Just finished reading John Ringo's book "Kildar". Its about a former seal (imagine that) who was awarded 30mil for a rescue. Buys a valley in Georgia (country) along with sort of a castle. Winds up with a harem, and turns local "farmers" into militia and kicks the shit out of the Chechans. It was freakin' awesome. Onto the next in the series," Choosers of the Slain".

I like the protagonist because he fights his own demons. He belives that he's an evil man who does good things. It was an interesting take on human inner conflicts.

Gonna go back and read the first one "Ghost". Supposed to be a lot darker.

If you don't have a part of you that wishes you were Kildar by the time you're finished, you're a nancy boy.

Great series, it definitely not for everyone.  The series is addicting and he is putting it on the shelf for a while to work on others, so don't burn through the rest of the books too fast.  

is this on the same literary level as mack bolan, et al?

The Kildar series are a great read!  I've read all the books and while they get somewhat predictable I found them very entertaining.

http://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html

Hilarious review of this series. Here's one small part.

I've never read the Mack Bolan books, but I would assume so.  It's like a Punisher comic interspersed with Penthouse Forum.  90% of the book is porking women or killing Muslims (primarily Chechnyans).  I like that the author, John Ringo, uses his own military experience to build a 'perfect' small armed force, using all the lessons learned from recent conflicts, progressive tactics, up-to-the-minute techology, and tier-one personnel.

I stopped reading that series after A Deeper Blue.

Pretty much, it's still incoherent onedimensional BS with a heavy side of nonconsensual sex and improbable kill counts.

Ghost was good, had a shit load of funny parts, but a lot of the book was dedicated to his sexual escapades, mostly involving S&M.  I mean I don't mind a good Penthouse letter every now and then, but I want to read about some dude killing bad guys when I buy a book about some guy killing bad guys.

 

That's because Ringo was dating the goth interior design chic at the time.  It really came through in his characters.  She must have been a hellcat.



I didn't see her picture up at his site last time I was there.  I wonder if that's why he isn't pouring out 10 books a year anymore.
 

You'll note that John APPROVES of this review :-)

The thing to remember is that when John originally wrote Ghost, he had NO INTENTIONS OF GETTING IT PUBLISHED.  The story was interfering with his ability to write "real" books, so he started writing it just to get it out of his head.  He was even complaining about this trashy story that wouldn't leave him alone.  So his fans started bugging him to see what he thought was so bad.  As he headed out the door to Dragon*Con, he posted the first story within Ghost in his conference at Baen's Bar, naively assuming everyone would agree with him about how bad it was.  He was HORRIFIED when I met him at Dragon*Con and told him how many posts there were saying the story was great (over 200, IIRC) and that many of them were from women I'd never seen post before, and that was only a couple of hours later.  So he considered publishing it under another name, or with another publisher, but Jim Baen heard about it and was insulted that John would consider not giving him first refusal, and told John that the major buyers were encouraging John to step away from purely science fiction, and that this book might be his break into more mainstream military fiction...

Hi and welcome to the FICTION department!



 

couldn't help but notice an uncanny similarity between the cover graphics.

I always thought the Kildar series arose of out of a bet with S.M. Stirling to see who could get the freakiest sex scenes published.

Anyone remember Casca?

Aint if funny how fiction isn't very realistic. It's almost like someone would read that to escape the real fucking world for a bit. Jesus, if I wanted to read realistc stuff, I'd read the newspaper. Yes, if the book was real, the girls would be alcoholics with heroin addictions, have every vd known to man. The militia would be on the take within the month and sure as hell wouldn't be training. Perhaps you'd rather read Websters dictionary, or Encyclopedia Brittanica. And as far as the sex goes.........He is dealing with inner conflict of enjoying inflicting pain on women. You all remind me of the nerd that is uncomfortable seeing a bewbie in a mewvie.ooooooooohhhhh, turn my head!

Yep, i have several of those. Needs to be an HBO series.
 

Oh, they're still dating, at least as of Thursday when I talked to her, but she is very decidedly NOT into S&M, she dislikes that everybody assumes she is because John wrote so much about it in the Paladin of Shadows series.  In fact, John wrote the first book (at least the first story in the first book, and had outlines for the rest) before he met her.  There are other reasons why John's writing speed has slowed down.

I've read a lot of Ringo's sci-fi, too. Wasn't into that genre untill I read his and Michael Williamson's stuff. The stuff they did together was great too. If you are looking for more realisic military fiction, I think Williamson's is a little closer but who wouldn't want to own a valley with a militia, harem and brewery?