Book Review

Tamara reveals that she has been reading John Ringo's The Last Centurion, reminding me that I have already read it and intended to post a review.

My "short" review starts off like this:

Back in 1974 Analog published a novel in three parts by Alfred Bester entitled The Indian Giver. I recall one letter to the editor saying that Bester seemed to have written it with the question "Whom can I offend next?" always in mind.

Having failed to offend his audience into forcing his own retirement with the Ghost/Kildar books, Ringo has decided to take a stab at pissing off the Leftist/Liberal/Progressive/Socialist/Media Elite by writing a book in which every cause they have backed for the last 50 years turns out to be the worst one imaginable.

All at once.

My shorter book review, possibly to be used as the title for the short one, ran thus:

Atlas Shrugged for the 21st Century?

The book is set about 10 years into the future. Iraq is about as free and democratic as it is going to get, but George W. Bush's successor (obviously intended to be Hillary Clinton) has gotten us embroiled in Iran, when a world-wide epidemic of a mutant strain of H5N1 Avian Flu does a number on the human population of the entire world. (A bubonic-plague-in-the-Dark Ages-style number.)

So, Ringo immediately points out that cultural norms have an impact on just how rapidly disease spreads--Americans, with their 3 foot "personal space" are less susceptible to disease than folks who literally like to get in each others' faces for normal conversations.

Then it turns out that all the Global Warming scoffers were right, and the next ice age begins.

Meanwhile, Our Hero, known in the book only by his Army callsign, Bandit 6, has been stranded by the National Command Authority in Iran as the "rearguard" "just until we can come and get you."

Most of the book is written in what the dust jacket terms "blog-style", a phrase I am not certain I understand. Maybe it just means "informal": The book may seem to ramble to some, but it's written in a style that breezes right along, for me. (Isn't that they way everyone is supposed to write?)

Besides anthropogenic climate change and foreign policy, Ringo also offends such liberal sacred cows as health policy, the media, and the nationalization of any and every industry. Also agricultural policies, including taking swipes at the organic and "local" food movements.

This book is sure to offend any one who votes a straight "D" on any election that they can, not to mention those who vote for the more obscure parties.