John Ringo The Last Centurion (Aug 2008) Baen Books
A prolific author whose work I've enjoyed since A Hymn Before Battle came out in hardback. I still have that hardback (signed) and all his other novels as well. I did enjoy this latest Ringo novel but feel the style he used worked against it very much. The fact it's styled as a blog journal that we are reading years after the fact online is a style choice I would have disapproved and said rewrite (after all the first draft only took 9 days). The last novel in a similar style I read was Emma Bull and Stephen Brust's Freedom & Necessity which is styled as a series of letters in the epistolary style that was last popular in the 19th Century. I didn't like that style then, and updating it to blog journal style (with wife edits for added annoyance factor) is no improvement. The style just kept getting in the way of enjoying the story for me. "Reader Trance" as the late Jim Baen referred to it proved elusive. Far too much tell and too little show is the great weakness of epistolary styles. Another is the inability to put down anything the epistles' author or authors don't already know -- though as an online journal of events composed years after the fact you can avoid the worst of that. At least we were spared any "Let me check my notes" and comments must have been disabled. ;)
Beyond the stylistic idiosyncracy of it all, it is an interesting read. Mostly because it touched on those matters of interest to me. Various subjects such as climate change and global pandemics finishing up with a nice series of military action-adventures as our hero returns home and then finds like the hobbits returning to the Shire their travails aren't quite over yet. The one thing that annoying me about the non-fiction parts was the lack of footnotes and cites. After all if the intention is to inform and/or persuade then some pointers on where to look would go a long way. Otherwise we should just assume that its preaching to the choir and judge it solely by its entertainment value. If footnotes weren't a possibility, then an afterward or appendices would have been nice. David Drake may think they are bad art for an author, but I think of such as more in line with those 'making of' bits on the DVDs and uninterested persons are free to move on.
That JR has done well with ensembles of characters in his other novels pursuing actions in multiple locations argues that such a format with events being seen through the eyes of participants would have been much more engaging. Possible viewpoints would be the retired farmer in Arizona, hero's dad, his farm manager, anyone in Detroit, various military & senior government officials all showing their actions and the various failures of the world in general and the US in particular to deal with the travails in the novel. The other weakness was forcing the single viewpoint character we have (through the journal he's writing) be the only viewpoint in that all the action had to be through his eyes and thus he has to wind up going everywhere exciting and taking part in the action and only telling us about the rest.
Ringo is best with action and characters and dialogue and the chosen style here works against all of that. Even so I'd still give it a 3 out of 5 and recommend you check out in paperback or digital versions, but even though I've a hardback and will be keeping it. I find various bits and pieces fascinating myself, I know this sort of thing is not to everyone's taste.
Other novels by John Ringo that I have unreservedly enjoyed are:
A Hymn Before Battle, Gust Front (5 out of 5/read this!), When the Devil Dances, Hell's Faire
March Upcountry, March to the Sea, March to the Stars, We Few (all co-authored with David Weber)
There Will Be Dragons
The Road to Damascus (with Linda Evans) [A Bolo novel]
Vorpal Blade (with Travis Taylor)
is a list to all his currently published work.
I would only caution against his Paladin of Shadows series:
Ghost, Kildar, Chooser of the Slain, Unto the Breach, and A Deeper Blue
Ghost, Kildar, Chooser of the Slain, Unto the Breach, and A Deeper Blue
which is best characterized as over the top men's adventure fiction
http://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html?thread=760769#t760769 gives a very amusing review of the early books in the series and John's reaction to same. "Oh, John Ringo, NO!"
