Book Review: Leviathan

Leviathan by Jack Campbell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow. What a ride.

Black Jack Geary has certainly taken the First Fleet into battles where the odds seem insurmountable, but he's Black Jack and has always managed to scrape through. Now he's facing the dark ships, and their AIs are designed to act and react like he would!

I really enjoy the Lost Fleet novels. There's plenty of action and down-time as well, but when the combat starts I can't put it down. There's plenty of character within these stories as well, and when we lose one it hurts; when we lose ships-full, it's incomprehensible.

Many surprises lead Geary to the dark fleet's home base where he hopes he can destroy their repair and replenishment facilities since he can't outright destroy the fleet the itself without significant losses to his own fleet. Old friends and new return to help out where they can.

An emotional ending brings the book to a close, though the First Fleet sails on.

Leviathan is great read!



View all my reviews

I received my review copy from the publisher through Netgalley.

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!


View all my reviews

Space Battles! Book Review: Starfire

Starfire by Dale Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I remember reading some of Dale Brown's earlier Patrick McClanahan stories, and thinking they were a tighter, leaner version of Tom Clancy-esque stories. I only read a few of those earlier novels, but only because I got behind and didn't want to try to catch up.

Starfire continues the Patrick McClanahan world though, and gives it over to the next generation of heroes, including Bradley McClanahan. He's the son of the famed General from the other stories. The narrative does a good job of catching the reader up on major events that lead the world and characters to where they are currently. That was good for me, since it had been some years since I had ready anything in this series.

I remember this series being very real-world military fiction. Cutting edge technology featured heavily in the stories I remember. Starfire goes beyond the cutting edge technology firmly into the near-future science fiction. A near-death character is kept alive inside of a robotic suit of power armor. College students develop an orbit-to-ground power-transmitting device and test it from a military space station, only to realize it makes a really good space-based weapon. And in this story, a new cold war has started over space-based weapons and vehicles.

On the whole, this was a good, fun book. Fans of previous installments will enjoy where the story goes. Fans of Tom Clancy or similar political/military fiction will enjoy this, though it's not as heavy on the political as a Clancy tome.

To nitpick, the narrative is very heavy on detailing the technology and sometimes spends way too much time describing in excruciating detail what is happening. In fact, the opening scene with a character going into space on-board a spaceplane, and docking and boarding a spacestation is one of those too-much-detail scenes. I almost didn't make it through that opening passage. But once I did, the action and actual story-telling picked up. Later sections that went into detail weren't nearly as in-depth as that opening passage and were easily skimmed over. I don't really need to know all the specific manufacturing and deployment history of certain missiles, jets, or whatever, just give me a nice quick overview if what is absolutely relevant to the narrative.

Overall, a good action/military story with a strong space element to the story.



View all my reviews

Oh yeah! Book Review: Honor's Knight

Honor's Knight by Rachel Bach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is good stuff!

I love it when a story does things I don't expect, and this book doesn't disappoint! Honor's Knight is not your ordinary space marine story. Devi is a female mercenary who just wants to survive her current assignment long enough to get accepted into the Devastators elite special forces team. But her current captain has a bad habit of getting his mercenary security guards killed in the line of duty, and he's definitely no ordinary trading captain. Devi's only been on a few months, but has seen plenty of action, and inadvertently stumbled into a war she didn't know existed. And she's become a weapon all the sides either want to use or suppress. And Devi doesn't even know which side she's supposed to be on.

There's so much more to this novel; you have to experience it for yourself!

Honor's Knight is the sequel to Fortune's Pawn, part of the Paradox trilogy. The next book is due out later this year. (I love that Orbit Books is putting out complete series within months instead of making us wait years between books.)

The author, Rachel Bach, also wrote a fantastic fantasy series under the name Rachel Aaron. That's the Eli Monpress series and I highly recommend that too!

Fans of awesome military space fiction will love this. Read it!



View all my reviews

Book Review: Grunt Life

Task Force Ombra: Grunt Life by Weston Ochse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Starting off with a thorough reading an uncomfortable topic (suicide, specifically a service member suffering from PTSD committing suicide), this book gives him and others suffering like him a second chance in a special unit fighting an alien invasion.

The alien invasion comes fast, and off-screen, while our characters are still in training in their new unit. This leads quickly to the typical trope of the last remaining vestiges of military fighting the aliens. They quickly realize all their efforts are having no effect, and must find new ways to gather intel, fight effectively, and win. By the end, they've made some progress, but in no way have won the war yet.

I enjoyed this book, though the suicidal tendencies of the characters were at times uncomfortable to read. People this distraught, this broken, make unique character point-of-views. But it's their overcoming of this that makes them readable heroes.

There's no paranormal stuff here, it's just the military against the aliens. Fans of Bob Mayer's Atlantis and Area 51 series, James Rollins, Matthew Reilly, Myke Cole, or Jean Johnson will enjoy Grunt Life.

An eARC of Grunt Life was provided to me for review through NetGalley.

View all my reviews

Series Review: The Phoenix Conspiracy Books 1-4

The Phoenix War by Richard L. Sanders, book 4 in the ongoing series.

This is what I get for grabbing a free ebook (the first book in the series was/is free on Amazon.com). The first book pulled me in. The second book, also offered at a discount, kept the story going and kept me wanting more. The third book was full price, but by this point I didn't care! I wanted more, and I had to have more! I had to know what happens next. I had to know how the story wrapped up!

Boy was I fooled! The third book wasn't the end of the series! The fourth book wasn't out at the time, but has since come out and I darn well paid full price for that ebook too!

I don't know how many more books are planned in the series. This is one of those instances where I hope it wraps up soon because I want to know what happens, but I'm enjoying the setting and don't want to leave just yet.

The Phoenix Conspiracy has your military SF, some political intrigue, alien civilizations working with and against the human empire, cool ships and technology, and some great characters.

The main character is Calvin, the captain of a stealth ship, reminds a bit of myself: he's kind of an introvert, prefers things laid back, trusts those around him to do their jobs, and prefers to be on a first-name basis with his co-workers and staff as opposed to calling everyone by their rank and last name.

The human empires monarchy is in danger, a vast conspiracy is trying to overthrow the king, while yet another interested party is seeking out an alien threat of weapons capable of destroying stars. Each book gets a bit deeper into the conspiracy and the war between all these factions.

The Phoenix Conspiracy series is like the Honor Harrington series without the word-count: it flows much faster. Fun stuff!