John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars is an imaginative history lesson from the creative mind of Roland Hughes. What if human civilization is much older than we have ever realized? What if Adam and Eve were not the first humans, simply some of the first from this cycle of history? What if the Atlantians weren’t destroyed when their city was lost, but have actually been living deep in the ocean in submarines waiting for the right time to reemerge? These questions and many more are what Roland Hughes asks readers to consider and explore.

The year is 2081 and civilization has moved on. John Smith was eleven years old on November 13, 2013, the day the world changed and a new cycle of humanity began. For years, people had been trying to warn of the impending doom, urging the population to stop looking inward and pay attention to the damaging effects they were wreaking on the world, but greed and power were the rulers of the day. Warring countries began to make threats of nuclear war, some even followed through. Finally, everything imploded on November 13^th with an event that changed the very fabric of the world and almost wiped humanity from existence. There are now 12 continents in the world and much of the land that was once inhabited is now unlivable, either laying at the bottom of the ocean or destroyed by radiation. The population of the world is a fraction of what it once was—most of it killed by plague, war, and radiation. The once thriving communication and technological knowledge of the world has been lost as well, so that those who have survived must survive by primitive means. Decades later, the people that are left are too young to know or understand what happened, so they search for survivors old enough to remember. The man they find is John Smith, but will they be willing to heed his warnings and believe his incredible tale?

Roland Hughes’s novel is intriguing and excites the imagination. However, the format Hughes has chosen to tell his tale, though it is unique, is a bit of a concern. John Smith is written in the form of a transcribed interview, a form that has been done with success in short forms, but is rarely used for novel-length works. The choice of form creates a static quality about the book, because everything has already happened and the characters don’t do anything but talk the entire time. This makes it easy to lose attention and hard to read for long lengths of time.

While I do have concerns about the format of the book, these concerns are alleviated by the author’s ability to weave a grand tale. It was the sense of discovery and the need to know what happened that kept me reading. It is obvious that Hughes has done an amazing amount of research on the history and myth of the world, religion, and ancient civilizations. This research has paid off, because he has woven the juiciest bits of information throughout his book. I recommend this book for any science fiction fans, scholars of ancient history and civilizations, and anyone interested in conspiracy theories. They are sure to enjoy this book, because it is unlike any that they will have read Click herebefore. John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars is a unique and interesting tale from an intelligent and creative mind.  I hope to read more from Roland Hughes.