Description:

First Contact Was Friendly

When aliens trundled a gate to other worlds into the solar system, the world reacted with awe, hope and fear. But the first aliens to come through, the Glatun, were peaceful traders and the world breathed a sigh of relief.

Who Controls the Orbitals, Controls the World

When the Horvath camw through, they announced their ownership by dropping rocks on three cities and gutting them. Since then, they've held Terra as their own personal fiefdom. With their control of the orbitals, there's no way to win and earth's governments have accepted the status quo.

Live Free or Die.

To free the world from the grip of the Horvath is going to take an unlikely hero. A hero unwilling to back down to alien or human governments, unwilling to live in slavery and enough hubris, if not stature, to think he can win.

Fortunately, there's Tyler Vernon. And he has bigger plans than just getting rid of Horvath.

Troy Rising is a book in three parts-Live Free of Die being first part-detailing the freeing of earth from alien conquerors, the first steps into space using off-world technologies and the creation of Troy, a thousand trillion ton battlestation designed to secure the solar system.

From Publishers Weekly

Prolific military SF author Ringo (the Posleen War series) imbues this near-future epic with a somewhat self-indulgent air, mixing lengthy and sometimes interminable discussions of science and economics with do-or-die action. Three years after the alien Grtul drop a transport gate in our solar system and welcome Earth to the galactic community, a Horvath warship shows up and destroys several major cities before extorting protection payments. Fast-thinking entrepreneur Tyler Vernon exploits the literally universal appeal of maple syrup to make a fortune, defies the Horvath, and reveals his ideas for keeping Earth safe, but intergalactic war threatens to derail his plan. This extended thought exercise is infused with plenty of old-fashioned two-fisted can-do attitude, a heavy dose of science, and occasional bursts of dry humor, but shallow characterization and an ambling plot detract from the overall experience. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

This irresistible action-sf tale launches another series, deriving partly from a webcomic (Schlock Mercenary) and partly from Ringo’s amazingly fertile imagination. In the near future, humanity enjoys (or suffers from) first contact with an entire galactic federation, one of whose unfriendly races goes to war with Earth for our heavy metals. A more benign race works through crusty Vermonter Tyler Vernon to exploit nonhuman technology in developing a space program and defenses. Eventually, Earth lives up to the title (New Hampshire’s state motto), with Vernon taking his mobile asteroid, in essence a Death Star in good-guy hands, on humanity’s first interstellar war cruise to settle some alien hash. --Roland Green