending, there has to be at least 4 more books yet to come. I will keep re-listening to the series until I have dug out every bit of the book. Good books have to be listened to multiple times. This is a great book and series.

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8 people found this helpful

Awesome hard sci-fi.

Great story and fantastic performance. As an ex-navy non-com found lots of fun stuff with the space navy.

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7 people found this helpful

Human interaction

Any additional comments?

It is true that this book has less outright battles in it (though the battles that it does have are epic) and also less detail on the preparation of the physical instruments of war. Instead, it concentrates more on the development of individuals and (as noted by many other polarised for or against reviews), the interactions between personal raised in different cultures and how they react when required to work together. It is also worth pointing out that many of the differences discusses seem to have as much to do with ones position (Class if you will) within a given culture as the culture itself.

This book, like most written these days, could easily be extended with additional works however, I feel that it also concludes at least the first three books nicely enough to put the series down for now. So, if you don’t like to start a series until it has finished in order to avoid waiting for pending books to finish the story, this book will allow you to read at least the first three in the series.

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7 people found this helpful