The Lost Fleet

JohnS wrote:

Dieu_Le_Fera wrote:Just about finished the first 6 books of the main series, anyone else read it?

Yeah, I love'em! I've also read the Beyond the Frontier and Lost Stars books. The former is a direct sequel to the Lost Fleet. The others are a spin-off, though very good, especially the characterization.

On a side note, two of the Kris Longknife books have mentioned the ship Dauntless, captained by Jack Campbell. (I also like those quite a bit.)

I love both series and can't believe I missed the Dauntless and Jack Campbell reference.

It's a good series and I have the first few books of the second series, but the attitude of the captain of the Dauntless (I don't have the books in front of me and I can't remember her name atm) towards 'that woman' is starting to grate. She is supposed to be a professional, yet she acts fairly petty when it comes to 'that woman'. It's one thing to dislike/hate someone and being petty about it and its something else entirely to be able to act professionally despite any dislikes/hatreds. The captain of the Dauntless, is, imo, coming off as petty more than professional with her attitude.

This is a great series, mainly; IMO, because of the Captain (Admiral) Geary character.
His ongoing Sisyphus battle to convince everyone and their mothers, that he is not going to do a Napoleon is one of the things that tie the series together.
Also the various alien races are just that…very alien!

Zakharra wrote:It's a good series and I have the first few books of the second series, but the attitude of the captain of the Dauntless (I don't have the books in front of me and I can't remember her name atm) towards 'that woman' is starting to grate. She is supposed to be a professional, yet she acts fairly petty when it comes to 'that woman'. It's one thing to dislike/hate someone and being petty about it and its something else entirely to be able to act professionally despite any dislikes/hatreds. The captain of the Dauntless, is, imo, coming off as petty more than professional with her attitude.

Year, she can come across as pretty childish. One thing I thought of as I read your post, was RFCs Safehold comments regarding what the pressure of impending extinction did to people's personalities. I wonder if some of what we see people say and do in Lost Fleet is because of the wear that a hundred years of war has done to individuals. The effects on their society as a whole have been made very clear, but now I think that what we see with individuals illustrates part of how their society got that way.

Arol wrote:This is a great series, mainly; IMO, because of the Captain (Admiral) Geary character.
His ongoing Sisyphus battle to convince everyone and their mothers, that he is not going to do a Napoleon is one of the things that tie the series together.
Also the various alien races are just that…very alien!

The "will he"/"won't he" tension is great! It's not even clear that playing Napoleon would be a bad idea, given how screwed up their government is, as the most recent mainline book showed. And of course there's the irony that the greatest pressure to take over the government doesn't arise from his devoted subordinates. It's the idiots in the government that are so paranoid about him, that they're making him fear for his life. If he ever did take control, I'm sure he'd be a "Thomas Theisman" and reconstruct a viable democratic government. We've seen enough of his thoughts to know that.

You're so right that the aliens live up to their billing. All three races are poles apart from humanity and each other. It really is an excellent effort and the author deserves a lot of credit for being so inventive.

JohnS wrote:If he ever did take control, I'm sure he'd be a "Thomas Theisman" and reconstruct a viable democratic government. We've seen enough of his thoughts to know that.

Wouldn't that be a kicker?
Having spent time in more then a dozen books, rejecting all attemts to get him to do a "Thomas Theisman".