The Lost Fleet starts with the near-total destruction of the Alliance Fleet on the doorstep of the Syndicate homeworld, its dreams of ending a century of war in tatters. John Geary, recently awakened from nearly a century of hibernation, becomes the commander of the survivors. A century out of time, he must lead the fleet home.

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Packed with space action and intrigue, the Lost Fleet is fast-paced and exciting. A lot of thought has been put into how communication and battles happen across the vast distances of space. After recently starting another sci-fi book, I appreciate this book even more. The Alliance fleet travels between star systems using jump drives and the hypernet, but travel and communication within star systems is slow, and communication is limited by the speed of light. A lot of thought went into the military engagements and the ship movements, and the implication of time-delay in communication and information. It’s exciting, but also interesting and thoughtful.

My favourite part though isn’t the detailed space-battles, but everything that goes on around that. There’s a lot of politics in the fleet that Geary takes over, and a lot has changed after a century of war. Generations of fighting has changed the people of the Alliance, and not in good ways. He has to wrestle with people who question his command, while fighting the Syndicates.

Another thing I appreciated (again, especially after picking up another sci-fi book…) was that with no fanfare, we have a society here that seems mostly free of sexism. Random crew members are female. Important crew members are female. There’s no production about it, it’s just something that doesn’t require any explanation or excuse in this world. It’s nice to see when I’m used to, and tired of, all the random characters being male, plus 90% of the important characters. Pretty much none of the characters get any physical description either, which basically means you can imagine them however you like.

My two biggest quibbles are repetition and the names of the books. The books are short, but each one repeats some information, that, while important, I didn’t forget between reading one book and the next. This may not have been so irritating if I hadn’t read each book right after the other. I also got a bit tired about hearing how awesome Black Jack is, as these conversations happen multiple time each book, with much the same content as all the other conversations about how he really is the hero the Alliance needs (though I do like Black Jack himself, just not the repetitive hero worship). Another, perhaps petty, complaint is that I can’t stand the names of the books, we have Dauntless, Fearless, Courageous, Valiant, Relentless and Victorious. Most of those are synonyms, and I can’t for the life of me remember what order they’re meant to be in.

Overall though, exciting, thoughtful, lots of military action and even better action outside the battles. Greatly enjoyed it.