The Troy Rising series is a humorous take on the standard Sci-Fi scenario of humanity's first contact with an alien race. As is often the case, things don't go well for Earth as we are outclassed both technologically and militarily when the Horvath come to claim our resources. Earth's governments have no recourse but to comply to the alien demands, and Earth becomes a subservient planet. The Horvath control the space orbitals and there is nothing that humans can do from the planet to fight their way free. Enter Tyler Vernon, entrepreneur and maple syrup king, into the story and things start to change. Tyler Vernon not only steps up to save Earth, but he also saves this entire series of books. He is an interesting, opinionated character that isn't willing to allow Earth to remain slaves to the Horvath. Any time the series focuses on Tyler Vernon and his plans to use maple syrup to save the Earth then it flies by and it is a joy to read or listen to.

There are, however, lulls in each of the 3 books in the series where Ringo spends way too much time on boring subjects. In the first book it is the difficulties of mining in space with a "laser", in book 2 it is ship maintenance and welding in space, and in book 3 it is the culture clash faced by the Latin American military in space. Each of these are important to the overall story, but could have been addressed in far fewer pages. The bloat fills the gaps between the interesting parts of the story related to Tyler Vernon and the fight for humanity's freedom. Of course, not everyone is a fan of Tyler Vernon, especially these days where people get easily put off by characters and authors having political opinions. I prefer to focus on the story telling at hand and I found Tyler Vernon to be very entertaining and enjoyed his approach to saving the Earth. If you are willing to take the good with the bad then think about giving the Troy Rising Series a shot for some humorous Sci-Fi.

For the audiobook version, Mark Boyett does a decent job with the material, although he is forced to repeat "Tyler said" thousands of times due to the way the book is written and that does get annoying after a while.