Rating: 
Summary: These are sailors, not Shakespeareans....
Review: What I did like about Brinkley's "The Last Ship", is his worship and veneration of women. The 'climactic' love scene in the book is one of the most poetic and sensual I have ever read--a beautiful picture of the joys of a woman...but....sailors on American missile destroyers do not speak with the forced Shakespearean elocution that Brinkley portrays in the book. This unrealistic narrative, and his frequent philosophical musings made me wonder where his editor was. The story and imagery were good, if you did not miss it while skipping over the profundities and absurd dialogs.
Rating: 
Summary: Post-Apocalyptic Literature That's Actually Literature!
Review: William Brinkley's stunning post-apocalyptic novel should, perhaps, become the standard by which all other P-A literature is to be evaluated. It has every stereotype, every non-stereotype, and, most important of all, it IS literature - unlike so many of pulp-style novels in this genre. Brinkley's language is a true pleasure to read, much like Nabokov's or Joyce's, and the dialogue is still realistic and believable.The story is told out of chronology, starting with landfall on an island as the crew of a United States Naval Missile Cruiser searches for habitable land. Although the apocalypse is only hinted at, we soon rewind to the moments directly leading up to the launch (in which our ship plays a role) and the crew's journey away from the shattered world in a search for life and a place to land. They must deal with Russian (Soviet) submarines, mutiny, and the usual dangers of people at sea. As the cover blurb indicates, the odd element in this book is the inclusion of women. Many post-apocalyptic books include women only as tertiary or minor characters; in The Last Ship, the captain (wisely) turns over a major decision to the women on board his ship. The book becomes as much a character study in gender as it does a delightful read or harrowing journey through a nuclear wasteland. The experiment works, and Brinkley manages to present us with something original, interesting, and accessable. I would recommend this novel over many others in the post-apocalyptic genre. The sheer pleasure I get from reading the language - and my interest in the subject matter - will keep me coming back for many future re-readings.
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