Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
SNIP
I enjoyed all the Baen-published series noted above but there is something slightly simple about many of them. John Ringo is my guilty pleasure. I enjoy his books but I shouldn't. He writes as if he was Tom Clancey at age 13, a touch juvenile. I think his low point was Ghost and the following books with the same character. I haven't checked to see if this was his earliest work. I thought his Council Wars series was his best so far but he needs a stronger editor (or listen to his current editor more). His weaknesses are tempered when he works with someone else. The Empire of Man series ("March to...") was entertaining and consistent.
Baen seems to make it their misson to not challenge my mind as much as, say, Neal Stephenson or Robert Wilson while feeding my Freudian id more (e.g. bad guys brought to justice).
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Ghost first showed up in Ringo's brain while he was on deadline for another project entirely. He wrote it to 'get it out of his head' so that he could finish the other book. When he complained to his fans at Baen's bar about the 'wanker book' that was preventing him from finishing the other project, various fans begged him to post some snippets -- How bad could it be? We should have known. After all, when the
author calls it "the wanker book" that should be a hint.
The answer was Ghost. Ringo wanted to publish it elsewhere under a pseudonym, but Jim Baen insisted on having a look, and bought it. That seems to have been a wise choice (commercially speaking) as every book in the series has hit the NYT extended best-seller list. Ghost is clearly the weakest book of the batch (and probably Ringo's weakest book, period), with quality of writing improving over the course of the series. That said, Ringo describes these books as "airport novel fantasies" in which he makes no attempt to be accurate, consistent, realistic, or anything else other than telling the story. He once commented (paraphrasing here) that for this particular series "If I need the sun to rise in the South, that's what'll happen."
As for Baen's books challenging your mind, well... The 163x series can be read as a fun romp. Or it could get you seriously engaged in Early Modern European history. Ringo's Posleen novels are just carnography. Except when he and co-author Kratman dive into moral questions, like "How far should you be willing to go when survival of humanity is at stake?" You may not like their answers, but the
questions are legitimately thought provoking. I can probably find similar examples from many of Baen's other books (but pretty much
not from the wanker... er... Ghost series).
Xenophon