Books of 2011: The Hot Gate

You may have thought that I've forgotten to read, since the last little book review I did was back in May, for Hard Magic.  Rest assured, this is not the case.  It is just that I've been reading through a large series an didn't want to do a separate post for each book. But I finally got a hold of the new book in John Ringo's Troy Rising series, "The Hot Gate," from the library, and read it Saturday night (yes, pretty much all night, yes, I'm sometimes pretty stupid when it comes to things like this).  It was pretty meh.  But I sure hope that this so-called trilogy is going have another book, because otherwise this was a very weak offering.  Half a book of lecturing about South American culture clash, a love story (or perhaps a mutual respect story, it isn't made clear) that is introduced and then dropped without exploration or resolution, a saboteur that is introduced for unexplained reasons and then dropped without exploration or resolution, a massive BATTLE SCENE at the END OF THE BOOK that should be the CLIMAX OF THE STORY that is pretty much... wait for it... introduced and then DROPPED WITHOUT EXPLORATION OR RESOLUTION. 

Everything you want to read about is forced and rushed and incomplete, it hammers on the uninteresting and unnecessary South American "honor" thing for faaaaarrr too long and then suddenly drops it for no apparent reason, and after the brilliance of first book and the good solid military action of the second one,  I am more than slightly disappointed in what I was thinking would be the third book in a trilogy.  Here's hoping I'm wrong.

My score--a good solid meh/10, to be raised if there is another book or two that get back to good storytelling.

And, look, oh great, the next book in my pile as I wait for the next one in the series I'm trying to read is the next in the 1632 series.  Speaking of things that are unresolved and going in the wrong direction...