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A review by mburnamfink
Duel in the Dark by Jay Allan
3.0
Amazon had a deal on the first six books in the series because the seventh one is coming out, and I like military scifi so why not?
Welcome to the future, a future of war! Galactic civilization has fallen after setting up a network of FTL routes, and the technology for building new ones have been lost. Three major powers have risen in the aftermath. The Confederation are our good guys, a democracy with an independent streak that is regarded as soft by the enemy, but which has survived three existential wars thanks to daring heroics and superior technology. The Alliance is our bad guys, a militaristic empire with a warrior aristocracy and Spartan/Roman overtones. And the ugly guys are the Union, a totalitarian empire with a fearsome secret police and purge-driven politics. The troops of the Union are the Foudre Rouge. Subtly is not Allan's strongpoint as an author, though compared to David Weber (Rob S. Pierre, folks!) he's doing okay.
So the plot. War between the Confederation and the Union is imminent, and Confederation battleship Dauntless is patrolling the frontier, when it gets pulled off for a refit at the rear of Confederation space. Except that the Union has convinced the Alliance to launch an attack as well, hoping to force the Confederation to fight on two fronts. The Alliance is skeptical, and in the midst of their own refit after a recent conquest, but they can dispatch their most advanced dreadnought, the Invictus, under the command of Kat, a staunch warrior who conceals her doubts about the Alliance, to take a distant refueling outpost. If the attack succeeds, the Alliance will press forward. If it fails, they'll deny everything. The fate of the Confederation rests on Dauntless, her crew, and her captain Barron, grandson of the Confederation's great hero.
Allan mixes action sequences and the rush to war with philosophical musings on combat and death, but this is very much war via John Wayne movies, a kind of pop-culture profundity. The space ships are Galactica style battlecruisers with laser and particle beam weapons, carrying a few squadrons of fighters armed with missiles and plasma torpedoes. There are some gestures towards Newton and vectors, but the style is "World War 2 in space" rather than a new, or even particularly cohesive take on war in space. There's a recurrent moment of ships hiding by orbiting behind a moon or planet, and as anyone who knows about orbital mechanics well tell you, the thing about orbits is that they go around a mass. You can't hide in orbit for very long. This is very much Extruded Space Opera product #7. There aren't any major flaws, but it is definitely a step down from The Lost Fleet or the good Honor Harrington books.
There was one thing that I couldn't tell if it a dumb oversight or actually clever. The Confederation has an emergency alert command "Omega One" which signals invasion of the Confederation. The Alliance has a command "Omega Zero" which triggers their self-destruct. Did Allan forget he used that name already, or it it a statement about what each side regards as their 'ultimate'? I'll probably read the rest of these between serious books, because I was entertained, but that's as far as I'll go.
Welcome to the future, a future of war! Galactic civilization has fallen after setting up a network of FTL routes, and the technology for building new ones have been lost. Three major powers have risen in the aftermath. The Confederation are our good guys, a democracy with an independent streak that is regarded as soft by the enemy, but which has survived three existential wars thanks to daring heroics and superior technology. The Alliance is our bad guys, a militaristic empire with a warrior aristocracy and Spartan/Roman overtones. And the ugly guys are the Union, a totalitarian empire with a fearsome secret police and purge-driven politics. The troops of the Union are the Foudre Rouge. Subtly is not Allan's strongpoint as an author, though compared to David Weber (Rob S. Pierre, folks!) he's doing okay.
So the plot. War between the Confederation and the Union is imminent, and Confederation battleship Dauntless is patrolling the frontier, when it gets pulled off for a refit at the rear of Confederation space. Except that the Union has convinced the Alliance to launch an attack as well, hoping to force the Confederation to fight on two fronts. The Alliance is skeptical, and in the midst of their own refit after a recent conquest, but they can dispatch their most advanced dreadnought, the Invictus, under the command of Kat, a staunch warrior who conceals her doubts about the Alliance, to take a distant refueling outpost. If the attack succeeds, the Alliance will press forward. If it fails, they'll deny everything. The fate of the Confederation rests on Dauntless, her crew, and her captain Barron, grandson of the Confederation's great hero.
Allan mixes action sequences and the rush to war with philosophical musings on combat and death, but this is very much war via John Wayne movies, a kind of pop-culture profundity. The space ships are Galactica style battlecruisers with laser and particle beam weapons, carrying a few squadrons of fighters armed with missiles and plasma torpedoes. There are some gestures towards Newton and vectors, but the style is "World War 2 in space" rather than a new, or even particularly cohesive take on war in space. There's a recurrent moment of ships hiding by orbiting behind a moon or planet, and as anyone who knows about orbital mechanics well tell you, the thing about orbits is that they go around a mass. You can't hide in orbit for very long. This is very much Extruded Space Opera product #7. There aren't any major flaws, but it is definitely a step down from The Lost Fleet or the good Honor Harrington books.
There was one thing that I couldn't tell if it a dumb oversight or actually clever. The Confederation has an emergency alert command "Omega One" which signals invasion of the Confederation. The Alliance has a command "Omega Zero" which triggers their self-destruct. Did Allan forget he used that name already, or it it a statement about what each side regards as their 'ultimate'? I'll probably read the rest of these between serious books, because I was entertained, but that's as far as I'll go.