Sister Time (The Posleen War)

I thoroughly enjoyed John Ringo's series of the Posleen War. However, as is usually the case involving sequels or such based on the series but written by someone else, this was not as good as I had hoped. It wasn't a bad effort, just not as good as the first few books written by Mr. Ringo alone. This one also presumes that you have read all the preceeding volumes and thus understand the various races. Definitely not a 'stand alone' story.

This series is one of the best sci-fi series I've read in a long-time. Action pack, great characters and plenty of development from the previous books making me want to read the next one.

Cally's still stuck with her blonde hair and, err, large assets which makes her under cover ops interesting and Clan O'Neal has multiplied and taken over Earth's anti-terrorist special forces group (well, 90% of them are O'Neal's and they think it's all good training).

Cally's sister is now an adept at manipulating the fabric of time and space but another mentat is hell bent on using mind control to make the humans more "civilized". Enjoy!

I read this book thinking "It can't possibly be as bad as the last one!" And I was right. It isn't _quite_ as bad as Cally's War. But its pretty weak. Furthermore, if you have not read the previous eight or ten novels about the Posleen War, you will be completely lost as to characters an relationships.

The story supposedly centers on Cally & Co. plotting to steal an evil mind control device from an evil human working for the evil Darhel. Throw in the first reappearance of Cally's sister Michelle (hence the title) in ~50 years. Michelle is now an uber-master of the Indowy nanite technology, ranked as a "mentat". (Ringo at least acknowledges where ho got the term from.) Her and four other humans. This seems unlikely, as we've been led to believe in normally takes hundreds of years just to reach master rank. Throw in that she (and others) have access to instantaneous interstellar teleportation with pinpoint accuracy. After ~10 novels, this is a cheap shot, but necessary to allow Michelle to be in another star system with frequent side trips to Earth.

At least this book doesn't spend most of the time wandering pointlessly into completely irrelevant side plots (as Cally's War does), though the side plots dominate, and seem to be there to set up future context that readers won't understand unless they have read all the ~10 preceding books to the ones that follow this one. (See paragraph one).

The actual execution of the "mission" and its preparatory ops are weak to say the least, especially if you consider that this is supposed to be Earth's premier covert ops team. Specifically disappointing is when Cally drives a Darhel into a fugue state by the equivalent of taunting him with "Your mother wears army boots! (OK, that isn't what she says, but it's about as effective.) Getting the team caught in the middle of the theft by a member of an elite military counter-insurgency group on guard duty, and having him respond "Hi Aunt Cally! Have a nice day," really sours things for me too.

The climax is especially lame, when the bad-guy mentat teleports into the middle of the shoot-out that results when the team blunders into the assembly of company security guards(!). He does this (presumably) from the first class seat of an airliner. Followed by Michelle teleporting in. Followed by an ooh-aah super mentat mind duel. Followed by Cally blowing the guy away with a Desert Eagle .50 pistol (can you spell overcompensating?)

I think I'll wait for the next one to appear on Half.com for $0.29 or such. At least I won't be directly subsidizing such weak writing. The next book, "Honor of the Clan", aka "The Return (finally) of the Missing Mike O'Neal Jr." promises more of same. At least I won't have any high expectations to be disappointed on. :(

Ususally anything by John Ringo makes a good read. The previous book in this sub-series was a bit less than his normal great effort.

This book brings things back to a much better level. All of the sub-series tend to get a bit complicated due to interaction with all the others.

The followup to this book has all the dash and excitement you would want. The ending left me hanging with a bad taste in my mouth. A rare issue with anything of John Ringo.

As a request, can we get a sequel to Princess of Wands? Thanks.

This book follows the aftermath of the Posleen invasion and brings the characters introduced in the early books back to the forefront of the action. The sisters are reunited and are both formidable. Excellent read but leaves you wanting more. Almost better to have the next book ready to read next.