Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Last Ship by William Brinkley had such potential. It could have been a great story along the lines of Alas Babylon or On The Beach. Notice I use the worlds "could have been". This ship should have sunk before leaving port. It had an excellent premise: I.E. the idea of having the only ship to survive a nuclear war. But the poor execution of the premise, just makes The Last Ship a 600-page disappointment. The story is told from a first person perspective (our Captain Tom). As far as I can tell, he spends about 250 pages of this 600 or so page book staring into the sea extolling the virtues of being in the Navy. Every two pages he is looking into the ocean, lamenting about life in the U.S. Navy, or working on his weird inferiority complex about women. After about page 300, you basically want to scream, "BRINKLEY! WE KNOW THE OCEAN IS WET, THAT IT TAKES A SPECIAL KIND OF PERSON TO BE IN THE NAVY, AND WOMEN ARE MYSTERIOUS IN THEIR GODDESS-LIKE WAYS. GET OVER IT!" This book is a lot like that big present you open on Christmas only to find out its 20 pairs of underwear! A lot of build up and major let down! Basically, the first 120 pages are kind of worthless (it starts in the middle of the story), which would be clever if this was a great story with strong characters. If you want to risk reading this, I'd start on Page 124, when the war breaks out. From here you get some elements of a good post-apocalyptic story. The problem is Brinkley never really develops the characters or takes the ideas anyplace. You have a Russian Sub, a mystery message from the U.S. command after the war, a mutiny, and the promise of a new beginning for mankind. What happens to these characters and ideas you ask? Well, as far as I can tell, the narrative by "Captain Tom Ocean-Navy-Woman-Worshipper" kills any of these ideas before they get off the ground! Characters such as Selman, the Jesuit, and Lt. Girard are never fully developed and just when you start to be interested in them, Captain Tom starts looking at the ocean again for 10 pages. Also can someone explain the Deliverance Island thing to me? How can they find this huge mystery island and it is not on any of their maps? Brinkley just has the crew of his last ship find it. Now the last time I checked the entire earth has been mapped out by satellites and every piece of land has been accounted for. So it is hard for me to suspend my disbelief when they bump into an island that is over 12 miles in size! Not only is it big, but no one lives on it! Come on! The biggest disappointment I had with the book was finding out that the author was in the U.S. Navy and yet he was unable to really translate that experience into the story effectively. For example, you some see flashes of it with the war, and the initial meeting with the Russian sub, but really nowhere else. But with other key plot points, that real world experience does not come over into the story. The mutiny in the story is so poorly done because you find it hard to believe the situation would be resolved the way it is in the story. It is more like a polite disagreement than a mutiny! Finally, don't even get me started on Brinkley's issues with women. You would think a character that is a captain of a destroyer would have more confidence with and understanding of women. I figure the only thing this Captain Tom needed to do was come into port in uniform and the ladies would be all over him! Nope, our captain is a bit different, kind of like the Ffolks character in that Roger Moore film that bombed! But imagine an insecure Ffolks that really needs some prozac. He is more of a knitter than a man of action. Captain Tom had some issues with his mother and needs some therapy. By the way, there is some major Freudian symbolism here that is about as subtle as a baseball bat to the skull. The women in his crew play a big role but it's very unrealistic on how they come to their big arrangement on the island. Very utopian and too happy for my tastes. I think when it is all said and done, The Last Ship needed: 1) Effective editing. It would have made a good 300 page novel. At 600 pages, it is 1/2 filler! Take out the ocean staring and it would be a 3 star review and not a 1 star review. 2) More emotional conflicts between characters. The supposed mutiny, need I say more! 3) More background in the story. We have World War III happen and we don't have any details of what caused it? That's a major let down. How about more meetings with survivors? The few survivors we meet don't do anything or say much really. 4) A better character telling the narrative. Captain Tom is not a man of action. He is more of a manic-depressive who worships women. He doesn't really inspire major interest or draw out the characters of his crew. Overall, this book is like a car-crash, you can't turn away. But at the end, you wish you did.