Gunpowder & Embers (Last Judgment's Fire Book 1)

Out-freakin-standing reading!!! The only bad part is it ended too soon! As always, if it has John Ringo's name on it, i know it will be GREAT!!!!

Ah yes! The Quest. One of the most popular themes in all literature. From Ulysses fighting his way home in Homer’s The Odyssey, or Sir Lancelot and the Quest for the Holy Grail. In more recent times Tolkien gave us Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and the One ring to rule them all, and the quest to destroy said ring in Mordor. The biggest selling and longest running fiction series in modern times have been “The Wheel of Time,” and “The Sword of Truth”. They all involve an ensemble cast of heroes, or ordinary people who set out to obtain something, or deliver something to a far distant destination. The adventure of the journey, and the striving through the fighting have always caught the imagination of we stay at home non adventurers. In this case the quest begins on a farm in a post Apocalyptic era, dominated by the fight against the Gants, gigantic ants from outer space, who have largely defeated the society we know well. The hard scrabble life of Chuck and his family is disrupted by the arrival of a dying character named “Gunslinger,” who bears the item that needs to be guarded and delivered to “The Bunker”, at all costs. The main protagonist, a resourceful young man named Chuck sets off at his father’s command to take a small key like shaped piece of metal across the strife torn post Apocalyptic landscape of America. This quest group is of the additive type. In the first town he comes to he meets Jay, who seems to be the town drunk, but who served with Chuck’s father, surprise, surprise. At one point he comes out with the phrase “leads the way”. Army Ranger, perhaps? The next addition is a warrior monk named, Garman, who is on his own quest at the behest of his own chain of command. A thoroughly stubborn young man, he mellows an becomes a productive member of the group. Their next fellow traveler is a woman named Jasmine, who brought with her a Dragon. It seems that however the giGANTic ants arrived, the dragons came at the same time. Jasmine is a dragon trainer who escaped from a local warlord. Then Ariel arrives, an escapee from the human cult which worship the Gants as gods. A romantic interest for Chuck, who is a defender of the weak and helpless. She also was trained in mechanics and electrical matters by the Gants. Gants, Cultists, renegade monks, pirates, and wild dragons: Everyone they meet wants to stop them, everyone wants to kill them. Their quest is crucial to humanity. Is this pickup group equal to the task? The plot is intriguing, the excitement is nonstop. The Characters are superbly crafted. Oh, and did I mention there are dragons. This novel is a great read, and the first of what I hope to be a great series. Get in on this one on the ground floor. Try it, you will like it.

When I buy a post-apocalyptic science fiction/fantasy book, I do so knowing that I will have to suspend my disbelief. I am ok with that, as long as this suspension of disbelief is semi-believable and advances the plot, story, or drives character development.A rift opens between worlds/timelines/dimensions? Check. I'm ok with that.Dragons and spider ants come pouring through the rift? Check. Still onboard. This is sounding pretty cool.These fantastical beasts, directly and indirectly, lead to the fracture and collapse of society? Check. Interesting enough premise, I want to know more!As the world fractures, people begin worshiping these creatures or try to tame them? That's probably the most believable thing on this list.Out of the chaos, a hero arises, a young naive farmboy...seen that a few times before, but fish out of water stories always have a great deal of potential.The United States military in less than a generation goes from a well trained and disciplined organization sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America to a well trained and disciplined death cult sworn to neutrality and that worships Mikhail Kalashnikov, John Moses Browning, and Chuck Norris?That is where this book loses me.Its not that that couldn't happen. Its that it couldn't happen over the short timeline the authors made it happen in. Keeping in mind the book makes no discussion about that happening, its set after that has already happened. There is no discussion of how, or why. It just is...Which is a pity, because that would have been a heck of a story told over a long enough timeline.So that's one star off for me.The book loses the second star because way too many fascinating characters are introduced, developed, and then killed just to introduce additional challenges for the protagonists. Without getting too spoilerific, the heroes are on a boat full of interesting people. So, of course, the boat gets attacked by pirates (no mention of pirates before the attack)...and all the interesting people die just so the heroes spend a couple of pages cold, wet, and miserable while the bad guys close the gap...So why three stars and not zero?There are things that I absolutely loved about this book. With the exception of the "drunk", the characters in the story evolve over the course of their journey. Sometimes it felt forced, but largely it felt natural. You understood why the characters acted as they did. You saw their journey and how and why they changed. Huge fan of that.The world-building was great (other than the military becoming a meme worshiping death cult) and again very logical. You could see, without squinting too hard, why the pockets of civilization behaved as they did.It was well written. The style is consistent, which is hard to pull off when multiple authors are contributing, but these three made it feel pretty seamless. A note about that, this does not feel or read like a John Ringo book. The consistency of style is not his style. It feels like a John Ringo story, it just doesn't feel like it was written by him.

Really a pretty good story only reason I rated it so low was the entire book had a disconnect between geography in the travel of the main characters. Usually Ringo is very detail oriented but the main character stares that they grow up near grand coulee dam then they go to the nearest town Rawlings in real life about 1000 miles away and pretty much the rest of the book when describing geographical locations is not accurate.

I seem to be the first actual buyer of this story, so I'll start by saying that yes, it is a postFall dystopia. But one with a distinct difference! Alien invaders have conquered Earth, or at least the US - other countries aren't mentioned here so there's plenty of scope for other resistance fighters elsewhere. What we do learn here is that the conquest isn't complete, with many areas almost totally unaffected. The aliens began by taking down all electricity, so we're looking at a rebuilt society with mos technology reduced to 1900-ish levels; steam power is possible. But as well as the bug-like aliens, Dragons also arrived - and it turns out that if their eggs can be successfully stolen and hatched the young dragons can be friendly and protective. And yes, they can and do breathe fire. But of course there's a fly in the ointment. One of the lead characters is a megaolmaniac with plans to take over as much territory as possible. Those we meet against him include two young men who've been given separate missions but decide to join forces, a dragon-handler girl who's escaped from the would-be dictator, and an apparent drunkard who seems to have hidden depths which I look forward to learning more about. This first book in the series sees them meeting others, some to fall bravely against attack and others to continue valiantly. The invading aliens have corrupted some parts of society into worshipping them, but there's also a highly regarded group that serves as arbiters between human arguments and, of course,, the independent dragons who don't seem actually hostile to humanity but will flame and eat anyone who annoys them. This part of the story ends with our heroes reaching what's left of the US Government in a bunker, only to find that their mission continues beyond it, and the megalomaniac capturing women for his men to misuse but also seeming unaware that two fo them are now starting to work together against him. It's impossible to summarise more without giving away the plot, so suffice it to say that there are wheels within wheels and I haven't even mentioned two important survivors whom we meet part-way through the story. This is definitely NOT a standard dysopian fall-of civilisation story (I hate those) or a 'young-man-coming-of-age during a search' saga, but has its own individual touch which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Loved it a great read

Loved it. Looking forward to the sequel. Chris and Kacey and John have spun quite the entertaining yarn, with a great blend of retro, pop culture, classic western, and familiar faces. I love all three authors' work in general and all three together is tremendous. 5 Stars.

This new book is pure magic from the first page to the lastNever have I been to a place like this book takes youJ Ringo never lets me down

A fast moving story that is full of surprises. I know that the continuing story has a high standard to reach.