Monday, 17 September 2012

Been reading: Jack Campbell - The Lost Fleet


   The war between The Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds had been going on for over a century, growing ever more vicious,  with neither side quite able to deliver the knockout blow.
 So finally the Alliance gathered up every ship it could spare for a bold strike at the heart of Syndic space.
 And walked straight into a trap.
 Outnumbered, battered and cut off, with their senior officers treacherously murdered and their new commander a dazed survivor rescued from a hundred year sleep in an escape pod, the Alliance Fleet looks to be doomed .
  However, the man in the escape pod was none other than the legendary "Black Jack" Geary and if he's anywhere near as good as he's supposed to be, he might just be able to get them all home.

  I was poking about my local library and picked the first one of these up on a whim. As soon as I finished it, I went back and got the next one. And the one after that, and the one after that.
  Does that tell you everything you need to know?
 You can probably guess that I am quite impressed with this series. Now let me try and explain why.

    The story is that old military trope of a force trapped behind enemy lines, trying to fight their way home. Hell, the ancient Greeks invented that one with Xenophon's "Anabasis". 
  Naturally the enemy are not the only problem Captain John Geary has to deal with.
 In one of fate's nastier jokes, "Black Jack's"' desperate last stand a century earlier has been held up as a shining example for Alliance captains ever since, to the point where reckless courage is considered  the only thing required to win battles and the fleet now has all the strategic awareness  of drunken Visigoths.
 Or to put it another way, Geary's first task is to teach his crews not to charge headlong at the enemy as soon as they come into sight.
 The thing that horrifies him the most is discovering that an awful lot of his force honestly consider him an agent of divine intervention.
"Black Jack" is a legend. 
"Black Jack" is invincible...
 "Black Jack" is just the man to kick out those useless politicians back home and lead The Alliance into victory once and for all. 
 John Geary, meanwhile, is painfully aware that he's just a regular Navy officer and the moment he starts thinking he really is "Black Jack Geary" is when he's liable to become a monster.

 Then there's the officers plotting against him, the officers plotting to put him on the throne, the officers who still think a bareknuckle brawl is the best way to win a space-battle and the alarming discovery that The Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds have been manipulated by a third party, currently unknown but almost certainly not human.
 As if the poor sod doesn't have enough on his plate, there's the  two women in his life.
 Victoria Rione, Alliance Senator, is cold-blooded, hard-headed and has openly stated that if "Black Jack" Geary ever poses a clear and present danger to The Alliance she will kill him herself.
 Meanwhile Captain Tanya Desjani is one of those who thinks John Geary is an agent of the gods.
 These two are John's closest allies and they hate each other with a passion . 

   I enjoyed this series a lot. Jack Campbell keeps his battles plausible without the mathematics making my head hurt too much. He's also made John Geary the officer you'd want in the big chair when the missiles are coming in hard and fast.
 Well worth a read. 

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