Claws That Catch

Looking Glass #4

by John Ringo, Travis S. Taylor

The Galaxy at Risk!

Humans have come a long ways since the looking glass gates first appeared and an alien menace turned a motley crew of scientists, sailors and force recon Marines into battle-hardened space adventurers. Now with other species running scared, it’s up to humans to take the lead and mold a weapon capable of checking the Dreen—a galactic cancer that has so far proved unstoppable. Their arsenal A hodge-podge of powerful technologies begged, borrowed and/or looted from across the galaxy and cobbled together on what has to be the strangest ship ever to ply the starways: the good ship Vorpal Blade II!

Great Ideas! Cool Space Ships! Evil Alien Butt Blasted to Smithereens!

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (DRM Rights Management).

Genres: Science Fiction, Military Science Fiction, Military Fiction, Fiction, Aliens, Space Opera, Adventure

342 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2008

About the author

John Ringo is a prolific author who has written in a wide variety of genres. His early life included a great deal of travel. He visited 23 foreign countries, and attended fourteen different schools. After graduation Ringo enlisted in the US military for four years, after which he studied marine biology.

In 1999 he wrote and published his first novel "A Hymn Before Battle", which proved successful. Since 2000 Ringo has been a full time author.

He has written science fiction, military fiction, and fantasy.


Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fine story by John Ringo. My only issue is the somewhat quick and incomplete ending that cost him a star. All in all, an excellent Sci-Fi novel. 8 of 10 stars

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enjoyable read, though the Anime portion didn't really work for me.

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a new commanding officer on The Vorpal Blade who appears to have significant difficulty understanding the difference between a conventional submarine and a starship. It’s an inauspicious beginning to what will be the Blade’s third voyage, and it adds tension to the story as new crewmembers screw with the things that kept the ship alive during the previous two voyages. Some of what is happening is the result of hubris and stupidity, but the biggest part is an inability of these men to understand that the culture of a spaceship is going to be different from that of a submarine because they have very different missions. This problem comes to a particularly infuriating head when the new commanding officer insists on restricting the movements of his female crewmember because submarines don’t have women on them. Again, note that he can’t quite make the leap to starship. He actually considers turning around and returning to earth to dump his female passenger—a woman who saved the entire ship in both of the last two books.

It takes a lot of time to reach the main problem of the novel—but it didn’t feel that way as I read. That problem is a bit funky. They encounter an ancient artifact that appears to create light shows out of the atmosphere of four Jovian giants in the system when music is played on the artifact. Naturally, the reader suspects that there is more to this artifact than a giant concert hall, and when a massive Dreen fleet arrives to take over the system, it quickly becomes a race to discover if the humans can decipher the secrets of the artifact before the Dreen crush them all.

[Ric · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the 4th book of the Looking Glass series, the storyline's undergarments are starting to show. The formula of the third book (Manxome Foe) is repeated: first 60-80% of the book is about "they flew there" and "they flew here" and the "marines made fun of the CO", then the final part is about a big space battle with exotic ships and weapons, alien allies and enemies and the hard-fought victory by the key characters, all of whom manage to survive and are in fact the heroes.

The final battle is probably worth the effort (to both writers and readers), although this probably could have been a short story rather than the novel length treatment here.

Hopefully, this marks the end of my military fiction binge as I am all gung-ho-ed out. Need to stop jumping to attention for Semper fi!

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the fourth novel in the Looking Glass saga, a story of humanities first foray into interstellar space, the species we meet there and the one that sees us as...moles to be whacked...when we "pop our heads up".

Well, this book changed ratings along the way. When I started this series I really liked the first volume, rated it 5 stars. After that each one I gave 3 simply because I wasn't into all the mathematical and theoretical details and it slowed the novels down for me...wwwaaayyy down. They (for me and I would guess for some others, even a few hard science fiction fans) bogged down into theory about how FTL, gates, etc. would work, function and about life on a starship and so on.

This one seemed it was going to escape that, and it almost did. There was a point at which a long discussion on metallurgy almost had me screaming...but we got past it and it wasn't nearly so "slowing" as some of the details in the last 2 books. In those there were times when it seemed you'd need an advanced degree in mathematics and theoretical physics to follow the book. But as I said this one didn't slow down nearly so much.

Now, NOTICE.....NOTICE what I'm about to say here is my opinion and is completely subjective. There is a point about two thirds through the book where things get silly. And not in a good way. I won't put a spoiler, if you read the book you'll see what I'm referring to and SOME WILL DISAGREE with my take on it. I'm sure some of you will say, well they explain this or it's science fiction and that's just "imaginative". There will be some who won't be annoyed by the segment and some who will find it humorous, some may see it as a "brilliant addition" to the story. As I said I just found it exasperatingly silly and it (to reuse the word) annoyed me. For the mild slow down in this book I'd have said, "no big deal" and it was on the way to a 4 but after this....idiocy, I dropped it to 3.

Let me say again, that's just me. I don't know why I found what the writer probably found funny so down right annoying that I almost put the book down, but I did. I stopped at the point "this" was going on and almost didn't go back. I finally picked it back up and did some skipping and skimming to get past the worst of it to see how they wound the series up. So: Good idea in the series, pretty good over all. This book? Another 3 star rating. Decide about some of it for yourself.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hurry up and wait...the novel.

Military SF always occupies a weird space (pun not intended). Such novels are often a poor attempt to recreate the masterful Starship Troopers (which was able to perfectly walk the line between small unit infantry tactics, the bureaucratic inanities of garrison duty, and some degree of "future-tech/bug-war") or the hyper-technical (and IMO, boring) daily routines of life aboard a "naval" vessel punctuated by a battle or two.

Claws that Catch falls more squarely into the latter category as we get a whole lot of...not much until the final 1/5 of this very short novel. A wormhole has been opened and humans (really: Americans) have utilized captured Alien tech to turn a submarine into an interstellar ship called the Vorpal Blade and we're taking the fight to the enemy.

Unfortunately, we're taking the fight very very slowly as the bulk of this novel is utter mundanity. We've got a military wedding, a brand new Lieutenant who is learning what it means to be a company XO (paperwork), lots of checking/rechecking of inventories ("CONNEX...the novel!"?), bitching to a mess Chief about the food (because this occurs over several chapters I'm obligated to call this a "sub-plot"), lots of made-up technojargon about some random sammoflange not working, and finally....mercifully, a sort-of kinetic battle that ends the book.

The writing is "fine" and largely unobtrusive, but the story goes nowhere. Meh.

[Parrot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so this series has always been a little bit silly up until now. Cat people, hamster people, humourous acronyms.... but this fourth and apparently final book in the series really ramps it up, especially towards the end.

Now, I kind of enjoyed the extra silliness a little, but that's just the kind of person I am. I can totally see how other readers will say, "What the hell??", and I agree with them. You can't just completely change the tone of the series this late in the game!

I think the author basically just gave up on the series and just started putting out all the stream-of-consciousness crap he could think of just to get the book out. Admittedly, this way is more in character with the title of the series (Into The Looking Glass) - but if he wanted to have it that way, he should have been doing it all along!

This series was gearing up to be a huge saga of Earth's first forays into the galaxy and the war they were going to fight for their survival. Instead, it seems to have just fizzled out and flopped limply to the floor like a pricked balloon.

There were so many parts that seemed like they were going somewhere but didn't. The alien intelligence that took root in Miriam's head seemed like it was going somewhere, but all it did was give her small hints and she didn't even try to communicate with it further. The second warp generator that they didn't know how to work... nothing came of that whatsoever. Like I said, it all just fizzled out.

The scenes between Eric and his love interest were annoying in the last book. In this book they were EXCRUCIATING! I think the author wanted to virtually live out his ideal of having the perfect wife.

She basically worshiped the ground he walked on, and made sure to let him know that his career came first. She wasn't a skilled cook, but she was determined to be a good wife so she got a job where she could learn how to cook so that she could make good meals for her man when he got home. And, of course, it turns out that she was a virgin, because, as she told him "good girls wait until marriage!"

So after they have sex for the first time on their honeymoon, they start talking about how things are going to work, and how she wants to take care of the finances and blah, blah, blah....

The only thing that kept going through my mind in all of this was. "Yeah, that's the perfect time for you two to start discussing how your marriage is going to work... ON YOUR HONEYMOON!!" Because planning ahead and figuring out how you want to handle your relationship BEFORE you get married is for suckers, I guess.

And there was just SO MUCH of it! I was thinking, "C'mon already! Get on with the story! This is completely inane and lacking in any value to the story!"

Anyway, spoiler alert, during the battle at the end they're joined by the ship that they captured in the last book, which has now been crewed by humans. The thing is, though, that them showing up makes absolutely no sense. First of all, they would have had no idea that the Vorpal Blade would need reinforcement, but fine - I can put that aside, maybe they just wanted to be better safe than sorry.

The thing I can't get past is that the ship would have had no way to catch up and be there in time! The Vorpal Blade was using an advanced warp generator that nobody else had! Any of the other FTL ships should have taken weeks or months longer to get to the system!

The only possible thing I can think is that they managed to figure out how to get the other wormhole generator working, but if that was the case they should have mentioned it. Like I said, I think the author was just trying to finish this book as fast as he could and putting down whatever came to mind.

I still generally enjoyed the book for what it's worth, but I thought it was a disappointing ending to this series.

[Per Gunnar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book and I did find it better than the two first books in the Looking Glass series but I have to say that I did indeed, after having read the third book in the series, have higher hopes for this one.

The book starts of well with the new Vorpal Blade II being made ready for a new mission. I’m so happy to get rid of this refurbished submarine crap. Naturally the ship ends up in one or two “situations” which require the marines to break out their “noise-makers” although these situations are much fewer and farther between than in the previous books.

Quite a lot of the book is spent in preparations and a fair amount of the book is spent on the tension between the new CO and the kind of new XO (our hero Weaver). Naturally the CO learns his mistakes in the end but the road there is sometimes a wee bit frustrating to read. I find it unlikely that a person so restricted in thought that he gets a fit at the mere thought of having a woman on board his ship would be deployed as CO to the first ever human starship. Especially in such a dire situation. That was just silly. The guy is just plain stupid at times.

The thing that drags the book down the most however is this silly “entertainment system” stuff that they find on the alien artefact in the second half of the book. I cannot be more specific without spoiling some of the plot but I did not enjoy that silly idea at all. I really wanted to scream when reading it.

Otherwise the book is well written as one would expect from John Ringo. The, sometimes, dry humour and action scenes are quite enjoyable and I liked the surprise addition to the human “fleet” at the end. Unfortunately it looks like this is a book series that John Ringo has abandoned and left hanging, pretty much in the middle of the main story arc, when there was much more to tell. The last book was published in 2008 so I guess it’s safe to say that no more are coming.

[Mathieu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sad, sad, sad...

It's a fair to good series, but this book lets it down. Deus ex machina after deus ex machina (I counted four plot devices introduced for the sole purpose of saving the characters' butts, in some cases being the central plot point of large parts of the book), against which the cutesy tendency of Ringo characters to laugh in the face of horrifying odds is now, well, not so engaging anymore. Suspension of disbelief stretched to the breaking point and then some.

This is sad because usually, in a Ringo book, the characters have to work (and die) at it. Here they die, but who cares? The next deus ex machina is just around the corner to save the rest.

Unfortunately, this brings all of Ringo's faults to the fore as well, turning them from quirks to irksome distractions: quoting from the same songs and bands over and over and over in book after book, the obligatory dig at the French (now with 300% more Francophobia in this edition!), at liberals, at academics. Indulgent in-jokes, plot devices that seem like they will spin off a side-plot, but don't.

The capital sin, however, is how flat the characters have become. Caricatures of themselves (semi-spoiler: Literally, in one silly-as-late-Heinlein section), they taste like bad fan-fic.

IOW, very disappointing, and trust me, I did not have high expectations.

[Roberta · Rating 3 out of 5]

The series seems to be getting a little bit disjointed, and it ended abruptly, but the action is good even if it took a very long time to get to the battle scene in this book. It's clear that the series has a long way to go before completion.

If you like space opera with a bit too much hard science, but strong characters (and whacky ones)--give it a try.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mostly fun read, though it falls off into a bit of silliness in the end. Some of the characterizations in this series are way over the top (the crew sometimes all but laughs off losses). The odd numbered books in this series seem a little stronger for some reason. This latest one was published in 2008, and leaves the series hanging, making me wonder if there will be another at some point.

[Miles · Rating 2 out of 5]

The humor that was notable in the previous books of the series overflows here. It was over the line for me, becoming both unbearably silly and distracting from the story. Read it if you're a completionist, I'd say.

[Leons1701 · Rating 3 out of 5]

More Ringo/Taylor silliness and man, does this one get silly at times. I'm sort of hoping for more books in this series, but I'm not sure I could actually take a higher level of crazy and still enjoy it.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just makes me sad that such a great start to a series ended so poorly.

[Kristoffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book, but it did involve adding a number of idiot characters to be in charge of large groups of people. I didn't enjoy reading about the idiot characters and felt that they should have been removed by the intelligent people going to their admiral friend or the president and telling them how incompetent these idiots were and how they needed to be removed. Prejudices also seemed to be common among the idiots. The book also had a point where it talked about anime tropes, but the tropes seemed to be drawing from a very limited and dated set of anime. The book is at least from the 21st century, so it should be recent enough to recognize the tropes it is mentioning are not standard to all anime. It seemed to be thinking that anime was just like Speed Racer, maybe some Gundam, and a spaceship anime that I am unfamiliar with but that featured a captain with an eye patch. The author also seemed to think that it was common in anime for there to be professors in tweed jackets smoking pipes. I have no recollection of this being a common thing in anime and can't recall a single one where this happens. This book focused on anime stuff way too long given how poorly John Ringo seems to understand what anime is like. Aside from those problems, the book was great.

As a bit of a side note, this book feels like it was meant to have a sequel. Unfortunately, it has been a number of years since this book was released, and there has been nothing since. From what I can tell, the author went on to write many books unrelated to this series. If this book truly is the end of the series, it leaves the series feeling incomplete and makes the book deserve a worse review if you are taking quality of series conclusion into account. I am not taking that into account though because I hope the series will get another book. I recommend reading this book to any fans of the series.

[Allen McDonnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Empty Ending

I don't understand the point of this novel at all. It started out okay but soon switched to constant complaints about the rigours of paperwork that comes with leadership in the military. This was salted with hostile personality clashes between the longstanding characters and the new crew members of the ship who are portrayed as going out of their way to be difficult. Then you throw in a senior cook who is terrible at his job and orders all the assistant cooks to follow his lead no matter what the consequences for crew moral. Finally you top it off with an alien pest that has no known world of origin or explanation for its arrival on the ship.
To top all that off we go exploring yet more super advanced alien technology without really taking precautions and vere off into anime based mass hallucinations.
I loved book one of this series and book two despite being a departure was still a fun romp. Unfortunately less than half way through book three the plot arc started falling apart and by the end of this book I could no longer detect any overall plot. None of the mysteries from the first three books were resolved, then enemy are approaching at their best speed and everyone is rather blase' about the growing coalition of species working together as if it is no big deal. Humans are from one type of biology while the three allied species are of a second type, the remorseless enemy is of a third type and there are some random planets terraformed by a fourth type but no intelligences of that type have been discovered.
It went from whining to weird but never resolved anything! Arghhh!

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can't believe the high ratings for this garbage. The writing isn't bad, but the character development is cookie cutter at best. The constant cursing is distracting, and by the 10th absurdly complicated technology fantasy explanation my attention began to wander. The cat was more fascinating then many of the characters and his role unfortunately was unidimensional. When the 'captain' regurgitated, and I mean regurgitation in the more repulsive expectorate way, nearly the exact same inane tirade to Weaver that Weaver had laid on the Capitan only a few chapters before I nearly put it down. But, I struggled a bit further since it was the only book to hand at that moment. It did not improve to say the least. Never made it to the supposed space battle at the end, something I normally tend to like if done well. Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever actually proofreads some of this drivel.

[AJS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again John Ringo gets .... bored? ... with this story arc and characters, so he meanders in strange ways and has an abrupt end. I can't pick up his stuff anymore until I can confirm he finishes the damn series and does it 'right'. Book likely more as a 3 1/2, but dinging it for the confusion sown into the cycle. It *does* have an ending, and I appreciate no fake cliff hangers, but these read like the 'season ending' of a show that wasn't sure it was going to be renewed so they tie some loose ends, leave plenty of open ones, and even create a few more. I know, I know, just like in real life and not everything is tied up nicely, but this goes beyond the norm.

[Nathan Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I continue to find this series highly fascinating. We get more Star Trek on a submarine, but with a LOT more of the author poking at the military culture. While interesting for those of us who've never been in the military (and being a Navy brat doesn't really count), it meant that large sections of the novel plodded. Same with the hard science of particle physics. While we get a fun and realistic space battle at the end, and while I'd have loved to have seen him continue with the series, I kind of got the feeling that Ringo was kind of jumping the shark and reaching for interesting things to do with this universe.

[Buzz Park · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Little Goofy but Still Fun

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series, and I did enjoy this book. However, it was quite a bit more campy than it’s predecessors with characters that were far more cartoonish and an even greater reliance on deus ex machina, if you can believe that lol. Still, a fun Saturday-matinee pulp-fiction sci-fi read.

[Bob Bias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when In paperback when it first came out and am glad to have it as an ebook. Great book and part of a great series. I truly enjoyed it then and now. Well worth the read!

This is a great book. The authors are very well read on their subject and very entertaining. I am thrilled to have the series on ebook!

[john fulkerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can this guy write or what!

Every time I finish a book by Ringo my IQ,jumps 10 points! This man is hands down the master of all he sets his pen upon.I'm all honesty id stave off even death to read just one more tomb if that was my fate. If your evaluation of excellence is askew of mine, then you are obviously intellectualy chalenged.

[Clayton Steele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun space opera..you'll understand when you read it.

Science techno babble, alot.... But the rest is golden. Good book, good series, so far, thumbs up! John Vinyl is a great writer! Now I want to see more by Travis Taylor as well. Again, great series so far.

[James Rickett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read, but Ringo might have at least acknowledged the debt to Alan Dean Foster's The Tar-Aiym Krang.

[PCress · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much as I loved this series, .. the guitar was probably an indicator that it was time to move on.

[David Moreland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great final book

Another great book from John ringo I wait fo his muse to strike again in the looking Glass and get more of the great charchter.

[ERIC HALL · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, this book seems to me to be the worst book of the four.

[Anthony Sawyers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkably Interesting

Took the time away from homework to read this one.

I love the humor and the space tech.

Can’t wait till the next one.

[William]

good

[DoodleBug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fun series. It's a shame there's no more.