The Road to Damascus

Rating:
Summary: Too Many Plot Holes
Review: For those of too young to have grown up on Keith Laumer's stories of self-aware fighting machines you now get a chance to taste what you missed. But these aren't KL's Bolos. No sir, gone are the independent tank sized fighting machines, the Bolo of the Ringo/Evans era are massive, 13,000 ton brutes that are large enough that only one is needed to protect a planet from enemy invasion

ROAD TO DAMASCUS is a story about one such machine. Obsolete and scheduled to be scrapped, a new war with aliens requires "Sonny" and his human commander be sent to Jefferson to protect them from the Deng, which he does with the usual Ringoisk style where you would swear that you were in the middle of the battle instead of just reading about it.

However the Bolo and the various wars it comes to fight are secondary to the real plot of the book, the subjugation of a once prosperous planet by a group of truly evil people. It was like reading Hitler's Mein Kampf all over again. The POPPA, a hideous blend of Nazi's and communists, use class warfare, brainwashing, gun control, goon squads, death camps and one really big semi-sentient machine to maintain their iron fisted rule. It is a story as much about politics as it is about war.

So what is a thinking machine suppose to do when the revolution comes? That's the big question and what makes this story different from any other Bolo story I've ever had the pleasure to read.

Lots of blood, guts, mystery, intrigue, and even a little romance thrown in. While RTD isn't your average Bolo war story it is a fascinating new look at human/machine interaction, revolution and dictatorship.

I liked and wholeheartedly RECOMMEND it.

Rating:
Summary: THE BOLOS ARE BACK!
Review: For those of too young to have grown up on Keith Laumer's stories of self-aware fighting machines you now get a chance to taste what you missed. But these aren't KL's Bolos. No sir, gone are the independent tank sized fighting machines, the Bolo of the Ringo/Evans era are massive, 13,000 ton brutes that are large enough that only one is needed to protect a planet from enemy invasion

ROAD TO DAMASCUS is a story about one such machine. Obsolete and scheduled to be scrapped, a new war with aliens requires "Sonny" and his human commander be sent to Jefferson to protect them from the Deng, which he does with the usual Ringoisk style where you would swear that you were in the middle of the battle instead of just reading about it.

However the Bolo and the various wars it comes to fight are secondary to the real plot of the book, the subjugation of a once prosperous planet by a group of truly evil people. It was like reading Hitler's Mein Kampf all over again. The POPPA, a hideous blend of Nazi's and communists, use class warfare, brainwashing, gun control, goon squads, death camps and one really big semi-sentient machine to maintain their iron fisted rule. It is a story as much about politics as it is about war.

So what is a thinking machine suppose to do when the revolution comes? That's the big question and what makes this story different from any other Bolo story I've ever had the pleasure to read.

Lots of blood, guts, mystery, intrigue, and even a little romance thrown in. While RTD isn't your average Bolo war story it is a fascinating new look at human/machine interaction, revolution and dictatorship.

I liked and wholeheartedly RECOMMEND it.

Rating:
Summary: Too much political stuff
Review: I agree with the other reviewer who said there was way too much social commentary in the book. Had I known what was in this book I would not have purchased it. When I buy a Bolo book, I expect military sci-fi, not social discussions. OK, some of the action sequences were good, but we didn't get to see the bad guys get their rears kicked! We learn to hate POPPA and its leaders, and the book ends with the Bolo turning to go after them. Come on! That is a gyp. Also, I have to say that I do not care for a so-called Bolo book that focusses on human interactions. To me, that is mixing apples and oranges. Bolo books should be about Bolos, and not mother-daughter relationships. The majority of this book is actually not about the Bolo at all, but about a family that is dispersed in the war with the Mother becoming the leader of the guerilla revolution, the daughter growing up spoiled rotten, and the Dad living on a totally different planet. Sorry, but...yawn. Besides this, another reviewer points out titanic plot holes. The Bolo, in short, goes through a cybernetic Moral Crisis that one phone call, so to speak, would have solved. Obviously some human drama is, at some level, necessary and even interesting, but other authors manage to find this mix without losing sight of what people want to pay for.

Rating:
Summary: Not really a Bolo book
Review: I had high hopes for this book, as I've liked John Ringo's military SF books and have been a long time Bolo fan.

This book does have some good story lines, but in my opinion has two major flaws. First, the book focuses on the Bolo's commander and his life rather than on the Bolo. Second, much of the book seems to be right-wing polemic, railing against environmentalists, urbanites, welfare, etc. I don't expect military SF authors to be liberals, but I was surprised at the amount of ultra-conservative rhetoric in this book - the only other bald Fox-like comment I remember from John Ringo's other books was some comment about global warming being junk science, and that was just an off-hand comment, not pages and pages of ranting.

Hopefully the author is not turning into another Steve White, another author capable of writing a good story who ruins his books by interspersing excessive political commentary.

Add one star if you consider yourself a conservative, subtract one if you are a liberal.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent political thriller!
Review: I know that most will call this a military science fiction, and with good reason. However, as is the case with good science fiction, there is more than space opera. It contains a biting social commentary and insight. If I were to issue a complaint it was that they went a bit too far. However, watching current events makes it clear that it is hard to overstate some people's perfidy, and other's gullibility.

Rating:
Summary: Over the top, politically.
Review: I liked Sonny the Bolo. Sonny might have been the most human character in the book, beside his drunken mechanic. Most of the other characters were over the top, whether because they were forced to be by the unbelievable chains of political events, or because they were the architects of those unbelievable events.

If you like to see political premise carried to an extreme that is unlikely in any human society you'll enjoy this. My suspended disbelief was actually expelled halfway through and I found myself skipping over the more political bits.

The politics were just too much to be believed or stomached.

Rating:
Summary: Way too Looooooong
Review: I've enjoyed Ringo's other books, but Evans is new to me. I doubt I'll read another of hers after this. It seemed that the editor on this piece was just way too shy, or had little support from management. What this novel needed was a heck of a lot of cutting. It didn't help that many quotation marks were missing from ends and beginnings of paragraphs. Perhaps the editor was imaginary? On to the story. The basic story was good - I liked Sonny, and all of the human folks. Where it all went wrong was in the political BS. Perhaps I'm a Pollyanna, but the bad guys just seemed too unbelievable to be true. Surely they couldn't possibly be THAT stupid?! In the end, this book preached to me even more than a Terry Goodkind novel, which frankly, I thought impossible. Message to the authors: If we can wade through this schlock, you're already preaching to the choir. Any dissident wouldn't have been able to finish.

Rating:
Summary: A more mature book than his previous offerings
Review: John Ringo is certainly making a name for himself in the SciFi category.
I have long been a fan of the 'Bolo' series created by Keith Laumer. This novel is a worthy addition to the series. Mr Ringo's writing is much improved from the 'competent, but flat' style used in his first novel "Hymn Before Battle". His characterizations are more vibrant, his conversations more realistic.
This novel is certainly very timely, given the current focus on 'collateral damage' in military actions. While he does tend to be a bit preachy at times, it is well concealed by an intricate plot and interesting characters. At it's heart, this is a book about duty. While the battle scenes are as good as anything he has previously done, the focus is on the personal costs to his characters of doing their duty and maintaining their honor.

I always look forward to Mr Ringo's offerings, and this one certainly did NOT disappoint.

Rating:
Summary: Too Many Plot Holes
Review: Let's leave aside the question of whether making a Bolo _that_ big makes any sense (as I recall, Laumer's original Bolos were much less unwieldly..). That done, there still remain the open questions of the villians' motivations and the lack of supervision from Brigade HQ.

Given that Earth history is still known and studied, we are at first given to believe that POPPA's founders have some sort of commercial motive for their power grab, knowing full-well what the ultimate results will be. A half-hearted smuggling subplot attempts to explain some of this, but the book later has a change of heart and suggests that the top of the cabal are True Believers.

Also, given that the Bolo has a built-in FTL tranceiver, which apparently costs him nothing in resources to operate, it strains credulity that he doesn't give more situation reports to HQ and receive better guidance. This situation becomes completely untenable when Vishnu's Brigade rep decides to commit herself to action against POPPA. All it should have taken is one report from her to HQ for HQ to send a cease-and-desist down to the Bolo..

All that said, if you put aside your disbelief at the setup, there are some nice scenes here, including a surprisingly moving Bolo epiphany.

Rating:
Summary: Good military, way too much social commentary
Review: Sonny, a tracked weapon system (Bolo) as large as apartment building, is sent to the planet Jefferson as his last home. Humans are hardpressed by two alien species and the Bolo represent their one great hope. Although Sonny is aging, even an aging Bolo is a terrible weapon of destruction. When the Deng attack, fleeing from even more rapacious aliens, Sonny, together with the effective military of Jefferson and some farmers armed with beehives, is able to kill all of them with no survivors. But the effort and its attendant destruction saps the Jefferson economy and rabble-rousing populists blame the planets problems on Sonny, the farmers who bore the brunt of the fighting, and on evil profiteers. Their election victory leads to continued encroachments on liberty--including dreaded efforts to disarm the citizens.

Stripped of his human officer, Sonny is left under the control of the newly elected President of Jefferson. Sonny's artificial intelligence recognizes the falsities in the Poppa Party program, with its slave labor for farmers and dole for unemployed gang members, but he is unable to ignore the President's orders that he engage in riot suppression. And the Bolo's efforts lead to greater violence against the Poppa Party leading up to an insurection. Where the Poppa once reveiled Sonny, they soon come to depend on him as their primary defense against well armed and well led rebels--especially as they've eliminated virtually all of the disloyal Jefferson army.

Authors John Ringo and Linda Evans provide a mix of exciting military/Bolo action (the Bolo construct was initially introduced by Golden Age SF author Keith Laumer) and heavy-handed social commentary. The Poppa platform is a strange mix of pre-World War II Soviet anti-farmer genocide and work camp, anti-Viet Nam war peace activism, environmentalism, and pure stupidity (even the Soviets weren't stupid enough to completely destroy their warmaking ability although they certainly damaged it enough to make things easy for Hitler). Ringo's apparent belief that the right to bare arms can secure freedom certainly flies in the face of recent experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq where armed populations were nevertheless terrorized into docility.

There are plenty of great SF books that include strong political statements and I don't begrudge Ringo's use of the soapbox of a novel to send his own right-wing/libertarian message (although I do think that lumping environmentalism with the Soviet genocide of Ukranian farmers is way over the top). From the story perspective, however, Sonny's long cogitations about the internal logic and factual problems in the Poppa program distracted from any plot and also made Sonny seem stupid.

A couple of hundred pages of tightening and this could have been a first-rate military SF thriller.