The Last Centurion

I was very underwhelmed after reading the first 30-50 pages but am glad I kept reading. I read a lot of military history and have been in the military for over 21 years. I have read books from WEB Griffin to Dale Brown and nonfiction from Hal Moore to James McDonough. Most military novels miss what being a service member is really like and or butcher our jargon and acronyms. You can usually pick up within a few pages if the person writing is either nonmilitary or if they served 15 minutes in the Guard. Most over "Hooah" it or paint military members into some stereo type. John Ringo gets i right. As I said before, the first few pages seem to overdo it with trying to have the reader feel like it is being written by a staff officer with command experience. The language and push to get the reader involved seem forced but Ringo seems to move into his comfort zone and draws the reader in. John Ringo has a few years of service and really captured what it means to be a member of the military. I say all this because I want to make sure that readers don’t put this book down and walk away from an excellent read. No spoilers provided just know that you should pick this book up and not put it down.

The arguments against liberal culture are better than the story line. Not intended as a ding— heck, I gave it 5 stars— but its true. That’s the good thing about Ringo. Dude does his research and when he puts out an argument, even if he’s doing so with a fictional backdrop, it’s still pretty sound. Centurion is no exception to this; a series of very sound, factual arguments that methodically disassemble the far-left PC culture.

This book is pretty good. I just finished John Ringo's Troy Rising series on the recommendation of a coworker. This book is told after the fact from the point of view of a blogger and former Army officer. I really like the style of the narrator recounting the events of a outbreak and giving his explanation and interpretation.

The negative reviews that I have read have been from people who obviously do not like the character and probably the authors political leanings. That being said if you are a liberal, vegan, or femme sit I don't recommend you read this.

I really liked this book, it had some dark moments but as a fiction future I can see why he wrote it the way he did. It has a flow of a journal but a well written journal. I like how he described everything in full detail with sarcasm and humor.

I have been begging my friends and family to read this book whenever possible and buying it for them when they express an interest. The book is great. The idea is great, the scary part is when I start to read about Global Cooling and compare his president with our current head of homeland security.
This is a smart book which requires you to start researching on your own. I saw one review which mentioned mindless. I am not sure where that would come from. It is a practical (fictional) look at how the world would respond to a global crisis (pandemic that kills) thrown in with a massive cooling effect due to increased sunspot activity. It is well researched and the logic he follows makes sense, I enjoy the main character and enjoy the writing. Once I started reading I could not stop, I laughed and I cried. This is one of the very few fictional novels that made me actually think, What if, and to follow through with my own research. My Father was military so I could relate to the military point of view. You either love it or hate it, but please do not feel ambivalent to it!

Enjoyed this book. I can understand the development of the story with regard to the explanation of the virus and the actions taken as well as the reasons why they didn't work. But i felt they dragged it on too long and got too in depth with it and the down side of organic VS industrialized farming. That however didn't detract from the scenes with the centurions. Just brilliant and engaging making you cheer on the boys.

Like one previous reviewer, I believe this book needs two reviews -- one for content and one for style.

In terms of content, I found it fascinating and worthy of five stars. I knew nothing of the author when I started reading and approximately three pages in I said to myself "there's no way this guy wasn't in the Army and deployed at some point to foreign country." So I went and looked him up and, sure enough, 82nd Airborne veteran. While that may not matter to some, it lends a huge deal of credibility in a lot of areas of the book. Namely, what happens and how soldiers interact when deployed to a theater of combat. In that regard, he hits it right on the head and drives it home. Kudos to Mr. Ringo. Then, of course, are the issues of governments -- big and small, federal and local -- and how they react to a crisis; the topic of global warming (or "climate change" if you prefer); and the scenario of a world-wide flu pandemic. All of these subjects, whether you agree with the author's views or not, are well researched given that it is a work of fiction (thinking he must have also grown up on a farm...?). More books need to be written in that way, I believe.

In terms of style, it's a little bit tricky to write a review. One of the "1 star" reviewers said that Mr. Ringo "failed" at his experiment in writing blog-style. I don't believe that he failed so much as he just over-used it; had the book either been broken up into sections where it was used and sections where it wasn't, or just made shorter overall, it would have been much stronger. I gave it four instead of five stars for this reason and the fact that, though I may agree with him on several points, it gets pretty redundant at times (okay, we get it, the main character telling the story thinks quite highly of himself. Point taken).

All in all, I say that if you are interested in either military fiction or post-apocalyptic/near-future disaster themed stories, then this is hard to pass up. It's a whole lot better than most works in this genre.

If you are tired of the highly varnished and biased views of the mainstream media or the utopic odyssees of general science fiction this story is for you. But be warned. This book challenges you to think for yourself and "Do the Math" often. A great read.

The style of writing was not completely to my liking and it seemed somewhat messy to me.

The story and setting appealed to me and I found it worth the time it took to read. Would recommend this if you like post-apocalyptic scenarios.

If you like conservative viewpoints not backed by facts that put down anyone else who believes differently then this is the book for you. It is a complete waste of time. Instead of what could of been a good story about the collapse of civilization and his life in the military, Ringo turns this into a "I hate everything that is not right wing Republican views" If I wanted to hear right wing nonsense I would turn on Faux News, but I want to read a good story, which this is not. Save your money. There are much better fiction authors out there who focus on the story and not their warped political views nobody, but them care about.

The negative reviews of this book can be characterized thusly; elitist social justice warriors with their upper lips turned up so far that all they can smell is their own stinking breath. If you are a left wing, socialist, finger pointing cry baby then stay away. Go read some crap by Scalzi and feel superior.

I have read just about everything by John Ringo and like most of them. This was a better book to read than to listen to on CD. The first 3 or 4 CDs went on and on setting the scene and whining about the president and her policies. While I might agree with him, it made the book way too long. Other than that it was good. Not as action oriented as most of his other books but still good reading. Not a book for anyone with liberal leanings.

The negative reviews of this book can be characterized thusly; elitist social justice warriors with their upper lips turned up so far that all they can smell is their own stinking breath. If you are a left wing, socialist, finger pointing cry baby then stay away. Go read some crap by Scalzi and feel superior.

I have read just about everything by John Ringo and like most of them. This was a better book to read than to listen to on CD. The first 3 or 4 CDs went on and on setting the scene and whining about the president and her policies. While I might agree with him, it made the book way too long. Other than that it was good. Not as action oriented as most of his other books but still good reading. Not a book for anyone with liberal leanings.

Excellent military fiction with a unique narrative style. At its original writing, many of the events were considered remote possibilities with little chance of occurring in the real world, however I challenge anybody to read this book while sitting in front of the evening news and not get a bit worried about the state of our world.

Very current events! In this time of the H1N1 virus this would be the perfect example of what to do and especially of what not to do! I do hope there is a Bandit Six in this world somewhere and I know the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan will need him. The author is very knowledgeable of history and that combined with modern "history" makes this one of the finest books I've ever read. I'm on my second reading now and am just as riveted. I WILL be reading more of John Ringo's books!

If you've already been reading John Ringo's books and like his work, you will probably enjoy this one too. On the other hand, if you've never read anything by John Ringo don't start here, go read There will be dragons or March Upcountry, both of which are much better. This one is written just like you would talk to someone, so it's disjointed and kind of rambling. There are some of John's usual good insights and one liners, but it's a SLOOOOWWW read. Not sure I would spend the money again on it, it's got some interesting points, but other places I skipped over whole groups of pages. This one is definitely buyer beware of what you are getting.

John Ringo's perspective of the worlds current situation is erry. With just a little emergency, the world could go to hell and back. USA citizens, are currently being led down the road of becoming sheep. I loved the main characters view of life. I could just image the popularity, of a real show like The Centurian.
The novel is a great read as I couldn't put it down. Check his other novels, too.

Engrossing action adventure novel that is thankfully free of any leftwing indoctrination, politically correct whining or 'flawed heroes' that have flooded the genre of late. Ringo tells a story which combines excellent military action with social-cultural issues that many of us will identify with. It does take a few chapters to get used to the blog style the story employs but before long I was immersed in the style as well as the story. Hopefully there will be more of Bandit Six to come!!!!

A great book, very readable, and teaches us how our government works and how our political leadership thinks. It is possible that the events in the book could really happen, and it is highy probably that our federal government would react in exactly the same way as pictured by Ringo. John Ringo obviously closely studied current American politics and political leaders, as well as the environmentist movement. Not only that, the book is a page turner and very entertaining to read. Extremely well written with a dash of humor where needed.

I find it interesting that some are turned off by the writing style of this book, because it was clearly advertised as a "blog" format. As such, it is an experiment, much as "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" was a writing experiment by Heinlein. I personally like this one better than Heinlein.

This also was an attempt by Ringo to write something in a Tom Kratman style format, i.e, thinly veiled extrapolation of what actual idiots would do in a mess up like this.

That being said, this is dead on. All the critiques of Global Warming I have read discuss the sun's activity as the major driving factor of global warming and cooling as compared to greenhouse gas (and, incidentally, as Europe dies because the Europeans are not bringing enough Western-assimilated children into the world, and world population according to the UN is going to implode, where do these scenarios keep coming from?), as does Ringo. Add one biological catastrophe, and away we go.

Plenty of trenchant observations on who was really at fault for the Katrina debacle (hint: it wasn't George) and other such things nicely counterbalance the action.

In short, well worth the hardcover price. Thanks, John!

Not Ringo's typical style of work. The action scenes were well written and realistic, just not very detailed. The mix of political philosophy and flashbacks took some getting used to, but looking back the novel reads like what it's supposed to be, the memories of someone who was "there" during a big historical event. A paradigm shift as it were. It's first person POV and obvious political slant are going to turn off some readers and for a science fiction novel, it's not very sci-fi; but it's a rock solid novel that makes suspension of disbelief and immersion in the storyline easy.

The Last Centurion is something politicaly incorect...An unabashadly patriotic book that further more calls out all of the bad science surrounding global warming, the wonders of socialized medicine, and the evils of the military industrial complex. In other words it's Ringo at his finest. This book will keep you up at night, first to finish it, then when you think about the probabilitys predicted.

For me, this is about as entertaining as it gets. I loved every page and it gets better and better as the book goes on. The 3 friends I lent this to all loved it. Highly recomended, especially to left wingers. They might learn something.

I enjoyed reading this John Ringo book based on contemporary themes. This book does have a typical Ringo problem, the background setup. In this case, the beginning of the book makes for slow reading, at times, to provide the information necessary to understand the characters and the world they inhabit. The end of the book, of course, pretty much slams along because you have absorbed that background. If you don't like military and society in flux scenarios, this is not for you.

There's always a lot of background material, facts, and serious theories in solid science fiction, historical fiction, political thriller, or even fantasy. This one has a little more than usual which appears to offput some of the reviewers while if it was a space choice between pages of background vs. endless dialogue between minor characters, this was the more interesting choice. As a veteran's first person narrative the relatively terse descriptions of the other characters follows most other veterans' accounts...there's a lot of buried trauma and grief in there generally for the rest of their lives.

What struck me, just having finished Amity Shlaes' outstanding history of the Great Depression, "The Forgotten Man", as well as Adam Tooze's economic history of the Nazis 1933-1945, "Wages of Destruction" that anyone interested in the 20th Century political economy would find fascinating...Ringo's stuff here for the most part has happened, repeatedly, rather than being dark fantasy. Many major countries have gone through deeply dysfunctional leadership and political economy theories that devastated them in the last few centuries alone when we've most clearly recorded them (let alone the Roman regimes.) Norman Cantor's and William McNeil's historical accounts of the impacts of plagues that killed 30-50% of populations frequently or the estimates that 50-80% of the Americas peoples were killed by European diseases show this is more the norm of human history rather than some sort of cycle we've luckily broken free from. Fast moving plagues have always been the hardest on the centers of civilization, towns and cities, while following trade routes often faster than the warnings. Global cooling has happened, i.e. the Little Ice Age from late medieval to late 18th century and major fluctuations that change where you can grow crops or sustain populations, like the Anasazi Ringo mentions where 10-70 year droughts radically shrunk the crop yields the local populations had grown to require. As to Ringo's points about varying effectiveness of responses to disaster, look at various communities hard hit and the variation is amazing...social capital matters a lot (if you think it's Ringo's theories, look at Harvard's Robert Puttnam's research on social capital impacts in "Bowling Alone" (a much more interesting book than it sounds.)
Ringo's craziness about the media for outsiders may sound absurdist. Read the investigative reporters' book on Robert Gray's PR firm in DC, "The Power House", on how a lot of this was worked out for delivering fake news through real news channels for foreign governments (Gray's office helped create the video news release.) Look further back to Edward Bernays or Ivy Lee, the pioneers of modern PR and American-style propaganda through manipulating the ever gullible reporters and editors.
The other thing was how many "Bandit Six" characters have had this kind of challenges and overcome them in the real American military. George Washington, Nathaniel Greene, Benedict Arnold, George Rogers Clark, William Clark (1815), Winfield Scott in Mexico, Sherman's March,
Custer, George Crook (Sioux, Apache), Nelson Miles (Sioux, Apache), John Pershing (Phillipines, Mexico, France), Smedley Butler (Phillipines etc.), Joshua Wainwright at Bataan, Patton... if anything Bandit Six's accomplishments with lots of appropriate supplies is the unrealistic part, not the journey or battles.
Ringo also captures modern farming and taciturn Minnesotans (lots in the family and friends, he's nailed 'em.)
Ringo's got an unusual amount of information backing his story points here, it's just as often common in recorded history rather than just extrapolating current trends. It's a different book, but it's a rich and sophisticated read.

this book might offend liberals. And that's okay.
What could be worse than global warming? This book will answer that question. Who would have thought it would disproportionately cause liberals to die. It's not to late to change your ways.

As John Ringo promised, there is something in here to "annoy" just about everyone. Ok, he didn't use the word "annoy", but I'm trying to keep this review "family friendly."

It's a "worst case scenario" story. The whole world has gone to Hell in a Handbasket and someone has to clean up the mess. This someone is Bandit Six. An infantry officer stuck in a bad mess and trying to make the best of it.

How bad are things? Well, Bird Flu makes the species jump and is deadly. A large chuck of the human population is killed off, especially in areas with little or no health care, and areas with heath care systems that are regulated by the state don't do as well as areas with well funded free market systems (ok, axe one is being ground here).

John Ringo's politics are clearly right leaning Libertarian, but he doesn't mind rubbing those groups noses in their faults either.

Oh ya, the world gets cold, fast. The global cooling we were promised back in the 1970s hits fast and hard. Those expecting global warming were caught completely off guard.

So, in many places, the infrastructure of civilization is falling apart because the people who operate it are either dying or trying to stay alive, what were the "breadbaskets" of the world are suffering from long winters and short cool summers, and Bandit Six is stuck in Iran guarding Billions of dollars of military equipment when the US pulled its troops back to the US to deal with the Bird Flu problems. Iran? Oh, by 2018, Iraq isn't a problem, but Iran is.

Ok, so the plot is laid, and now the fun can begin. Just remember that "adventure" is someone else in deep trouble, very far away from you.

Oh ya, Bandit Six grew up on a farm and has strong opinions on organic farming.

Yup, something to annoy everyone in the family.

I heartily recommend it.

Those that are giving the poor reviews are obviously blinded by their hatred of anything to the right of Michael Moore, and judge everything in their lives with that barometer. Talk about being close-minded!

I have read some excellent books by John Ringo, but this one was a dud except for the combat, which was excellent. His hang up with global warming and liberals ruined a really good story. The book would have been good if he had just put it into that type of setting. But no! Three quarters of the book was nothing except a repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, and so on. tirade against liberals and global warming! I finally just glanced at a page and flipped to the next one.
I consider myself a farm boy, but not a factory farm boy. Of course this was 1945-1952. And my Dad could not have made a living on our 150 acres. We did have a couple of milk cows, hogs, chickens, about 20 or so of range cattle including a bull, a horse for cultivating, a large garden, fields of corn, oats, alfalfa, a Ford /Ferguson tractor with mower, disc, plow and harrow, and a half share in a hay-baler.