The Last Centurion by John Ringo

I am an on again off again fan of John Ringo. I really like his Posleen War or Legacy of the Aldenaata series, hate his Kildari series, and am ambivalent about his Looking Glass series.

With that in mind I want to talk about his latest book The Last Centurion.

The cover art and blurb caught my eye so I bought the Advanced Readers Copy:

Centurions were the guardians of Rome. At the height of the Roman Republic there were over five thousand qualified Roman Centurions in the Legions. To be a Centurion required that, in a mostly illiterate society, one be able to read and write clearly, to be able to convey and create orders, to be capable of not only performing every skill of a Roman soldier but teach every skill of a Roman soldier.

Becoming a Centurion required intense physical ability, courage beyond the norm, years of sacrifice and a total devotion to the philosophy which was Rome. When Rome fell to barbarian invaders, there were less than five hundred qualified Centurions. Not because Rome had fewer people but because it had fewer willing to make the sacrifices. And the last Centurions left their shields in the heather and took a barbarian bride . . .

We are . . . The Last Centurions.

And this Rome SHALL NOT FALL!

At first I thought it was going to be a alternative timeline history, but I was wrong it's actually a future history based around an incredibly deadly pandemic of H5N1 flu couple with climate shift (global cooling) caused by decreased solar activity and the US response too it. Essentially to revert to a Cambodian / Zimbabwe style dictatorship lead by Hillary Clinton analogue. Too say things are screwed up is an understatement.

The main character is Bandit Six, a US Army Captain who has to try and extract his abandoned company from Iran where the were performing peacekeeping duties. The story is at least partly based on Xenophon's March of the Ten Thousand, and has the potential of being an incredible story. Unfortunately most of the action is glossed over and the writing is a very annoying first person retrospective with some even more annoying touches, especially the so called "wife edits". It's disappointing because if this book was done in the same style as "When the Devil Dances" it would have rocked.

Again unfortunately it wasn't and it doesn't. In all actuality this book is a thinly disguised polemic against a Hillary Clinton Presidency, and while I completely agree with the sentiment it distracted from the story. The book is still worth reading and it's a hell of a lot better than "Ghost", but definitely not Ringo's best work.