The Last Marines by Lawrence N. Oliver: two hundred years too late

The Last Marines is a military science fiction novel about two veterans who go into business towing space junk around Mars, get attacked by aliens, survive by hiding in stasis pods, and wake up roughly two hundred years later. The war they stumble into is not theirs, and staying out of it is not an option.

The idea behind it

The hook is a classic one, done with real commitment: the man out of time. Ben Corbin and Sam Garrett were soldiers until they were replaced by robots and drones, which is the quiet indignity at the centre of the book. Automation did not kill them. It made them redundant, and they took the only work left, dragging derelict hulls and debris out of the shipping lanes near Mars.

Then an alien attack on the transport they are travelling on puts them in stasis pods, and the next thing they know, the world has moved on by two centuries. Earth and its colonies are now governed by the Commonwealth of Nations and are at war with a species called the Nineteenth. The aliens who attacked their ship, the Gar Rei, are no longer simply the enemy. Politics does not stand still for two hundred years, and the two men wake into a situation nobody has bothered to explain to them.

That is the engine of the book, and it is a good one. Ben and Sam are not chosen ones. They are two working men with obsolete skills, a shared history and no stake in the current arrangement, and the story gets its tension from their refusal to simply accept the version of events they are handed. Their survival two centuries earlier has made them useful, and useful people in a war are not left alone for long.

The story, spoiler-light

The book opens with the pair running their towing business, which is a good decision because it grounds them as people before anything goes wrong. Their trip back to Earth for replacement service robots is a mundane errand, and the attack that interrupts it is sudden and total. The sequence where they hold out long enough to reach the stasis pods is the best action writing in the novel, and it earns the strangeness that follows.

Waking up is where the story broadens. A changed Earth, a Commonwealth at war, engineered soldiers, self-aware machines and a great deal of interplanetary politics arrive at once, and Ben in particular is sceptical of all of it. He has been told that today’s enemy was yesterday’s ally and that a greater threat is coming, and he does not take any of it on trust.

The plot then becomes a mix of investigation and combat, with Ben trying to find out what is actually happening while being pulled towards the role of ambassador to the Gar Rei Jhi. The book has a lighter side too: the robots and machines in this universe have personalities, and some of them are funny. That tone keeps the military material from becoming grim, and it is one of the more distinctive things about the novel.

What makes it science fiction

This is military science fiction with a space opera frame, and it wears its influences on its sleeve. There are marines, mechs, cyborgs, AIs, alien species and a great deal of hardware, and the book is comfortable with all of it. Where it separates itself from the crowd is its interest in obsolescence. The premise that machines replaced the soldiers is not just backstory here. It is the reason the two leads are free to be forgotten, and it gives the story a melancholy edge that pure action fiction tends to lack.

The stasis-pod device is used well, too. Two hundred years is long enough for the world to change completely and short enough that the reader can follow what happened. The Commonwealth, the Nineteenth, the uneasy alliance with the Gar Rei Jhi: all of it is new to Ben, and the reader learns it alongside him, which keeps the exposition from feeling like a lecture.

Who should read it, and who should give it a miss

• Read it if you like a man-out-of-time premise and want it played straight.
• Read it if you enjoy military science fiction with politics and a sense of humour.
• Read it if you want a series to start rather than a standalone to finish.
• Give it a miss if you want literary prose. The writing is functional and the pace matters more than the sentences.
• Give it a miss if a slow first third puts you off. The setup takes its time before the plot accelerates.

Where to start, and what to read next

The Last Marines is the first book, so this is the right place to begin. It is an independent and relatively recent work, which means it does not have the shelf history of the classics, but it does have a clear premise and a lead pair worth following across more than one volume.

If you want more in the same register, the obvious comparisons are the military science fiction staples: Starship Troopers for the soldier’s-eye view, The Forever War for what prolonged service does to a person, and Old Man’s War for the recruitment angle. If you liked the political side of this one more than the combat, the Expanse novels are the natural next step.

The verdict

The Last Marines is a solid, well-pitched military science fiction novel with a genuinely good hook and a pair of leads who carry it. It is not trying to reinvent the genre, and it knows what it is: a story about two obsolete men dropped into a war whose rules they were never taught. The book is at its best when it lets Ben be sceptical, and at its weakest when it has to explain the politics quickly.

Read it for the premise and the relationship between Ben and Sam. Go in forgiving of the prose, and it will hold your attention all the way to the end.

Frequently asked questions

Is The Last Marines the first book in a series?

Yes. It is the opening volume, so there is no earlier book to read first.

What is the premise in one line?

Two redundant veterans survive an alien attack in stasis and wake two hundred years later, in the middle of a war that has already made them useful again.

Is it hard science fiction?

No. It is military science fiction and space opera, driven by characters, politics and action rather than by physics.