Hailed as “an extraordinary novel of men at war” (The Washington Post) this is the book that inspired the TNT television series starring Eric Dane, Rhona Mitra, Adam Baldwin and Michael Bay as Executive Producer. The unimaginable has happened. The world has been plunged into all-out nuclear war. Sailing near the Arctic Circle, the U.S.S. Nathan James is relatively unscathed, but the future is … unscathed, but the future is grim and Captain Thomas is facing mutiny from the tattered remnants of his crew. With civilization in ruins, he urges those that remain—one-hundred-and-fifty-two men and twenty-six women—to pull together in search of land. Once they reach safety, however, the men and women on board realize that they are earth’s last remaining survivors—and they’ve all been exposed to radiation. When none of the women seems able to conceive, fear sets in. Will this be the end of humankind?
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One of the more interesting characteristics of some post-apocalyptic tales is the sense of total isolation. The world has been destroyed in whole or part and survivors are few and uncertain. William Brinkley’s The Last Ship is a tale of a fictional Navy ship call the USS Nathan James and it is hard to image any group of people being more isolated. The story begins almost immediately after the Nathan James has launched her nuclear tipped tomahawk missiles from the Arctic Circle at Orel, Russia completely obliterating that city and its people. It quickly becomes apparent that this is but a small portion of a much larger world-wide nuclear exchange that ravages the planet.
Thomas, the ship’s captain, seeks to keep his crew together as they search for answers. All radio and satellite transmissions are non-existent and as the ship’s nuclear fuel runs low, they search for a habitable port. Some crew members however wish to return to America despite the almost certain death and destruction they will encounter there. A group leads a successful mutiny and one third of the crew leaves the Nathan James in smaller ships to head across the Atlantic against all logic.
The ship continues through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the Straits of Acheron. All along the way they find nothing but death, heavy radiation, and nuclear winter. It quickly becomes apparent, that with the exception of a Russian nuclear submarine they encountered earlier, that they may be the only humans left alive on the planet. The crew finally make their way into the South Pacific and by chance find a habitable island where they begin growing crops and attempting to continue the human race through a selective breeding program. Things quickly go wrong on a number of levels.
The Last Ship is a fantastic post-apocalyptic story that is fresh and unique. I cannot think of another story that is similar. The tale is believable and well told. The characters are fully developed and complex. The only criticism I have of the book is that there was a point when the story seemed to take a hard left. Throughout the book, discipline and order were stressed to keep panic and despair in check. Yet, at one point the crew seems to at least partially abandon these tenants which had kept them safe and turn into sex-crazed caricatures who willingly accept a system of forced mass polygamy. This abrupt twist seemed to go against the entire theme of the story and appeared almost as an intentional shock for the reader.
Despite this minor criticism, I very highly recommend this book despite the poorly adapted mini-series based on this book.
I found the author to be very talented in the use of the English language….took a while to get accustomed to his style, but it was well worth the effort….
Interesting story, but the slow tedious writing was a chore to read.
Interesting idea but it is a very verbose book. The writing is convoluted, hard to follow, and one has to reread the sentences often.
I first read this book when it came out more than 30 years ago. I have since read it several more times over the years. The writing is superb…some of the best I have ever come across. The story is well developed and the characters are believable. The premise is a scary one.
Too much technical naval information.
An exceptional author, but somewhat wordy and yet a quite an intelligent novel
This book draws you in when it’s built around what a possible nuclear war can do to this planet, and how it affects the survivors. Very good read.
Great spin on a recurring story theme. Ponders the complex problems that would be prevalent in this situation. Very good characters well developed. Well developed and generally plausible story.
My only objection is the author seemingly had to prove how much smarter he was than me through his vocabulary. The following are from page 2 and are just examples of the type of language used throughout the book:
Deliquescing (= decomposition)
Flocculent (= resembling tufts of wool)
Not that I mind expanding my own vocabulary, but to me it distracted from the story’s flow.
A different kind of story about the end of the world as we know it. You think everyone is home free and then a great surprise….leaves one wanting more to understnd what is next.
Very compelling and informative.
If it had been any slower moving, it would have gone backwards. The first season of the show was pretty good but then deteriorated. The book was nowhere near as entertaining as the show. How often does that happen?
“I have often felt that the captain of a Navy ship is the last absolute monarch left on earth, as close to possessing the divine rights of kings as remains.”
Oh my goodness! I read this book 1. because I like post-apocalyptic books, and 2. because I have the TNT series on DVD and wanted to read the book first.
I agree with all the other reviews I’ve read on the book – this author did not know how to use one word in a sentence if he could use 12 instead. He pontificated. He was verbose, flowery. His writing style reminded me of some of the works from the 1800s and because of that this book feels old-fashioned.
But I persevered because if you’re able to see past that, there’s a good cautionary tale here.
The book was first published in 1988 so the U.S. and Russia were still in the middle of the Cold War. The book is centered around the Captain of the U.S.S. Nathan James, a huge nuclear-armed Naval destroyer staffed by both male and female sailors. It was stationed in the Barents Sea when the nuclear war to end all wars came about between the U.S. and Russia.
Other than the writing style I enjoyed the book. The author was a Commissioned Officer in the Navy during WWII (so he wasn’t a young man when he wrote this book) so the Navy and nautical terms seem correct.
This isn’t a book to read to cheer yourself up. It’s dark and dreary at times – but then the subject matter isn’t puppies and butterflies.
I think the subject matter holds up well seeing as the book was published over thirty years ago. If the author had only been less enamored of his own words…
P.S. I’ve read the synopsis of the series and I don’t think it follows the book too much. I know it’s been re-written and updated but even so, looking at my DVD cases and checking on IMDB it seems a scant amount was taken from this book. I’ll try to remember to update this once I’ve gotten around to watching the series.
I bought this book because I enjoyed the television series. About all they used from the book was it’s title and general concept. I agree with tommbui that the writing was very difficult to follow, and I found myself rereading whole sections. I did finish reading the book, but at the half way point I found myself skipping multiple pages just to get the story to flow better.
Good start. A bit wordy long long long descriptions that should have been vigorously pruned back. Nothing like the TV show. Too falsely “patriotic” about the incredible, wonderful ,characteristics of a US naval captain. Terrible ending–makes little or no sense. Book had already found a great ending point, then for some reason the author blew up that end and wrote some more chapters that seemed glued on. Was he getting paid by the word? Sad. Book needed a better editor.
Very detailed narrative in some places that tends to bog the story down. Overall an interesting story with an interesting concept about how the world turns out and how humans cope.
Hard start, but once you got into it, a great book.
Interesting thought about how to rebuild after global tragedy. Especially the battle of the sexes.
Fell a little flat.
This was not an enjoyable read for me. The author seems more impressed with demonstrating his vocabulary than telling a story and never hesitates to use a three or four syllable word when a simple word would be better. It”s a shame. I liked the TV adaptation of this book and hoped for an even better read.