The Last Centurion – John Ringo

Baen, Copyright 2008, 439 pages.

ISBN: 978-1-4165-5553-7

Read: January, 2011, at age 32

First time read

What to expect:

The Last Centurion is a standalone, near-future military science fiction novel.  It’s first-person-ish, very opinionated, and is told as a retrospective.

From the dust jacket:

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 any in recorded history.

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.

To me, the book felt more like sitting at the bar with a crazy old drunk, listening to him telling his life story, than “blog-style”.  It wasn’t episodic, for one – but one long narrative. 

My reactions: (Not much for spoilers in this one)

Characters:

There was only one character who matters in this book – Bandit Six.  Everything is told through his eyes – biases and all.  Bandit Six is your ordinary, self deprecating small-‘s’ superman.  His voice was easy to read, but the other characters were shadows, never threatening to take the attention away from the subject of the story.  This wasn’t actually a bad thing, as Bandit Six is the guy telling the story, and the story is his life, and he’s a pretty self-contained guy, at least to hear him talk about it. 

The subjectivity in the story is one of the very brightest parts, however.  The writing style demands this type of opinionated storytelling.

Premise:

Global warming’s a lie, the influenza epidemic finally hits, and the American president is a slightly delusional hippie democrat.  Ok, I can work with the first two.  The last seemed a bit far-fetched, more of a reason to air grievances relating to organic farming practices and other “crunchy granola” ideas than a reasonable plot element.

Setting: 

The book was set in the Middle-East, in Turkey, and in the States.  The combat terrain and political climates were clearly and succinctly laid out, and the fallout from the combined disasters seemed well thought out. 

Plot:

The plot was overall pretty simple.  Get stuck in the boonies.  Trek across the Middle East.  Get stuck in various administrative roles.  Take down a warlord in Detroit.  It was so gripping that I when I went on holidays, I left the book at home, with about 20 pages to go.  This was not one of the strengths of the book.

Readability:

The readability was quite good – the book flew by, especially after the beginning.  The beginning section of the book, setting up the doomsday scenario, explaining why (gripes against current politics and policies), explaining why the American population did better than everyone else in the world (U! S! A! U! S! A!) got tiresome.

One more complaint:  Blog-style, to me, is much more fragmented style than the one presented.  In a blog, somebody writes a few paragraphs on one subject one day.  A few days later, something else comes up, and they write about that.  Everything happens in the recent past, since one of the major strengths of blogs (compared to books, for example) is the immediacy of the responses.  This book was much more of an informal personal retrospective, and I think is just trying to cash in on the whole blog idea, rather than the actuality.  Blog style, to me, is more Microserfs (Douglas Coupland), or Just a Geek (Wil Wheaton) rather than this one.

Overall:

The book was a bit more political than I like my fiction, the politics were a bit more republican than I like my politics, and the story was too flag-waving American for this Canadian boy.

It was all right, and my complaints are personal taste, not a quality judgment – they were very appropriate for the character, and reasonable things for this character to use his personal soapbox for.  But generally, I wouldn’t go looking for these particular arguments and opinions.  That said, it’s good to get out of my particular comfort zone every now and then, and this book did that.  The character was good, too, and it was generally an enjoyable read.

Rating:  3

Other Opinions:

The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf

Fantastic review.