Valiant (The Lost Fleet, Book 4)
by Jack Campbell
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Book Reviews of Valiant (The Lost Fleet, Book 4)
Book Review: Fun and Fairly Clean
Summary: 5 Stars
I really like this series and this hero. In my first review of this series, I said the first book was clean and absorbing. I am still absorbed by this book and I still believe it is much cleaner than most sci-fi books. There is a little profanity and the hero has one intimate relationship in books 2 and 3 of the series, but there is no desription of anything graphic. Short of reading inspirational/Christian genre novels, this is still one of the cleanest mainstream books you will be able to find.
The author still focuses on leadership and ethical issues, intermixed with tactical and increasingly complicated personnel issues. As the hero has become more successful, he has both increased his support among most of his troops and increased the hatred his enemies have for him. This book continues to develop the plot in terms of sabotage and determing why the 100 year war really began.
Book Review: Dragging...get on with it!!!
Summary: 2 Stars
I gave this book 2 stars because of the previous 3 books which have been entertaining and well written. This book has several main flaws:
1) Campbell is a military writer and should stick with it. His love triangle is beyond annoying and is distracting from the story. I had to flip through about 25% of the book because of this awful, awful, section
2) Nothing new... .each of the previous book seem to be moving the story along but this one has a case of Jordanitis (the late great robert jordan) nothing really happens, nothing really gets accomplished.
3) It is still a good series- forget this book...the first 3 are great reads. Hopefully mr. campbell can tone down the love jack and get back to black jack kicking space booty.
4) I will still purchase book 5, but if there is more "love" interests, I'm done with the series
Book Review: Starting to Drag
Summary: 3 Stars
I agree with everyone else who said this book was a step back from the previous three. The battles felt flat, I'm starting to get tired of the stock "isn't it funny how the Navy still does ____ but no one remembers why?" type scenes, and there was absolutely ZERO character or plot development in this chapter of the overall saga
Basically, other than having two people admit they're attracted to each other, nothing special happens for 300 pages.
Valiant felt, to me, like it was rushed out to satisfy a schedule. I had alot of trouble visualizing the things that the book was describing, a first in this series, and when I got to the end of the book I felt like I'd just read the first chapter of a story
Loved the first three, hope the next two are WAY better than this. If book 5 isn't a big step up I won't bother with book 6
Book Review: Filler Fluff
Summary: 3 Stars
I've been pretty enthusiastic about previous Lost Fleet books, but Valiant wasn't quite up to snuff. The hallmark of the series is brilliant space battle, but this time the action takes a backseat to interpersonal relationships.
John "Black Jack" Geary is a great protagonist, but his convoluted love life holds little interest for me. Frankly, I find both of the women irritating and their constant sniping at each other as they battle for a man's affections comes across as a bit clichéd . His conflicts with other fleet officers provided a few dramatic moments, but nothing was resolved and I learned more about the fleet's recreational viewing habits than I cared to know. The aliens remained a vague undefined entity,
In the final analysis, the book is just filler fluff, doing nothing to advance the story.
Book Review: Decent, but repetitive
Summary: 3 Stars
All in all, this series is good and I'd probably recommend it to others - but with some conditions.
The one thing I've found most irritating about the books so far is the constant repetition. I'm guessing that the author (or editors) were thinking that people would pick this series up in the middle, but the constant re-explaining of the positions of the characters seems to assume that we're either fish or have absolutely no short term memory.
Aside from that, it's a bit long and some of the combat scenes are just more of the same that we've seen in the past two books. Overwhelming odds that always get overcome - either by some clever trick or superior tactics. It's certainly helpful to providing the real depth of space that the author's trying to convey, but after awhile it just gets a bit boring.