ROC, 1999, $6.99, ISBN 0-451-45686-6, 344 pgs., paperback

The Confederation Army is always looking for a few good men, even if they come via jails. Njanga Yoshitaro had a choice between a mind wipe or frontier duty. On the trip out, he meets Garvin Jaansma, a re-enlistee. That's when the pirates strike...

So begins The Last Legion, a pleasant read for military sci-fi, and one with a couple of strong characters who manage to get in and out of trouble with regularity. The pacing is first rate, the battle scenes imaginative, and the prose up to the task of keeping the plot moving.

The setup is a tad odd, for the Confederation's starting to fray at the edges, and a local warlord has cut off the frontier post from Headquarters. An alien species intrudes, but the war is with the guerrillas on planet, not the aliens. Here, the action reverberates with tinges of any low-level insurgent conflict, only with higher-tech weapons.

All in all, The Last Legion will not be the last Bunch book I read.

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