Dauntless

Title:	Dauntless
Author:	Jack Campbell
Genre:	SF
Series:	Lost Fleet (1)
Ranking:	Good
LibraryThing:	Title:Dauntless ISBN:0-441-01418-6 (Add Book)
Read:	2007-07-12

The Alliance has been fighting the Syndics for a century -- and losing badly. Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized beyond belief...

Thoughts

Pretty good. There was a slight feel of "okay, how do we set things up so that Our Hero is the solution to this particular problem" -- at first, anyway. John Geary is not a Marky-Sam by any means. The reverse, really. No, he isn't an Everyman, but I think in his time, he'd have been a good officer, not a genius. But he has attitudes they've lost, traditions they've lost and training they've lost. And a commitment to duty, even if success is unlikely.

The Good: Reasonably sympathetic main character. Good space battles (dealing with the problems of high speed, relativistic effects and information-lag). The importance of honour and discipline over aggressiveness and pride.

The Bad: Didn't really get a feel for the other characters; two supporting characters are half there, and everyone else is really just cyphers. I was skipping ahead a bit, which is a bad sign.

I think I'll put off reading the next book or I'll end up not liking it.