DNF, quit and returned the e-book because it was a little slow. It's that kind of techy-detailed that showed research without the skill to keep it interesting. Then, randomly, in one scene I got thoughts from more than one character. This is called head-hopping. If it doesn't bother you, ignore this review. :)

Done deliberately and consistently, this is called "omniscient" - and a reader can depend on it. But random means the author doesn't understand how distracting and potentially confusing it is, and/or the editor doesn't know enough to suggest the author not do it. ( )

Nagata, Linda. The Last Good Man. Mythic Island Press, 2017.
I was not as big a fan of Linda Nagata’s Red series as most fans of military SF, but in The Last Good Man, Nagata has put all the elements of near-future warfare in a tight, fast-paced, and nuanced package. The story focuses on the efforts of True Brighton and her team of mercenaries to capture a former colleague who seems to have gone rogue. True is a fully developed character who asks herself all the right questions about the ethics of her profession, but these ruminations never slow the action. In Nagata’s vision of the future, warfare has become one more venue for private enterprise. Corporations and three-letter government agencies hire private companies to achieve limited military goals. They use a chilling array of drones, remote targeting, surveillance devices, 3D printed weapons, and big-data research tools to track and take down their targets. Unfortunately, these tools are also available to their opponents, and some of them are as lethal on the home front as the battlefield. 4 stars. ( )

The opening sure hooks you up - interesting characters, promising plot, fast pace. But then the author ran out of ideas and for the rest of the book you feel like you're watching a Steven Seagal movie. I can't believe I endured this all the way through, I should've cut my losses much sooner. ( )

"The Last Good Man" is a Compelling immersive tale of a near-future Military Contractor seeking the truth about her son's brutal execution.

I wasn't sure this would be my kind of book. Set in the near future, it tells the story of a woman soldier working for a Private Military Contractor (PMC) licensed by the US government, who finds something she doesn't like while on a hostage rescue mission.



I see PMCs as a scourge on the earth and the US's tendency to use force in countries it's not at war with as criminal, so I doubted I'd be sympathetic but I was curious, so I gave it a try.



Three hours into this fourteen hours long audiobook, I was hooked. The first mission was still in progress and I still didn't know what the bad thing was that our soldier was going to discover but instead of finding myself tapping my fingers in impatience at the pace, I was enjoying myself. I found it unexpectedly compelling to get a blow by blow account of the planning and execution of the mission. it felt real. It was tense without being melodramatic.


One of the things that kept me reading was the credible but very scary biomimetic robotics being used. This is not far out tech. Many of the physical characteristics are already available and the AI and Swarm technologies are catching up fast. When they become available for real, they will transform warfare, and terrorism and private armies and organised crime.


I also liked the thoughtful way in which the role of PMCs was talked through. The dangers of having a private military capability that makes money from was but has no incentive to bring or keep the peace were given ait time, as was the impact of a boundaryless war: the ability to pursue a conflict globally, based on infrastructure capability rather than national sovereignty.


The most surprising thing for me was that the book managed to be character-driven. The soldier, Tru Brighton, ends up on a very personal quest for the truth around the public and barbaric execution of her soldier son eight years earlier. This worked partly because Tru is likeable as a mature soldier and as a mother and partly because her quest is not for comfort or even for revenge but just to know the truth.


There's a reasonably complicated plot that kept me invested all the way through without making me feel I was being teased in the way some smug bet-you-didn't-see-that-coming thrillers do. It allowed some great action scenes and a constantly shifting perspective on the truth as new facts came to light.


I listened to the audiobook version and was impressed by how well Liisa Ivary delivered the story. She has tremendous range in both pace and characterisation.

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It is hard to classify this book and this may be its disadvantage. I guess the most likely category is military SF. However, most well known mil-SF are leaning hard on the SF part, from [b:Starship Troopers|17214|Starship Troopers|Robert A. Heinlein|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1406457252s/17214.jpg|2534973] to [b:The Forever War|21611|The Forever War (The Forever War, #1)|Joe Haldeman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386852511s/21611.jpg|423] to [b:Armor|102327|Armor|John Steakley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1337817762s/102327.jpg|604650] to [b:Old Man's War|51964|Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1)|John Scalzi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487044882s/51964.jpg|50700]. This book takes place in very near future Earth and there is nothing that cannot be made in some five to twenty years, assuming the current pace of the technology development. Thus it also borders techno-thrillers. This falling between two genres may limit the number of readers, which is sad for it is a good book.
The novel follows the group of members of private military company, chiefly former US army and navy, who are made obsolete by technology, from helicopter pilot to grunts. They are contracted to save a kidnapped woman, who was forced to become a wife of one of the warlords in TEZ - Tigris-Euphrates Zone. As a bonus they can get a reward for delivering the warlord to the US justice. Maybe a third of the book is preparation and operation itself, which is done largely by different robots, with men on the ground more a spectators. The operation opens some old wounds and urges protagonists to look in their past.
The book is written mainly in present tense to give it more action feel and it is a fast and engaging read. At the same time if one is choosing between this book and [b:The Red: First Light|17605440|The Red First Light (The Red #1)|Linda Nagata|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1363059827s/17605440.jpg|24561453] by the same author, I would recommend the latter as more SF read.
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