Dauntless (The Lost Fleet, #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Jan 11, 2017 D.G. rated it really liked it

Shelves: awesome-narration, reviewed, audiobook, science-fiction, re-read

Imagine if you spent 100 years in suspended animation and when you woke up, you find out that you had become a mythical hero to your people. That the discipline in the military you had known was lost and they justified all sort of terrible tactics in your name. And now a twist of fate left you in charge of a whole fleet with the responsibility to take them home.

That's the situation that our hero, John "Black Jack" Geary finds himself in. After his survival pod is found 100-years later, Geary lea Imagine if you spent 100 years in suspended animation and when you woke up, you find out that you had become a mythical hero to your people. That the discipline in the military you had known was lost and they justified all sort of terrible tactics in your name. And now a twist of fate left you in charge of a whole fleet with the responsibility to take them home.

That's the situation that our hero, John "Black Jack" Geary finds himself in. After his survival pod is found 100-years later, Geary learns that everybody he knows is dead and that the Alliance is still fighting the same war in which he supposedly died. After the enemy kills the people in charge, he has to assume command even though that's the last thing he wants.

If there's something you learn in this book is that is that being a hero is a very lonely business. Everybody has a warped view of who he is, and they either worship him, think he's a relic or a danger to the Alliance. Nobody thinks of him as a human being.

That said, he has some people at his side. Co-President Rione, the only civilian in the fleet, is very wary of Geary, but has the potential as a future love interest. I really liked Captains Duellos, Tulev & Carabali, as they are the only ones that seem not to think of him as Black Jack. Capt. Desjani is on his side now but as one of the worshipers, you're afraid that she'll turn on a dime when he makes a mistake.

I'm not a Physics expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems Mr. Campbell has incorporated the constraints of traveling at the speed of light in this series. Incredible as it seems, this slows the action as there isn't instant communication (if a ship is 10 minutes away at the speed of light, it takes 10 minutes to get a message to them). This takes some time to get used to, but you understand later on that this makes Geary even more pivotal to Alliance victory, as he's the only one who knows how to fight taking into account relativistic distortions, instead of going pell-mell as it seems they've been fighting recently.

One thing that bothers me is that there are no descriptions whatsoever. I don't know how old Geary (or anybody) is and what they look like. I know the author probably does this so the reader can imagine the characters however she wants to, but it's still annoying. There's a lot to try to figure out in this world and I wish the appearance of the characters wasn't one of them.

Overall though, awesome start of a series and I'm definitely reading the next book. ...more

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Jun 27, 2010 Chompa rated it really liked it

I'm going to review all five books of "The Lost Fleet" series in one fell swoop here.

I had a love hate relationship with these books. I really enjoyed the space battles and voyage home. Black Jack Geary was an interesting and good character, but at times he'd just annoy the hell out of me with his whiny self-doubt.

The first book was very good. Second book also good. Third started to get me really not liking the whining and self-doubt. Fourth book was about the same and then the fifth book pull ...more

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Dec 08, 2010 Kati rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2010, in-czech, sci-fi

This is exactly the kind of sci-fi I like: set in space and portraying heroes. I wish there was a show like that on TV right now. I really liked John and the way he kept the whole fleet in check while aware of his own shortcomings and of the need to hide them. And I'm really curious about the possibility of a non-human life form they found. I'll definitely read the next book in the series. ...more

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