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3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Great military sci-fi. I can't wait to see where the fleet goes next.
I listened to this and the narrator was was pretty ok. I'm not really big into reading/listening to space sci-fi, I normally lose interest in the tedious details of how something works. I want action, plot and fancy kit, I don't want tedious, exhaustive details of how fancy kit works. I was, therefore, very pleased there wasn't too much techy stuff and surprised that I finished this quite quickly.
It was an enjoyable 3 stars for me. It would have got more had it not been quite so preachy, teachy, explainy. And it wasn't so much fancy kit explainy, more morals and honour explainy.
By all means have morals and honour, they're very good and I approve, bravo, clap, clap, but please don't keep explaining it all at me.
I'm sure there were good things intended by the author. I'm a bit of a sucker for 'turn events around and win the day' stories but this missed it a bit for me with ALL the explaining and reasoning. It made me want to huff a bit like Kevin the teenager.
And as for vice president wossername. Ugh open the airlock and boot the irritating woman out. They're doing important stuff on the deck (?) with oncoming baddies and she wants to question everything. I know she was a device to allow explanation for the reader etc but honestly as if civilian would barge into the HQ of a combat situation and then start questioning things. You're a civilian, piss off and stay out the way and let the experts do their job. It's like walking into ER and stopping the nurses and docs as they're racing to save lives and demanding they stop and explain exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it. Well it is to my mind.
I liked that there was no romance in this, I think it would have been meh (and possibly explained in detail. A lot.)
Anyway I didn't hate it. I might listen to the next one or I might not, I'm not sure yet. Or, I might have a space adventure elsewhere, who knows. It'll be a surprise.
It was an enjoyable 3 stars for me. It would have got more had it not been quite so preachy, teachy, explainy. And it wasn't so much fancy kit explainy, more morals and honour explainy.
By all means have morals and honour, they're very good and I approve, bravo, clap, clap, but please don't keep explaining it all at me.
I'm sure there were good things intended by the author. I'm a bit of a sucker for 'turn events around and win the day' stories but this missed it a bit for me with ALL the explaining and reasoning. It made me want to huff a bit like Kevin the teenager.
And as for vice president wossername. Ugh open the airlock and boot the irritating woman out. They're doing important stuff on the deck (?) with oncoming baddies and she wants to question everything. I know she was a device to allow explanation for the reader etc but honestly as if civilian would barge into the HQ of a combat situation and then start questioning things. You're a civilian, piss off and stay out the way and let the experts do their job. It's like walking into ER and stopping the nurses and docs as they're racing to save lives and demanding they stop and explain exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it. Well it is to my mind.
I liked that there was no romance in this, I think it would have been meh (and possibly explained in detail. A lot.)
Anyway I didn't hate it. I might listen to the next one or I might not, I'm not sure yet. Or, I might have a space adventure elsewhere, who knows. It'll be a surprise.
adventurous
challenging
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I'm not used to science fiction books just yet, hence my lower rating. A lot of the vocabulary was hard for me to grasp but aside from that, I did find the overall plot of the war between both sides intriguing.
It's been a long time since I've been so disappointed to finish a book because I couldn't read what happened next until I got the next one. This book was extremely difficult to put down, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes military sci fi specifically of the space combat genre. As the blurb on the dust jacket intimates: if you are the type who enjoyed the Honor Harrington series, this book is perfect. I was sucked in from the beginning all the way to the end, and can't wait to read more of the series.
Extremely quick read. Best parts have been the time-delayed spaced battles. Pretty straight-forward plot thus far, nothing exciting.
After reading the whole Lost Fleet series, I honestly couldn't tell you where one book ends and the next begins, so I'll give my overall thoughts. If you're just planning to read the first book, don't expect any kind of satisfying ending.
Okay, so let's start with the premise: a sleeping hero is awakened to save the Alliance Fleet from the brink of defeat at the hands of an enemy. Over the hundred years the war has taken place, both sides have let any sense of honour bleed away, and now executing prisoners and bombarding civilian targets is perfectly acceptable. I can see how this would come to be over a long war, and I'm glad the book doesn't condone these actions in any way. The bigger problem is that every single tactical braincell of the fleet officers has seemingly been blown out into the vacuum of space in favour of all-out attacks and mindless aggression. This is absolutely laughable if you think about it for more than two seconds. Anyone with an internet connection just need look at the difference in casualties between the battles fought a hundred years ago and the current ones, and think "maybe we're doing something wrong here." Seriously? No captain before now has decided to tap in one of the old formations into one of the fancy combat simulators and run the numbers? Sure, buddy, if you say so.
So let's talk about those space battles. They should be the highlight of the series with it being military sci-fi, right? And yes, they probably are. But that's not exactly a compliment. I really enjoy the considerations of how relativistic speeds affect combat, with the time delays and sensor distortion. It's also cool to see how huge formations can work together in 3D space to maximise the damage they inflict on their enemies. But with an enormous fleet comes a pretty serious problem: with so many ships, the reader doesn't give a damn about 99% of them. When they explode, we don't care. Just another generic heroic-sounding ship name we'll never see again.
The other problem, which I'll come to more later, is how the battles are described. The same bland descriptors are used over and over and over again. Ships blow apart. Hell lances tear into hulls. Missiles explode. I am so bored. We never see any of this damage from the perspective of a character; it's always described from Geary's combat displays. The flagship, Dauntless, is hit repeatedly throughout the series, but it might as well get through good as new. All we're told is numbers of dead, not even any names. Occasionally a hell lance battery will go offline, but this doesn't affect the battles at all. And because we're from the limited POV of the fleet commander, we don't even get to see characters doing anything, just him telling Captain Desjani what to do, for her to order around nameless bridge officers. Short of sticking Geary on a space station to give out orders, this is as far as you can distance us from the action. This is not how you get us excited. I should be hearing damage alarms scream, sweating as the bridge heats up from particle beams ravaging the environmental systems, watching chunks of debris rip through the bulkheads and decapitate sailors before anyone can even react. Show me crewmembers struggling to free their friends trapped by closing pressure doors. Show me air blasting out of the bridge and everyone having to slam on their helmets before the air's sucked from their lungs. Just give me something—anything—to show me that war is happening.
And next, let's talk about the characters, if we can even call them that. There are three types: people who worship Geary as the second coming of Christ (sorry, sent by the Living Stars), , those who hate him with cartoonish vitrial for absolutely no reason other than the author wanted them to, and politicians. These characters have maybe one personality trait each. We never learn anything about them that isn't related to their naval career. We never get a single physical description, not even of the love interests. These characters are not people—they are tools to make the plot happen, and nothing more. The only arcs we get are them learning that maybe war crimes aren't such a good idea, and that Geary can do no wrong and the sooner they accept it the better. And because the characters are stale pieces of toast, that leads to...
The most agonising romance subplot I've read in years. The only thing it has going for it is that it isn't actually problematic, at least not that I'm aware of. Our two lovely women that complete the love triangle are Captain Tanya Desjani, who has the personality of "hero-worshipper," and Co-President Victoria Rione, who has the self-proclaimed personality of "bitchy." Geary gets with Rione first, and I feel like there is the beginning of an interesting character here: a politician who's watched the senate and the navy become more and more hostile towards each other as the war's dragged on, a wife who's lost her husband to a Syndic labour camp who actually turns out to be alive. There are definitely some interesting emotions to tap into here, and a few times throughout the series we almost get there. But unfortunately the whole thing's spoiled by Rione behaving like an angsty fifteen-year-old for 95% of the series, especially after her relationship with Geary ends. Ah yes, this middle-aged woman, who ended the relationship herself, might i add, talks to Desjani like a jealous teenager, and refuses to even say her name.
And our other love interest, Captain Desjani, just doesn't have a personality other than "loves to kill Syndics," so there isn't as much to say here. But fear not, once Geary becomes involved with Rione, she acts just as petty and immature as Rione does to her. So much of the later books is just these two scrapping. I honestly don't know how I got through it. I come to adult military sci-fi for cool battles and the philosophy of warfare, not a love triangle that makes me want to take a small, sharp object and plunge it repeatedly into my ear canals.
Okay, let's try and speed this up. Worldbuilding. don't worry, this paragraph will have as many words as the author decides to spend on the subject in his novels. Despite travelling through about twenty star systems, we don't get a single interesting detail about any of the planets, barring one in the last book where the Syndics have a skiing resort on an ice world. Uniforms and changing fashions are mentioned, but never described. We're told about all the different classes of ships, but they're never described. We have a religion which every single member of the fleet appears to follow, each believing the exact same interpretation, and still almost none of it's described. Are you noticing a theme here?
And finally, because as an aspiring writer I can't not mention it, this author's general craft is just not there yet. This series takes window-pane prose to the absolute extreme. Think Sanderson is boring? Try reading this. As mentioned above, literally NOTHING is described. That is, except the facial expressions. Oh no, you won't go two pages without the clunky way the author tags his dialog to convey emotions there's no way Geary could pick up on. Either that, or using obnoxious dialog tags that add nothing to what's being said. Seriously, "said" is fine, folks. Please use it. Or better yet, don't tag your dialog when we know who's speaking already. So much of the series is just elling, telling telling. And each book we get told the same things again. Must have been five times we got an explanation of how up and down is measured in a solar system.
So why did I finish the series, you might ask? Simple. For all the problems it has, it's really damn easy to read. Seriously, I ploughed through these audiobooks faster than anything else I've read this year. The space battles have helped me figure out a lot about what does and doesn't work; I recognised a bunch of the problems here in my first novel. So if you have some time to spare and you just want to get through some head-empty, easy-to-read military sci-fi, by all means read the series. But you can get better space battles elsewhere, and that's probably why you want to read this in the first place.
Okay, so let's start with the premise: a sleeping hero is awakened to save the Alliance Fleet from the brink of defeat at the hands of an enemy. Over the hundred years the war has taken place, both sides have let any sense of honour bleed away, and now executing prisoners and bombarding civilian targets is perfectly acceptable. I can see how this would come to be over a long war, and I'm glad the book doesn't condone these actions in any way. The bigger problem is that every single tactical braincell of the fleet officers has seemingly been blown out into the vacuum of space in favour of all-out attacks and mindless aggression. This is absolutely laughable if you think about it for more than two seconds. Anyone with an internet connection just need look at the difference in casualties between the battles fought a hundred years ago and the current ones, and think "maybe we're doing something wrong here." Seriously? No captain before now has decided to tap in one of the old formations into one of the fancy combat simulators and run the numbers? Sure, buddy, if you say so.
So let's talk about those space battles. They should be the highlight of the series with it being military sci-fi, right? And yes, they probably are. But that's not exactly a compliment. I really enjoy the considerations of how relativistic speeds affect combat, with the time delays and sensor distortion. It's also cool to see how huge formations can work together in 3D space to maximise the damage they inflict on their enemies. But with an enormous fleet comes a pretty serious problem: with so many ships, the reader doesn't give a damn about 99% of them. When they explode, we don't care. Just another generic heroic-sounding ship name we'll never see again.
The other problem, which I'll come to more later, is how the battles are described. The same bland descriptors are used over and over and over again. Ships blow apart. Hell lances tear into hulls. Missiles explode. I am so bored. We never see any of this damage from the perspective of a character; it's always described from Geary's combat displays. The flagship, Dauntless, is hit repeatedly throughout the series, but it might as well get through good as new. All we're told is numbers of dead, not even any names. Occasionally a hell lance battery will go offline, but this doesn't affect the battles at all. And because we're from the limited POV of the fleet commander, we don't even get to see characters doing anything, just him telling Captain Desjani what to do, for her to order around nameless bridge officers. Short of sticking Geary on a space station to give out orders, this is as far as you can distance us from the action. This is not how you get us excited. I should be hearing damage alarms scream, sweating as the bridge heats up from particle beams ravaging the environmental systems, watching chunks of debris rip through the bulkheads and decapitate sailors before anyone can even react. Show me crewmembers struggling to free their friends trapped by closing pressure doors. Show me air blasting out of the bridge and everyone having to slam on their helmets before the air's sucked from their lungs. Just give me something—anything—to show me that war is happening.
And next, let's talk about the characters, if we can even call them that. There are three types: people who worship Geary as the second coming of Christ (sorry, sent by the Living Stars), , those who hate him with cartoonish vitrial for absolutely no reason other than the author wanted them to, and politicians. These characters have maybe one personality trait each. We never learn anything about them that isn't related to their naval career. We never get a single physical description, not even of the love interests. These characters are not people—they are tools to make the plot happen, and nothing more. The only arcs we get are them learning that maybe war crimes aren't such a good idea, and that Geary can do no wrong and the sooner they accept it the better. And because the characters are stale pieces of toast, that leads to...
The most agonising romance subplot I've read in years. The only thing it has going for it is that it isn't actually problematic, at least not that I'm aware of. Our two lovely women that complete the love triangle are Captain Tanya Desjani, who has the personality of "hero-worshipper," and Co-President Victoria Rione, who has the self-proclaimed personality of "bitchy." Geary gets with Rione first, and I feel like there is the beginning of an interesting character here: a politician who's watched the senate and the navy become more and more hostile towards each other as the war's dragged on, a wife who's lost her husband to a Syndic labour camp who actually turns out to be alive. There are definitely some interesting emotions to tap into here, and a few times throughout the series we almost get there. But unfortunately the whole thing's spoiled by Rione behaving like an angsty fifteen-year-old for 95% of the series, especially after her relationship with Geary ends. Ah yes, this middle-aged woman, who ended the relationship herself, might i add, talks to Desjani like a jealous teenager, and refuses to even say her name.
And our other love interest, Captain Desjani, just doesn't have a personality other than "loves to kill Syndics," so there isn't as much to say here. But fear not, once Geary becomes involved with Rione, she acts just as petty and immature as Rione does to her. So much of the later books is just these two scrapping. I honestly don't know how I got through it. I come to adult military sci-fi for cool battles and the philosophy of warfare, not a love triangle that makes me want to take a small, sharp object and plunge it repeatedly into my ear canals.
Okay, let's try and speed this up. Worldbuilding. don't worry, this paragraph will have as many words as the author decides to spend on the subject in his novels. Despite travelling through about twenty star systems, we don't get a single interesting detail about any of the planets, barring one in the last book where the Syndics have a skiing resort on an ice world. Uniforms and changing fashions are mentioned, but never described. We're told about all the different classes of ships, but they're never described. We have a religion which every single member of the fleet appears to follow, each believing the exact same interpretation, and still almost none of it's described. Are you noticing a theme here?
And finally, because as an aspiring writer I can't not mention it, this author's general craft is just not there yet. This series takes window-pane prose to the absolute extreme. Think Sanderson is boring? Try reading this. As mentioned above, literally NOTHING is described. That is, except the facial expressions. Oh no, you won't go two pages without the clunky way the author tags his dialog to convey emotions there's no way Geary could pick up on. Either that, or using obnoxious dialog tags that add nothing to what's being said. Seriously, "said" is fine, folks. Please use it. Or better yet, don't tag your dialog when we know who's speaking already. So much of the series is just elling, telling telling. And each book we get told the same things again. Must have been five times we got an explanation of how up and down is measured in a solar system.
So why did I finish the series, you might ask? Simple. For all the problems it has, it's really damn easy to read. Seriously, I ploughed through these audiobooks faster than anything else I've read this year. The space battles have helped me figure out a lot about what does and doesn't work; I recognised a bunch of the problems here in my first novel. So if you have some time to spare and you just want to get through some head-empty, easy-to-read military sci-fi, by all means read the series. But you can get better space battles elsewhere, and that's probably why you want to read this in the first place.
Autor przez lata służył w amerykańskiej marynarce wojennej, co widać w obszernych opisach licznych bitew międzygwiezdnych. Strategie, taktyka, przebieg i hierarchia wojskowa są tu mocno widoczne.
Ale od początku.
Kapsuła ratownicza kapitana Johna „Black Jacka” Geary’ego zostaje odnaleziona po 100 latach w latającym złomie minionej bitwy w niemal zapomnianym przez wszystkich układzie. Okazuje się, że jego postać urosła w legendę po jego ostatniej bitwie Sojuszu z Syndykatem. Musi zatem stawić czoła swojemu wyidealizowanemu wizerunkowi, gdy staje na czele floty, by doprowadzić ją bezpiecznie do domu przez terytorium wroga.
Sam opisany świat jest dobrze opisany, ale uproszczony. Tak samo bohaterowie. Indywidualne cechy charakteru posiada John Geary i Victoria Rione, współprezudentka sprzymierzonej z Sojuszem Reubliki Callas. Całą resztę można określić półsłówkami. „Przychylny Black Jackowi”, „nieprzychylny Black Jackowi”, „niesubordynowany”, „nienawidzący Syndykatu”. To wszystko sprawia, że prowadzona opowieść jest dość płaska. Ale czy nieciekawa? hmm
„Zaginioną flotę” nazwałabym science fiction dla młodzieży. Czyta się to szybko. Akcje militarne są opisane bardzo dynamicznie i zgodnie z relatywizmem związanym z odległościami. Brakowało mi jednak pochylenia się nad przyspieszeniem do szybkości przyświetlnych albo nad grawitacją. (Choć to może moja fanaberia). Bohaterowie (prócz głównego) nie są - jeszcze - rozbudowani, raczej zawierają cechy stereotypowe i takie, których byśmy się spodziewali (w patriarchalnym świecie wartości). Przekłada się to na momentami sztywne dialogi.
Czy poleciłabym? Jeszcze nie wiem. Pierwszy tom skończył się dość interesująco, bo być może mamy tu trzecią, utajoną stronę konfliktu.
Powiem Wam po drugim tomie.
Ale od początku.
Kapsuła ratownicza kapitana Johna „Black Jacka” Geary’ego zostaje odnaleziona po 100 latach w latającym złomie minionej bitwy w niemal zapomnianym przez wszystkich układzie. Okazuje się, że jego postać urosła w legendę po jego ostatniej bitwie Sojuszu z Syndykatem. Musi zatem stawić czoła swojemu wyidealizowanemu wizerunkowi, gdy staje na czele floty, by doprowadzić ją bezpiecznie do domu przez terytorium wroga.
Sam opisany świat jest dobrze opisany, ale uproszczony. Tak samo bohaterowie. Indywidualne cechy charakteru posiada John Geary i Victoria Rione, współprezudentka sprzymierzonej z Sojuszem Reubliki Callas. Całą resztę można określić półsłówkami. „Przychylny Black Jackowi”, „nieprzychylny Black Jackowi”, „niesubordynowany”, „nienawidzący Syndykatu”. To wszystko sprawia, że prowadzona opowieść jest dość płaska. Ale czy nieciekawa? hmm
„Zaginioną flotę” nazwałabym science fiction dla młodzieży. Czyta się to szybko. Akcje militarne są opisane bardzo dynamicznie i zgodnie z relatywizmem związanym z odległościami. Brakowało mi jednak pochylenia się nad przyspieszeniem do szybkości przyświetlnych albo nad grawitacją. (Choć to może moja fanaberia). Bohaterowie (prócz głównego) nie są - jeszcze - rozbudowani, raczej zawierają cechy stereotypowe i takie, których byśmy się spodziewali (w patriarchalnym świecie wartości). Przekłada się to na momentami sztywne dialogi.
Czy poleciłabym? Jeszcze nie wiem. Pierwszy tom skończył się dość interesująco, bo być może mamy tu trzecią, utajoną stronę konfliktu.
Powiem Wam po drugim tomie.
Mai havia llegit res d'en Jack Campbell i he gaudit d'allò més! Ciència ficció militar a l'estil Joe Haldeman per gaudir i quedar enganxat! Amb ganes de llegir tota la saga d'una tirada m'he quedat
It's a book about space war written by a guy who really liked Nelson's navy. Above replacement level for this position.
I enjoyed Dauntless. I can't imagine the idea of being in suspended animation for 100 years only to wake up and when you're basically functional have a fleet dropped in your lap. Now, you have a fleet that's behind enemy lines, already damaged and filled with various factions to the point where your so called fleet-mates are as dangerous or even more so than the enemy.
There were pieces of the story that were weak, which is why I only gave 3 stars, but it was a good read overall.
There were pieces of the story that were weak, which is why I only gave 3 stars, but it was a good read overall.