Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet Series
The following is a short summary of the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell (the pen name of John G. Hemry):
The Alliance has been at war for nearly a century with the Syndicate—an opposing group of human colonized planets. The war has dragged on; the Alliance has lost most of its deep knowledge of tactics and relies upon aggression. Enter John ‘Blackjack’ Geary, a man who fought the first battle of the war and found in hyper-sleep on the verge of the Alliance’s first foray into Syndic homeworld territory.
Betrayed and left to command, Geary has to get the ‘lost’ fleet back home to Alliance space. He’s aided by Captain Desjani, captain of his flagship Dauntless, and co-president Victoria Rione, but has to battle a leadership born of aggression rather than military prowess.
Okay, mild spoilers as I summarize my overall thoughts and opinions of the novels:
I felt the first and last novels were the weakest of the series. In Dauntless, Geary is as flat as the other characters in the book. Over time and throughout the series, the characters evolved and took on dimensions, picking up quickly in the second book. The final novel pushed beyond the end of what I thought should have been the logical end of the series. There were open threads that could have been resolved in a new arc. That said, the final book rushed to complete all the threads and felt both compressed and not quite fulfilling.
The enemy throughout the series was flat and predictable. On the one hand, Geary is original and comes up with old and outdated tactics to respond to the enemy. On the other hand, the Syndics are faceless and have zero knowledge of historical tactics and an inability to adapt. Even at the end, the Syndics act almost predictably relieved at being beaten up by Geary.
I enjoyed the tactics and the larger sweeps of strategic decisions, while I don’t think Campbell gave the enemy as much credit and thought into responding. Toward the end, it got repetitive, with Geary out-thinking the enemy at the last second, losing a few ships, and winning the day. I enjoyed the battles, and it was just right that the series was the length that it was. This differs somewhat from a longer series like David Weber’s Honorverse, where every novel has an arc, but not a similar goal (i.e. to get home to Alliance space) in each book.
The BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) — If you enjoy space battles and more realism than other military space opera, this is the series for you.
The Good:
There were a few things Campbell surprised me with—the women in the novel were more fleshed out than the main character himself. Geary is basically a self-righteous tabula rasa (he had descendants he worried about, but no friends or love interests he mourned). Desjani was born and raised within the Alliance Fleet. Rione was born and raised for politics. At a personal level, I thought these women were interesting. I was also surprised that Campbell introduced new elements and piled on additional worries for the main character. I also enjoyed the realism of the battles in terms of light delay and relativistic speeds.
The Bad:
Campbell’s stereotyping was pretty ham-fisted. I’m not speaking of racial or gender, but job or entity. The Syndic CEOs were characteristically the same in every battle and in every encounter. Campbell walked this back by using a Syndic prisoner as a foil, but it either didn’t work for me or was too late into the story. Instead, the prisoner became an intel source to feed Geary and the reader. Geary’s view of politicians was uniform (in that they all sucked) lacked nuance. Geary (and thus Campbell) never acknowledged that Rione did some impressive things in the background to rally support around Geary when it was necessary. Geary also displayed some hard criticality early in the series, but by the second half, the political arena became a parody.
The Ugly:
John “Blackjack” Geary never truly evolved for me as a character. The personal stakes were almost never raised beyond the first book—get the fleet home—but Geary himself never faced higher and higher stakes. Each battle was a test to pass, but he never faced failure or personal limitations. He lost ships and captains and personnel, but the losses never seemed to affect him deeply. Near the end of the series, Geary still couldn’t be bothered to know the flag bridge crewmen’s name (battle stations personnel only change if there is a casualty or they’ve transferred). On one hand, it’s the mark of leader, but in terms of character arc, it was flat. Admittedly, it is hard even for me to do this in military science fiction as we view military personnel like ourselves as professionals.
Your Thoughts
If you’ve read Lost Fleet series, what did you think? What was your favorite? What are you reading now? Leave a comment or send me an email.
Personal notes:
I’m over a quarter away through the major rewrite of Rise of Avalon. I’ve written/revised another 40,000 words for the month. So far, it looks like Rise of Avalon will be my longest book yet. I am on track to have that finished by the end of April if all goes well.