I do enjoy a good Heinlein, and although he has some strange philosophical ideas about relationships, morality and society in general I find that this normally adds to my enjoyment of the story. The main character in the book is, as is often the case in Heinlein's books, also the narrator. She tells us of her life on Mars, her hopes fears and relationships and of a trip to Earth that goes a bit wrong. The story contains a great deal of justice – when things go wrong those at fault are punished or the situation is put right and is written in such a way as to put the reader firmly on the side of the main character and her family. It also contains detail on what things might be like in the future – what society might be like. In fact what different societies might be like as each planet has its own social set up. These kinds of details add interest to the story.

I did enjoy this story but found that it ended rather abruptly - as though the author had got bored with it. There are a lot of loose ends – characters that are developed but never really fulfil their potential. It’s like the book is the introduction for a much larger book. Like the Hobbit is for the Lord of the Rings. But on the whole it was fun, I liked the characters in it and it had some interesting ideas about what the future might be like.

Mike Resnick's reputation rests on planet-hopping adventure stories, larger-than-life heroes, and sophisticated tales of the often-tragic enounters between alien cultures. "Sideshow" is something altogether different. It's *so* different that, despite the clearly alien beings on the cover and the fact that it's volume 1 of something called "Tales of the Galactic Midway," it's easy to spend the first third of the book wondering whether you're reading science fiction at all.

The sideshow of the title belongs to a third-rate carnival whose members eke out a living doing three- and four-day stands in backwater towns in the northeastern United States sometime in (at a guess) the 1950s. The owner and manager of the carnival is one Thaddeus Flint: a conniving, hard-hearted soul whose spiritual ancestors include Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Flint, as we're given ample opportunity to discover in that first third of the book, is a thoroughly loathsome sonofabitch. He cheats and lies without the slightest remorse, cheerfully exploits his employees, and casually inflicts deep psychological wounds on those who are closest to him. You spend the first couple of chapters wondering when the hero of the book is going to show up and give Flint what's coming to him. Then it slowly dawns that, God help us, he *is* the hero (or at least the protagonist).

The cover of "Sideshow," with its tableau of weird-looking aliens, makes it look like standard-issue pulp science fiction. It's not. Yes, there *are* aliens (including the three-breasted woman and the demonic-looking blue guy promised on the cover) and they *do* encounter Flint and his crew, but the story isn't really about them. It's about how the humans--especially Flint--respond to them, and how their lives are changed in the process. It will come as no surprise to anybody that, of all the humans, Flint is changed the most, or that the changes are mostly for the better (it's hard to fall off the floor). Resnick, to his credit, doesn't have the experience turn Flint into a completely new person. The changes are more modest, and more subtle, than Scrooge bringing Bob Cratchit a prize goose for Christmas dinner or the Grinch riding triumphantly back down the mountain into Who-ville. Whether they're plausible and dramatically satisfying is a matter of taste. A week or so after finishing the book, I'm still ambivalent about that one.

"Sideshow" is the first of four books in the "Galactic Midway" series, and the titles of the other three suggest that they'll focus not on Flint but on other members of the carnival who play supporting roles here: animal trainer Jupiter Monk and trick-shot artist Billybuck Dancer, for example. If so, it would be both interesting and welcome. I'm not sure I'm ready to spend 350 more pages in close company with Thaddeus Flint--even the new-and-improved version.

Vorpal Blade is the sequel to Into the Looking Glass and since it is a sequel, first some background.

In that book a science experiment gone wrong generates a 60 kiloton explosion, destroys a chunk of Florida around the University of Central Florida, and opens portals to other worlds. Not surprisingly considering Ringo’s previous books, what came through the portal were really nasty creatures that would like to make our planet theirs without the inconvenience of sharing with us. These are the Dreen.

William Weaver, a genius in multiple fields, is handy and, perhaps the only one capable of understanding what’s happening. He is pulled into the response. Weaver, along with SEAL Chief Miller, manages to close the portal to the hostile world. Non-hostile worlds are also found. One race, the Adar become allies, and givesthe humans a mysterious object, the purpose of which they don’t understand. Weaver discovers that it is capable of destroying solar systems.

Another interesting occurrence at the explosion is the survival of the young girl, Missy Jones. She walks out of the site, the only survivor, accompanied by a spider like creature named Tuffy. Tuffy is now apparently her guardian and mentor. She was taken out of our universe at the time of the explosion. She doesn’t know why and Tuffy isn’t talking.

This brings us to Vorpal Blade.

As it begins we learn that Bill Weaver has wrangled a direct commission into the Navy as a lieutenant commander. The object given to the humans by the Adar is a faster than light drive that has been installed into a submarine which has been made space worthy and is about to leave on its first mission to explore the universe. Weaver decided to join the Navy in order to become part of the mission. Tuffy tells Missy that she and, now retired, Miller must join the mission or it will fail. Since there is some speculation that Tuffy might be God or a representative of God, she and Miller are accepted as crew.

As the submarine, now christened Vorpal Blade, begins its exploration, the focus is mainly on the marines making up the security force, the first ever Space Marines. They go from star system to star system, hoping to find other life and signs of the Dreen threat. By the end of the mission the Space Marines have been blooded and have a better appreciation of what they need to prepare for a potentially hostile universe.

If you haven't read any of John Ring's books, he writes hard military science fiction from the view point of troops at the pointy end. You are guaranteed a lot of action, acts of sacrifice and courage, and a high body count.

Vorpal Blade is an excellent action story but has other features that made it interesting for me. The first battle fought was political; which branch was going to launch the first interstellar mission. The Navy wins over the Air Force, one of the arguments being that the Navy is better equipped to handle long term missions.

Ringo does a good job describing the Marines, particularly the enlisted men. As someone who grew up in a military family and who spent some years as an Army enlisted man, I appreciated that he treated them as intelligent people and not just muscle. There is humor as well as when the Chief of Boat demonstrates his ability to hold his mug of coffee in extreme circumstances in space. In real life, it isn’t unusual to see a senior NCO with a coffee mug apparently permanently attached to one hand. You also get a taste of the graveyard humor prevalent in the military services, something people who have not spent time around the military might find in macabre bad taste.

The authors also get across that a new type of enlisted man will be necessary in the future. A significant part of the book as the marines coming to grips with quantum physics. Some readers might think this takes away from the action but for me it makes an excellent point; with advances in technology we are moving toward a military where even a common soldier will need advanced degrees to operate in combat.