Currently listening to The Lost Fleet: Victorious, by Jack Campbell nee John G. Hemry.
Very, very disappointed. Wasn't a HUGE fan of the earlier Lost Fleet books, as there just seems to be something that smells a little funny to me behind the author's world view (at least how it's presented in the books). That was forgivable . . . the repetitive nature of the action, however, as the fleet kept meeting Syndics, killing them, and moving on . . . that was not forgivable. And this new book reads like Campbell or Hemry or whatever has gotten tired of the Syndics and wants to clear them from the stage for some new bad guys. No suspense, no real sense of mystery. Just jumping from plot point to plot point, seemingly trying to move on . . .
So, wasn't a big fan before, and this book is not helping that any. It's got some decent space battles, again, and I'm ok with some of the characters . . . but then, other characters are really sadly flat, and some of the command decisions Geary and the other characters make are so 'speed of plot', and would get them SO court-martialled in any logical military.
So, Lost Fleet: Victorious . . . I'm going to give it a 5+ with a re-roll.
I agree that these novels started to get a bit "samey" as things went on and the military world view is fairly whacky.
ReplyDeleteHowever I did appreciate at least the first book for the relatively realistic space travel and combat. It is fairly unusual that you see things like the information delay as ships appear from the gates and approach each other etc.