The lost fleet

by Jack Campbell

299 pages

English language

Published April 17, 2008 by Ace Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-441-01567-2

(70 reviews)

Badly damaged and low on supplies, the Alliance Fleet is raiding Syndic mines for raw materials-and Captain "Black Jack" Geary hopes they can continue to remain one step ahead of their enemies. But the Syndics are the least of Geary's worries when he learns of the existence of aliens with the power to annihilate the human race.

4 editions

ridel reviewed The lost fleet by Jack Campbell (An Ace book)

Review of 'The lost fleet' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Great news! Valiant continues to deliver exactly what the previous Lost Fleet novels delivered: clever protagonists to cheer for, lots of action and victories, all wrapped up in a well-thought out military organization and a greater science fiction setting. We finally get interactions with Syndics that are worth recalling and foreshadowing of the greater battles to come.

Sadly, everything that was a weakness continues: the novels are just a bit too short, the antagonists are one-dimensional, undeveloped or incompetent, and there's still very little suspense as there's insufficient foreshadowing.

At this point, I've made my peace with the weaknesses of these fun, easy to read novels. Valiant is better than average, as Geary does have a match in the conspirators amongst the fleet. I don't know if Jack Campbell is intentional about this, but I view the Lost Fleet series as an internal conflict first, with the Syndics being mostly …

ridel reviewed The lost fleet by Jack Campbell (Ace science fiction)

Review of 'The lost fleet' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

As the third novel in the series, I think you know what you're in for from Jack Campbell. Everything that was a weakness continues: the novels are just a bit too short, the antagonists are one-dimensional feckless incompetents, and a lack of foreshadowing means that there's insufficient suspense. On the bright side, the protagonists are sympathetic, clever, and they win. It's a feel good novel with plenty of action and few flaws to be found in its primary goal of describing a military science fiction setting.

I'd normally give such a novel 3 stars, but Courageous does something different... and it shows how world-building can be shown without info dumps, and how very small changes can have cascading impacts. I'm also impressed by how much of the setting we're exposed to despite the Alliance Fleet being restricted in where they can go, as well as the viewpoint being restricted to Fleet Commander Geary. It's a pleasure to see and while I wish the villains can level up, I would be doing the novel a disservice to give it a mediocre rating.

Recommended.

I am not referring to the possible aliens and gates, but rather the revelation of how the Alliance's hero worship and focus on aggression resulted in a shift of talent wanting to captain Battecruisers, which in turn resulted in an effective policy of weeding out good people and protecting the idiots as they're on the Battleships. This goes a long way to explaining the current Alliance situation, and combined with the many organizational reasons (explored previously, but the core principle is that the navy has no organizational memory because they keep dying), showcases the tremendous subtle world-building that went into the Lost Fleet before page 1 of Dauntless was written.

Lovely stuff.