There are two initial facts about Keep the Last Shot. One, it isn’t a traditional publication but was first found online, and it isn’t a military novel but a lengthy love story.
It’s important to have the facts in mind when you open the book, for it may take a long time before you realize that it actually is “a real nice read”. Perhaps it’s the 405 pages and tedious sentences which explain why it remains an online novel. And don’t expect, like most so-called “well written literature”, this personal story to have all its words precisely chosen; often it comes closer to verbal language.
By using the first-person tense, Keep the Last Shot narrates a sad love story in the tone of writing a diary, chronicling how the main character Xiao Zhuang grows to be a Special Forces soldier.
No one would believe soldiers choose the army because of endless passion to protect their country. Most of them have various other reasons, and in 17 year-old Xiao Zhuang’s case, the motivation comes from his girl putting on military greens. His affection for this girl is so deep and strong that he decides to quit college and embark on a complete different life. As a new recruit in the army, Xiao Zhuang is inevitably cornered, but his philosophy of fighting back no matter how hard helps him grow not only muscles but also inner strength. Later he even exceeds his comrades and is picked to join a special troop dubbed Wolf Teeth .The even tougher training creates an ever harder-skinned Xiao Zhuang. Later, when he is selected to be a UN peacekeeper in Southeast Asia, he agrees to go simply because the girl he loves is a UN peacekeeper there, but it ends up being the place where Xiao Zhuang witnesses her killed in a local conflict.
Any reader as emotional as me will finish the book in tears, not just for Xiao Zhuang’s loss of a loved one, but for understanding that behind the proud glory, there are soldiers sacrificing love and life.
A French lieutenant said after reading the novel that he shares ‘the glory and sorrow”, and an Australian SAS lieutenant said that through this book he saw his own love and life. But for the rest of us who have never served in the army, what do we receive from the story? It’s not just a peek into the mysterious lives of Special Forces soldiers, it is an example of the loyalty to love that can be shared not by only Chinese soldiers but by human beings in general.