Book Review: Steadfast

The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast by Jack Campbell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is military science fiction done well! Not too political, not just all space combat - Jack Campbell hits all the right notes with the Black Jack Geary series.

In my opinion, Campbell outdoes Weber at military science fiction. Whereas Weber's excellent Honor Harrington series gets deep into the political actions of ...well, absolutely everyone who ever took a breath, Campbell's Lost Fleet series keeps the long-winded political machinations to a minimum. Oh, you'll still get interstellar politics and conspiracies, but it's always shown from the main characters' points of view.

You also get great space battles, interesting aliens, some exploration (though not in this particular book), and an galaxy in-flux as the war has ended and star systems are trying to figure out where they stand and with whom they stand.

To round out what makes the Lost Fleet series, and Steadfast in-particular, great reading is the characters. Everyone has a story and gets a little bit of the narrative without taking focus from the story.

One of the things I like about this series is each novel is named after a ship in the fleet. We find out what's special about Steadfast towards the end of this book.

While Steadfast, the novel, takes place deep within the series, it does a good job of briefly mentioning what's come before. If this is the first book you pick up, you won't be completely lost as to what's going on and why. I've read a few of the novels in the series before Steadfast, and enjoyed them all.

Fans of the Honor Harrington series, Star Wars or Star Trek, or any other military science fiction series will enjoy the Lost Fleet series.

Steadfast is due to be published on May 6, 2014.  Thanks to the publisher for providing my copy for review!


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