Say Anything Blog

What does it take to alter one’s world view?

I have often mused that our society has padded the corners and edges of life to excess. The most common path to wisdom is via a series of collisions with the sharp edges and corners of life, and that path to wisdom only works when those corners and edges leave a lasting mark.

The Last Centurion gives us a glimpse of what life without that padding might be like.

2019 marks the congruence of two natural disasters and a political disaster. The first of the natural disasters is the H5N1 “Bird Flu” virus mutating into an airborn human to human disease and in the process doing a recreation, only worse, of the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic. The second of the natural disasters is the onset of a “little ice age.” Now either of these on their own would be very bad. Taken together, much worse. But, wait, you say, what of the third disaster, the political one?

While the history is well documented, most folks don’t realize that every famine since the end of the 19th Century has been either a wholly produced phenomenon of politcs, or greatly exacerbated by politics. So too is the “Time of Suckage” (as our narrator Bandit Six calls the time) made to suck even more by politics.

How bad?

In excess of 70% of world population does not make the Darwinian cut.

Do any human societies survive? Yes, read the book to find out which do, which don’t, and why.

Why title a book about the apocolypse The Last Centurion?

Well, it’s a time of suckage, but it is not the apocolypse. It’s not even a global dark age, though it will be a dark age indeed for vast tracts of the globe. But mostly it’s because our protagonist has a little problem.

He and his command survived the pandemic. His army pulled out, with their kit neatly loggered, and left him to guard it. He, and his company cum rump battalion, are stuck in a newly created howling wilderness sitting atop a treasure trove of beans, bullets, and gas which the survivors around them covet.

What happens when you leave a supremely competent commander with an impossible mission and a worse situation?

The Last Centurion is what happens.




The Last Centurion

By John Ringo

Published by Baen Books

E-ARC Available via Webscriptions

Sample Chapters available here

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!