katikat | Jack Campbell's "Dauntless", #141

The Lost Fleet: Dauntless is the first book in a military science fiction saga from Jack Campbell (pseudonym for veteran genre writer John G. Hemry, author of the Stark's War trilogy, A Just Determination, et al.). With its senior command dead and many of its ships crippled and stranded deep in enemy territory, the only hope for the Alliance fleet rests in the hands of Captain John "Black Jack" Geary -- a legendary war hero who, after nearly a century in survival hibernation, has been found in an escape pod floating in deep space and reawakened The war between the Alliance and the Syndicate Worlds has been going on for a century -- and now, as entire generations have lived and died during wartime, no one even knows why the bloody conflict began in the first place. But as Black Jack Geary struggles to come to grips with his almost godlike reputation -- while trying to find a way to somehow extract his fleet from an impossible situation -- he begins to realize that there are dangers in the universe even more perilous than intergalactic war.

Review: 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.