Peter Hodges

 Jack Campbell continues with his aggressive publishing schedule by releasing the fourth book in the Lost Fleet series just eight months after the last one.

The saga of Black Jack Geary, commanding a battered fleet in enemy territory, continues. The novel opens with a large battle that is rendered in exquisite detail. Ship manuevers, timing, formations, and a seemingly complex battle plan are described from Captain Geary’s point of view as his fleet engages a numerically similar force in an effort to secure some breathing space for repairs and replinishment.

This book, like the others, is told primarily from Geary’s perspective. Black Jack Geary was lost in an engagement that history recognizes as the opening shots of a one hundred year war. He drifted alone in an escape pod, until the fleet he ended up commanding found him drifting in space and rescued him. In the time since he disappeared, Geary has been venerated as a hero, granted almost god-like status by the men and women under his command. Also during this time, the men and women in the navy have lost their sense of honor. They fire on civilian targets with impunity, kill survivors of enemy fleets, and conduct battles with all of the complexity of a bull charging. When the existing fleet leadership is betrayed during a parley, Geary assumes leadership of the fleet (as the senior captain) and tries to teach them about the way war should be fought. His adherence to honor and an older tradition that would be loosely recognized as a modern day “law of war” is foreign to the men and women under his command.

Geary is trying desperately to get the people under his command back to Alliance space. His ship holds the key to the Alliance winning the war against the Syndic Worlds–literally an access key to the enemy’s network of faster than light travel. Unfortunately, a non-human intelligence has entered the picture, and Geary’s crew makes some startling discoveries about its history and motivations.

To make matters complicated, Geary faces mutiny within his own fleet. Some of the captains under his command resent the “mercy” that Geary shows to the Syndic forces and endeavor to sabotage him. Moving carefully, Geary consolidates his hold as a leader of the fleet while still remaining in charge of the fleet’s destination and tactics.

Campbell has done it again in this volume. The pacing is superb, the writing is taut and somewhat suspenseful, and the characterizations are top notch. The author avoids the temptation of making his character god-like, instead forcing him to wrestle with the mythology around his absence, and the growing hero-worship associated with his return and his unquestioned success. Geary is really just a man, trying to do the best that he can for the men and women who serve under him. That others think this attitude makes him a candidate for receiving divine intervention bothers him to no end.

Campbell apparently has two more volumes in this series, and I have to say that I wish I had them in my hands right now. If you haven’t started this series, do so.