Review: The Lost Fleet - Dreadnought

I’ve long been a fan of Jack Campbell’s (actually John G. Hemry) Lost Fleet series. So, when a certain online bookstore shipped me a copy of Dreadnought (the latest edition), I read it that night in one sitting. If you’ve been waiting for a chance to jump on the bandwagon, or just want to read some rip-roaringly good military SF, now’s your chance.

The problem with series, in books or otherwise, is that if you don’t start in the beginning, you can get lost. Well, with Dreadnought, Campbell is starting a new series. In the previous Lost Fleet books, two human factions had been fighting an interstellar war for a century. Well, that war is over, and the Alliance, under (now) Admiral “Black Jack” Geary, won.

Although this victory is cause for celebration, there are a number of problems. For one, just releasing a huge number of ex-military people on the economic and political systems of the Alliance looks like it could be a problem. For another, Geary has discovered that humanity is not alone in the universe, and appears to have had a hand in both starting and prolonging the human war.

These two factors are used to cancel each other out, and Geary with a sizeable fleet is sent to find out more information about the aliens. The result is an exciting adventure dealing with problems both internal to the Alliance and external to humanity. But Dreadnought isn’t just an action book – characters are well-developed, realistic and people you’d care for. Campbell, formerly a career Naval officer, has a deep understanding of how militaries operate and interface with civilian politicians. This understanding finds its way to every page.

There are two nits I wish to pick with Campbell. First, he does some inconvenient hand-waving to get a character re-assigned to the fleet. I would have liked to see a different character brought in. Second, Campbell’s space fleet looks shockingly like the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet circa 1916, with battleships chasing faster but less well-armored battlecruisers. But these are truly nits. Dreadnought is a great action read, and a wonderful way to get into (or back into) the exciting world of the Lost Fleet.