The Lost Fleet: Victorious

The Lost Fleet wraps up, both in print and in story, with Victorious. In short, everything is wrapped up in grand fashion. This is a great bookend for the series, and there's plenty of meat that makes this worthwhile as more than just a bookend.I'll be giving spoilers on the books up to this point, so go back to Book One and get reading if you haven't already!The setup: "Black Jack" Geary and crew have finally returned to Alliance space after a final and desperate fight. Things are certainly not well in Alliance space, and you just know Geary's going to have to take the fleet right back out as soon as they've duct taped it back together. Don't forget that there's an alien menace that's going to put him between a rock and a hard place, even if the fleet can finally crush the Syndics once and for all.The execution: Campbell continues to write some of the best space battles ever put to print, and now he's got some fresh ships to spice up the mix. The story takes a few genuinely interesting and unexpected turns at a few points, and there's plenty of must-read information for fans of the series. Most everything gets an explanation, down to why the Alliance names its ships after ideas instead of places as our current military does.The downside: For all the rollicking space battles, I've always had a few minor bones to pick with this series. First off is Campbell's insistence in recapping previous works, so there's again quite a bit of retreading here. He says it's because he's trying to attract new readers in each volume, and it's hard to fault him on that, but more than anything it just leaves me wondering what story development he could have spent that space on instead. The other gripe that really comes into play here, is Geary's lame love interest in Desjani. With Co-President Rione, the interest between a heroic fleet Captain and a dirty politician made for some real (and sexy) intrigue. The relationship with Desjani, by contrast, is a little too Harlequin with the characters dramatically facing away from each other and mumbling awkwardly about the feelings-which-we-dare-not-name. I'll go ahead and give you the minor spoiler that there's never any bodice-ripping, although I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing in the end.Overall, the flaws of the work mostly add up to some sappy and seen-this-before moments sandwiched between the incredible space battles, which stand as the true hallmark of the series. Buy Victorious now- and the rest of the series if you haven't already- and be prepared for one of the best little serials out there. It's not the deepest read out there, but it is a ball of space battling fun.

Like many reviews of this book, this review will be partly for the book, and partly for the series as a whole. So if you have no idea what the Lost Fleet series is all about, you're on the wrong book, please go to the first book and start from there. Oh, if you're a newbie, don't let the cover art fool you. For some reason the publishers have Jack Geary as a soldier on the cover, when in fact he sits in a chair for most of the books, doing what commanders do.The Lost Fleet series as a whole was an interesting read. It's a slight take on the Buck Rogers story, the military man frozen in space, and found by his people while they're hip deep in a long and endless seeming war. The Jack Geary character isn't the cocky guy that Rogers was, and indeed he's somewhat intimidated at first. And I wish we could have seen more of that, more of the initial moments and days as he came out of his cryo-sleep. Instead we got a few pages at the beginning of book one, and then some flashbacks in later books. Of course Campbell chose, or was told, to get to the action quickly. Jack finds himself in charge of the fleet due to a fluke, and somehow keeps hold of it through attempted barratries and enemy actions, not to mention the spectre of political interference. He's standing in a tippy boat, and how he keeps his balance is one of the more interesting facets of the series.Besides Jack, the only two reasonably formed characters are Captain Desjani, and politician Victoria Rione, and they frankly could have used some work. Rione's motivations seemed unclear even to her most of the time, and I get the feeling that Campbell changed his mind a few times over the course of the books on what to do with her. Desjani was wonderful when she was being Captain of the ship and de facto Chief of Staff for Geary, but their 'romance', if you want to call it that, was where the series went off the rails. It was almost Victorian in a way, their repressed emotions and unwillingness to say what they clearly felt. I mean they did the right thing, in how they handled it, but it became too much of a part of the last few books. The love triangle aspect of it all should have been pared way down, or excised completely. Rione herself could have been edited out and the books would have been none the worse for it. The other supporting characters were interesting in the bits that we saw them in, but none stood out other than Lt. Iger from Intelligence, who deserved more page time.The battles were fascinating, and the highlight of the 'show' for me. The ships fought the way actual spaceships likely would fight, and didn't use lasers either, thank goodness (a nod to Battlestar Galactica perhaps). Fighters weren't used except in one battle, and ships had to think of problems like fuel, munitions, and food, something many sci-fi book and TV series often forget. The devil is in the details isn't it? And Jack Campbell got so many of them right it's not even funny. I also enjoyed the virtual conferencing, which will likely be coming to a boardroom near you in the next decade, and the fact that time and space mattered for sending messages, sometimes critically.The last book? Rushed. That's my word for it. The big buildup to the end produced.....what? I wonder if he was at the end of the book contract and his publisher was on him to wrap it up, because he could have gotten at least two more books out of the plot he had left, and I very gleefully would have bought them. And I still will buy anything he puts out next, he's a talented writer.Overall the rating here would have been four stars because of the love triangle, even before the last book rushed the ending. But no way is this three stars, there was just too much that was good about it. Four stars.

The book arrived in short order, and in excellent condition. Thank you.

I can highly reconmend this book, I love those huge spacebattles and specialy the main charakter her in this book. I can't stop reading those books.

I am reviewing book 6 of the series as it is the last one of a continuous story.The books are about a fleet, trapped in an alien start system that is at war with the one the fleet comes from. A captain, John Geary, who was in the first battel of the war a hundred years before has been rescued from a suvival pod. The commander of the fleet and other senior officers go to negotiate with the enemy and the commander nominates Geary as his successor because of his seniority of rank, The commander and he officers are murdered by the enemy and Geary takes command.Over the hundred years the fleet tactics have degenrated into mad charges regardless of casualties.Using his experience and training Geary turns the fleet into a lethal tactical force to fight their way back to their own star system.I did wonder how such a story could be stretched so far without becoming boring hwoever it never did.With the various threads of the constant battles, the varying threats, the internal conflicts betwen the various factions and personal relationships on board the flagship the story never lags. Here we have real space opera and a good human story all rolled into one.In fact I enjoyed it so much that I ordered books one and two of "The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier" before I had finished this set. I can say that that is a continuation of the story but going even further. Not only that I have been ordering other books by the same author. He is great.

This was a good ending to the series. After getting the fleet home Geary is faced with miss trust by the poloticians who have learned to fear the ambitions of military leaders. The allied fleet is sent back to the Syndicate home system with the hopes of ending the war but the Syndicate has one more devastating trick up it's sleeve. After this Geary has to find a way to prevent the aliens on the Syndicate boarder from taking advantage. This book tied up the loose threads while leaving room to expand the series.

Très bonne conclusion au cycle. Un seul regret, il y a de quoi faire une suite, ce qui est dommage si c'est vraiment la conclusion.