The Last Centurion

This book certainly has a distinctive voice. It is the voice of a know-it-all who won't shut up even though you stopped buying him beers two hours ago. In this book he tells the army how they should be doing things, the middle east how they should be governed (while shooting quite a few of them), a new farm wife what to cook her farmer husband for breakfast, and finishes with an interminable, oops, stirring, speech telling every citizen of the US how to be a proper citizen. No need for personal liberty when you have John Ringo, oops, Bandit Six, to tell you the right way to think.

A wankfest for people with a John Wayne fantasy.

A tough slog in some places but an interesting read none the less. As a preemptive right wing strike; should the US ever elect a liberal female president, it opens will a definite and quite detailed analysis of how a pandemic spreads. Then, transitions to a lost company in Iran captained by no ordinary mortal. Refuting current thinking on global warming with a well reasoned counter theory, he makes the case for industrial level agriculture as the way to feed the world. Then, he resolves most of the historic Mideast problems on his way to capture Istanbul assisted by some Nepalese turned into instant Gurkhas and the usual bevy of beautiful women.

This is a novel about a plague and climate change hitting in 2019-2020 written back in 2008, from the perspective of an infantry captain in the U.S. Army. This is a flawed book but still great. Probably the best post-apocalyptic near-term book I've read. Strangely prescient in some ways, strangely flawed in other ways -- a few things were exactly backwards, possibly due to changes in the world between 2008 and today.

It doesn't fall into the weird right-wing novel trap of being a manual for revolution (with lots of detailed instructions, product placements, out of place monologues about philosophy, etc. There's some of that, but it's in-context and appropriate.

Book was written in 2006-2008. There's an obvious Hillary Clinton character as show more President in 2016-2020. The irony is most of the negative things ascribed to her turned out to be bipartisan (Trump did them as well, and some were Obama-type actions); you could have had the same novel with only insignificant changes written as a left-wing post apocalyptic novel. I guess there are universal forms of bad governance.

There were a lot of really unbelievable situations in the book which were somehow explained and made plausible through the story through other implausible situations, but it was consistently entertaining.

A fair number of technical errors throughout the book -- the author had some military background but only up to E-4, and didn't have really extensive personal knowledge of the geography of the areas involved in the novel, but it was still entertaining. show less

Weird and wonderful. If you liked the Ghost series by him, you'll love this - it's not quite as nasty or explicit, but there's an awful lot about the technical aspects of blowing people and things up. Very heavy politics - Ringo is well over to the right. I actually find this fascinating - being a (more or less) liberal myself, I'm quite familiar with liberal stereotypes of conservatives. I enjoy seeing the reverse. Ringo displays his stereotypes very strongly ('tofu-eaters' is a frequent identifier), but when it gets down to people (only in the last third or quarter of the book) he's (character, and apparently author) perfectly willing to accept that there are decent people on the 'other side' and with training they can become quite show more acceptable...

Interesting variant on apocalypse and post-apocalypse story. Civilization doesn't fall apart, despite a double hammer-blow of epidemic and sudden mini-Ice Age; it's all about hanging on until you can work through these problems and get back to normal. More or less. The first part of the book Ringo spends a lot of time talking about how different areas handled the problems - these are the most annoying to a liberal, because he states categorically (and with liberal use of stereotypes) that the 'tofu-eaters' fail in every possible way. The middle is the character's own adventures - not only fights his way through a destabilized Middle East but leaves it on the road to recovery (reasonable borders are a good idea, but it's a bit Mary Sue that he can produce them so easily). The last section he's back in the US and dealing with individuals instead of stereotypes - and wonder of wonders, there are idiotic conservatives and capable-of-thought liberals to be found...that's the best part - most realistic - to me. And where-o-where did that wife come from? It stops rather abruptly, I'd have liked a little more or at least an epilogue. And there's one logical hole - when he's swept off to the Pentagon. If the MSM are as much worshipers of the President and her policies as depicted, why are questions about the farm policy a problem, or why are they happening at all? Sorry, weakness.

Overall a not-bad book. Part primer on how civilization can fall apart, part men's adventure story (blow things up! and girls!), part an interesting exploration of people getting things working again. Better than Ghost but very much in the same vein. I like Ringo better when he co-writes with David Weber, but I'm glad I read this and may well re-read. show less

Limiter: vulgar language -- narrator is enraged 21st century American solider, and talks like one

The book's mantra is "React, adapt, and overcome."

The first section is a diatribe against creeping socialism and a culture of entitlement which hits a lot of junk science, sociology, psychology, and political theory. Bandit comes off as rabid -- as a survivor with his stated background probably would be.

The second section is highly detailed military information about how they leave the Middle East. They see a lot of battles, and a lot of military jargon is used.

The third section is about his work back in the US to repair the damage of the previous administration. He starts with the agriculture.

The narrator is avowedly Republican, but is show more also against some present-day Republican policies. He comes off more as anti-Democrat and anti-liberal (with full historical hindsight) than as blindly "Republican". He tends to make casual, grandiose statements first, then explain the reasons why he knows "better". But the reasons are rational and thoughtful, not "because they are just wrong" or "because I say so". Reasoning is based on the scientific "experiment" of hindsight.

Reviews said anti-Hillary. More anti-"stereotypical, self-aggrandizing, egotistical, feminist"; take all Hillary's faults or vices, exaggerate them, and add no virtues or receptivity to outside ideas. Female President with biographical similarities to Hillary is an effigy for the narrator's flame thrower. show less

Although this book is a prolonged attack on Blue State thinking, Global Warming, Democrats, and Hillary Clinton; it is an excellent, funny read (I am an effette Blue Stater). Written in the form of a blog recounting the prior seven (7) years or so, it describes an Earth suffering from a Plague and a new Ice Age. I hghly recommend it.

It's told in the first person by a soldier post-apocalypse. As another review indicated, it's like reading someone's well-thought out blog. It contains a LOT of acronyms, vulgar language and right wing sentiments.

But all the arguments put forth (community trust process, political leadership failures, emergency response efforts and etc) are backed up by some "evidence" inasmuch as you can have evidence for something that hasn't actually occurred. It has a nice ring of truth to it so if you read this and discovered after reading it that it was a true account of events (say, from a different planet) you would not think it unbelievable.

It's not badly written, or badly argued, and even though it's right wing, it's not loopy-loony or show more anything. In a way, it's similar to Max Brooks' World War Z where there's a believable "historical" accounting of an event that didn't actually occur. show less