nemo reviewed Lost fleet by John G. Hemry
Review of 'Lost fleet' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Good: Military SF - I don't read much of that. Distances are in light-travel-times.
Bad: Warfare itself, while a core part of the book - is given a shallow treatment, beyond the "formation' aspect (ala Ender's Game?). There are 3 weapons (across an entire fleet with hundreds of ships) - which are described very vaguely. Same goes for ship classes themselves. Character development was meager, and most characters only stood as minor antagonists propped up against our revered Hero. It felt like someone wanted to write a more accurate treatment of Battlestar Gallactica - the constant chase felt quite similar.
Bad: The opposing faction (Human, Syndicate/Syndics) are given such a weird one-sided portrayal that it felt eerie.
Bad: Character Motivations. For plot reasons, we don't get to know why the war is being fought, or judge for ourselves if the dispute is worth a century of war in any way …
Good: Military SF - I don't read much of that. Distances are in light-travel-times.
Bad: Warfare itself, while a core part of the book - is given a shallow treatment, beyond the "formation' aspect (ala Ender's Game?). There are 3 weapons (across an entire fleet with hundreds of ships) - which are described very vaguely. Same goes for ship classes themselves. Character development was meager, and most characters only stood as minor antagonists propped up against our revered Hero. It felt like someone wanted to write a more accurate treatment of Battlestar Gallactica - the constant chase felt quite similar.
Bad: The opposing faction (Human, Syndicate/Syndics) are given such a weird one-sided portrayal that it felt eerie.
Bad: Character Motivations. For plot reasons, we don't get to know why the war is being fought, or judge for ourselves if the dispute is worth a century of war in any way - that makes it "fighting for the sake of fighting", which feels odd for a century of war. Not knowing what motivates the fleet also feels like a hole in the story, because the characters feel that much unreal - they don't really have motivations to fight.
And finally, on the science side - this book has FTL. As the saying goes - FTL/Relativity/Causality - you can only have 2. This book keeps relativity in the spotlight (all battles and engagements have relativistic distortions featured), FTL at bay (there's slow and fast jumps via specific jump points) - but handwaves the causality concerns that this FTL brings (or rather ignores it entirely). The ships themselves only go up to 0.2c, so the time dilation doesn't impact causality that much beyond the time-delay and that gets covered decently.
