Into the Looking Glass by John Ringo

A fairly short novel by his standards, plenty of military style action as is usual for JR. The plot relies on coffee table quantum physics, and incidentally has a small error in that science. (Later in the second book in the series he corrects that error and reveals it was actually one of the characters getting confused in the heat of the moment. Yeah sure.)

An annoying assumption, not confined to JR I hasten to add, is that what we know now in the early 21st century about quantum physics is absolutely correct and so is accepted by aliens who are technologically well in advance of us.

Quantum theory is confusing because it presents a number of genuine paradoxes to people who profess to understand it and there is more than one interpretation of what is known. This would suggest that current theories are wrong, therefore if we meet more advanced aliens, it is likely that they would look upon our present day beliefs, in the same way we look on the medieval idea that there are only four elements, earth air, fire and water and different mixtures of these make up everything.

Once past that bit however, the action is pretty good, the nasty aliens are very nasty, full of surprises and almost unstoppable and the sneaky aliens are very sneaky and the nicer aliens are er.. nice. We also are told that nukes are not so scary after all, if used wisely. We can all live with them provided the wind is in the right direction, and our country is about three thousand miles wide. Not much hope for a little overcrowded island off the coast of Europe though.

The characters are only roughly sketched being very gung ho jocks to a man, again very JR and he will never win a Booker prize for his characterisation, but I find Booker nominees boring, so I must be like JR’s characters.

This book was my first John Ringo novel and despite the faults I have listed, it made me want to read more of his books, which I have done and found them very readable. Fast paced writing can carry you along without being textbook correct if the plot is interesting enough and ITLG is interesting. The idea of windows or wormholes into other worlds is an intriguing one and many writers have used this idea from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Peter F Hamilton without making it stale. The science in Science Fiction is bound to be stretched a bit if the plot depends on it, so switch off the credulity and take the ride. Despite my seeming criticism I think it is a great read.