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brettt's review
2.0
Jay Allan's "Blood on the Stars" series about an interstellar war between the nominally democratic Confederation and the autocratic, vaguely Romanesque Union began in 2016 with Duel in the Dark. The Confederation battleship Dauntless, needing significant repairs and carrying a crew in need of significant rest and downtime, is sent back from the main defense line for maintenance, crew rotation and time off. Unfortunately for the ship, crew and Captain Tyler Barron, a distress call en route uncovers a covert Union operation to attack mining worlds. But the political and military leadership fear the attacks are a feint and won't release anyone to help Barron and the Dauntless. They'll have to handle the problem alone, and even if it is just a feint it may be more than the stressed ship and crew can manage.
Allan's writing is better than average, and he does a decent job of showing space battles and giving the Dauntless an air of exhausted desperation. He uses the semi-Roman culture of the Union forces to give their commander some dimension that "enemy commanders" don't always have in space opera. But he's treading ground that's well-marked -- gone over time and time again by authors able to offer something different, some tweak or another that makes their version of the Hopeless Battle Snatched From the Jaws of Defeat at the Very Last Minute something that sticks with the reader. Allan doesn't bring that tweak, either in Duel or in any of the three or four subsequent novels where the Dauntless crew is in the very same Lonely Fight for Their Lives.
So in the end, there's no real reason to read Duel instead of re-reading one of those better space-opera tales. And probably not much reason to read the string of "Blood on the Stars" books that follow it, either.
Original available here.
Allan's writing is better than average, and he does a decent job of showing space battles and giving the Dauntless an air of exhausted desperation. He uses the semi-Roman culture of the Union forces to give their commander some dimension that "enemy commanders" don't always have in space opera. But he's treading ground that's well-marked -- gone over time and time again by authors able to offer something different, some tweak or another that makes their version of the Hopeless Battle Snatched From the Jaws of Defeat at the Very Last Minute something that sticks with the reader. Allan doesn't bring that tweak, either in Duel or in any of the three or four subsequent novels where the Dauntless crew is in the very same Lonely Fight for Their Lives.
So in the end, there's no real reason to read Duel instead of re-reading one of those better space-opera tales. And probably not much reason to read the string of "Blood on the Stars" books that follow it, either.
Original available here.
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