Gunpowder & Embers

Last Judgment's Fire, Book 1

By: John Ringo, Kacey Ezell, Christopher L. Smith

Narrated by: Matt Godfrey

In the smoking ruins of our world, will the struggle for yesterday's technology spark tomorrow's global war?

A new postapocalyptic novel, in which a young cowboy claims his destiny—and tries to prevent a catastrophic war—from New York Times best-selling author John Ringo, Kacey Ezell, and Christopher L. Smith.

Thirty years ago, the world ended. Giant electrovoric ants and pterodons came through a rift in space-time, millions of humans died, and that was that. Thirty years later, humanity has rebuilt … to an extent. Human ingenuity has provided some creative solutions to life without electricity, but most folks survive at the subsistence level, farming to keep themselves and their families fed.

Chuck Gordon never thought he'd have to leave his family's farm. The simple life of a rancher was enough for him. A dying stranger proved him wrong. Now, he’s on the road of destiny, accompanied by a mystic warrior monk, a beautiful dragon tamer, a runaway cultist, and a mysterious drunken lecher, all of them searching for the key to reclaiming humanity’s future and past. Each of them carrying a single spark of hope.

But will that hope be enough to light the beacons of freedom once again? Or will they face the next century in bondage to the last century’s technology?

©2019 John Ringo, Kacey Ezell, and Christopher L. Smith (P)2024 Recorded Books

Intriguing story, cast and dragons!

I’m rooting for Chuck and the folks who join him on his journey. I love Jasmine and her dragon, too! So many adventures and strong female characters!

can't wait for the next one

More than pleasantly surprised by this book. I love how Ringo can get you to vest so much I to the characters. Admittedly, after reading the last book of the Looking Glass series just before this, the character archetypes in this book definitely had anime scenes going through my head with this book.

Ok, not great

The story was ok. Nothing I can point out, but I really didn’t care about most of the characters. Only the “drunk” was interesting. Most of the characters seemed to be water in a hose, there was only one way for them to go.

Every girl about the same age was someone the MC was interested in. It almost felt like it was going to be a harem novel at one point since there were several female characters.

I stepped away from the book due to some cringe at one point and came back to it several days later. The story still didn’t draw me in.

Unique story

Started a little slow, give it a few hours
Interesting characters, a little predictable, but worth the journey 🙂

Post Apocalyptic Cowboys, with dragons?

Seems to be a large divergence from "Classic Ringo". While listening I felt like I had missed an earlier book or something. It's like you jump in in the middle of things, where "Something" happened to the entire planet earlier, and now there are parasitic characters that are part of a hive mind, somehow Dragons were introduced to the environment, and humanity is primarily back to steam power, with a smattering of residual high tech equipment scattered around for those educated people who know how to use it.

Like I said, it's pretty different for a Ringo book.. not "bad", just "different". I'm attributing that to the two Co-Authors that seem to have done most of the writing.
If there's another volume in this series later on, I'll buy it. I'm interested to see where this goes once it's got its legs under it.