The Lost Fleet: Courageous

It’s been a long while since I really got into a series until this one. Great space war action, believable characters and an engaging plot line. There‘s almost no part of this series that I don‘t like. Perhaps knowing that it will go on for several more volumes but this is a double edged sword as I don‘t want it to end and yet I want to see the climax.
Would like to know more about this universe that Hemry has created. How did the Syndic empire come to be, how did the alliance. Where is Earth in all this? Is this an alternate universe or this one, far in the future?
The reader, Christian Rummel is great. He does female voices very well and accents as well. Very believable. At first I thought only Scott Brick could do justice to this series but Rummel grows on you and you realize he is into this story and a very good actor. Cannot wait for the 4th in this series in June. I might have to buy the hardcover.

If you like hard science fiction in the great tradition then this series Worth every penny.

The books (1-3) are quite good and have held my interest. I will be getting book four as soon as I can. However, I sometimes wish Black Jack would just get on with life as he is in the present and get over his past, and reputation.
The narrator is in a class by himself. The tone changes and accent changes between characters leave no doubt as to who has the dialog, and the whole story comes alive through his characterizations - well done!

I haven't been this excited about a series of books since Clancy's first three books.

Excellent series, has just the right amount of action and personal plots. The narrator does an excellent job on par with Scott Brick. It would be nice to see a little more background information on the two warring factions. Recomend for all ages.

Christian Rummel did a good job narrating this story. Great space battle scenes and over all a good military Sci Fi. Black Jack and the lost fleet keep getting into impossible situation but do manage to get them selves out of it. A bit of repetition was getting a bit annoying but over all a good fast pace story. This story finished with a cliff hanger so can not wait for the next in the series.

I am very intrigued by this series, and the reader is very good. There are some problems though.


Each book in the series assumes the reader never read any of the preceding books. You often get descriptions of systems you already have had explained to you over, and over again. The sections dealing with his personal life is very interesting, but the continuing theme of hero worship puts a foreshadow on everything in the book. If he starts thinking about how he can't turn into Black Jack, that probably means he's going to stomp the Syndic fleet into a mud hole.

This book also has problems with the commander being too perfect. Its like the commander does everything you expect him to do. For this reason he doesn't have a human side to him, not really anyways. He's always minding his honor, and doing everything exactly the way it should be done. Its just not very realistic, and this is brought out by the irony that the main character keeps telling himself over and over he's not perfect. Even worse, when things do go wrong Black Jack can't be blamed for the failure. He's invincible and unfallable...


Now onto the good. The space battles are nicely done, if you've been loaded with a pretty good 3D graphics card from the womb they come out pretty handsomely. The fleet drama between the characters does wonders to make the plot very interesting and dynamic. You get to see them fail, and then disciplined which is gratifying for the reader. Anything involving Captain Falco is absolutely hilarious. This is only intensified because the reader makes him sound like quagmire from Family guy. I'm just waiting for a giggidy giggidy to be thrown in for good measure where I would lose control and risk a stroke.


Thats about it for night, i'll see the series through for sure. I just wish the author would of thought it out a little bit more. Some minor tweaks could have removed some of the more glaring inconsistencies.

My only issue, and its a major one, is the author repeats things in all 4 books. This doesn't sound that bad at first but he repeats A LOT! He explains how the ship captains use a virtual conference room, the importance of the hypernet key, how Geary was found floating suspended for 100 years, and the list goes on. I like what one reviewer said "any reader who cannot look in the front of the book and see this is book 4 in a series of 5 deserves to be confused... the repeated content just makes the story more tiring and comes off as "filler" so the book meets a specific page count. "
Amen brother!

I think the author is intent on destroying the whole series with his tiresomely overdone, repetitive, repetitive (did I mention repetitive?) device of the Co-President being paranoid about Geary being or becoming the Black Jack of legend. I had hoped that after overdoing it monumentally in the second book he might give it a rest in this third, but no. This is really the worst of anything overdone I've ever run across in any published work.

I started this book with the expectation that the 3rd book would be the last. I was wrong. There are only 3 available in audio, but there are 6 books planned in this series. The 4th installment will be released to paperback on June 24th, 2008. I don't know when the audio version is due.

The story is still interesting, but it's getting a little tired. We need some closure. Once that happens, I think there would be a strong interest in other stories set in the same universe.

Originally posted at FanLit.

In Courageous, the third book in Jack Campbell’s LOST FLEET series, the Alliance fleet is still wandering from star system to star system, trying to get back home by some path the Syndics won’t predict. It seems like a hopeless situation, but the legendary Black Jack Geary, who’s been revived out of cold sleep after his suicidal mission 100 years ago, is just the hero they need. He’s proved himself so capable so far that some of his commanders want to help him secure a dictatorship when they get home, and others just want to get rid of him. Geary could decide to be a dictator, get rid of the people who are causing him problems and do things the way he thinks they should be done, but then how is he different from their enemies?

Geary isn’t as confident in his own abilities, however. He’s still uncomfortable in this new military where the pursuit of self-glory is tolerated and the best commanders are put on the ships most likely to be destroyed. No wonder discipline is shattered and the war has been going on for so long. Geary is starting to understand how the Alliance fleet got this way. He’s also learning more about their enemies — the Syndics — and the possibility that an unknown alien race may be manipulating both the Alliance and the Syndics. A scary thought.

Meanwhile Geary’s lover, Victoria Rione, who used to be reserved, reasonable, and icy, has turned into a fickle drama queen. This subplot is tedious and exasperating and it feels contrived to elevate the tension. It’s clear that Campbell is setting things up for a romantic change of venue for Black Jack, though our hero isn’t aware of it yet. After listening to Victoria rant and rave for so long, readers will be eager for a change.

I love the hero of the LOST FLEET series — Captain Geary is awesome and Campbell has done a great job with his development over the series so far. Geary is what keeps me reading LOST FLEET because I don’t much like anyone else in the book, or at least I don’t know them well enough to like them.

At this point, though, I’m starting to wonder why the series needs six books. It could have been cut in half. The truth is that even though I like hanging out with Black Jack Geary, not much new happens in Courageous. They’re wandering around at the beginning and they’re still wandering around at the end. In the last chapter of Courageous, Geary and Victoria make some really wild speculations about what might be happening with the alleged alien race and though I thought it was far-fetched that they would jump to those conclusions, I want to know what happens. Campbell leaves us with a cliffhanger that made me glad I’d already downloaded the next book, Valiant.