The Last Centurion | John Ringo

The Last Centurion | John Ringo | Slow and preachy....

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The Last Centurion

	The Last Centurion John Ringo Baen, 2008 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 59 reviews view larger image
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In the second decade of the twenty-first century the world is struck by two catastrophes, a new mini-ice age and, nearly simultaneously, a plague to dwarf all previous experiences. Rising out of the disaster is the character known to history as ?Bandit Six? an American Army officer caught up in the struggle to rebuild the world and prevent the fall of his homeland?despite the best efforts of politicians both elected and military. The Last Centurion is a memoir of one possible future, a world that is a darkling mirror of our own. Written ?blog-style,? it pulls no punches in its descriptions of junk science, bad strategy and organic farming not to mention all three at once

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Too Extreme

All in all, not a bad story. It's entertaining and reasonbly good sci-fi / alt history. The basic premise of the story seems to be all too possible, indeed, likely as things go to today.

All that said, several items picked at me throughout the story:

1 - Bandit 6's career does not really follow the Army model for an Infantry Officer; he does jobs and attends schools somewhat out of order, for no reason that I can tell other than the author is either unfamiliar with the commissioned side of Army ife, or he needs to switch things up for no apparent reason. There are always exceptions to the standard career model, but I can not tell why Bandit 6 should be one of them.
2 - the author uses the Bush name for former presidents, but uses the name "Warrick" clearly as a substitution for the Clintons. I don't understand this. The presumption is that the author (as well as Bandit 6) does not like the Clintons, but is afraid / reluctant to actually use their name for some reason. I do not care if you don't like the Clintons, but at least man-up and use their name. Additionally it actually became a story-telling distraction reading the hate agsint the Clintons / Warricks.
3 - the same love / hate issues come up in regards to the Press. Fox / Murdoch are gods, all other Press are left-wing, subversive, idiots. Can we be any more stereotypical? If Bandit 6 was as smart and educated as indicated, I think that he would have a little more common sense approach to the idea of the Press and not follow the right-wing party line.
4 - virtually all of Bandit 6's superiors, in or out of uniform, are idiots and not worthy of his respect or followership, those that are not worthless are those who agree with him; nothing more needs to be said about this silly story telling device.

I've read a fair amount of Ringo lately, and most of his books have similiar type plot points as noted above. As long as you overlook Ringo's belief that virtually all officers are idiots, most politicians are criminals, the Press is bad, only the English-speaking peoples of the world are worth comment, and that the French are beneath contempt (well maybe this one is spot on!), then his stories are good light, escapist reading, that sometimes even have something interesting to say about historical events.

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Slow and preachy....

I really enjoy most of the Military Fiction that Ringo puts out there. It's fun, it's exciting, it's like a James Bond movie. Last Centurion was not.

The basic storyline sets thing far enough in the future to play with politics, environmental conditions etc. without worrying too much about things being unrealistic. The main character is a uber-Officer in the Army who has a unique set of qualities that enable him to save his troops and accomplish an almost impossible mission as the rest of the world collapses around him. It's an interesting storyline. My main concern was that it felt like I was reading a book by some Foxnews-type political commentator and not a Fiction novel. That's not what I expected from Ringo.

Ok, so the book is a bit dry and extremely egotistic. It's not far wrong and it hits dead-on with a lot of very strong opinions that are not being well represented in the United States today. I liked that, but it was not what I wanted to be reading about in a Ringo Military Fiction novel.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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