That's interesting Rodders, I'm guessing you have the Titan books UK edition, I got hold of the American Ace Books eBooks through a friend in the US. That's what happens Mr Titan books if you can't be bothered to get a UK ebook edition out (though they told me they intend do it but have no dates yet). Anyway I didn't notice any problems like this in my editions.
I've just finished Valient and now onto Relentless which has the same editing issues as before.
As much as i'm enjoying these, i can't believe that the two female characters Rione (a senior polition) and Desjani (the Flagship Captain) are bickering like two schoolgirls over Geary.
I've read the first book and quite liked it, especially its likeness to Xenophon's Anabasis (Or 'The Ten Thousand').
I think part of its unique attraction is that its oddly like that show where they scratch-build custom motorbikes or one where they decorate a house- 'Hows this fella gonna fix up this fleet?' The reader wonders, and more importantly: 'How would I go about it?' I guess its in the genre called Bloke-fixes-up-something thats-a-bit-shoddy. Or Jobsagudunpunk perhaps.
I've just finished Valient and now onto Relentless which has the same editing issues as before.
As much as i'm enjoying these, i can't believe that the two female characters Rione (a senior polition) and Desjani (the Flagship Captain) are bickering like two schoolgirls over Geary.
I thought he overplayed their bickering in that book. Some friction between them was necessary for the plot but it didn't need as much as he gave it and I found it quite annoying.
Agreed, i don't believe that two professionals of that stature would not be acting that way.
It was interesting to see a little bit into Geary's past in the first chapter of this. I wonder if Mr. Campbell plans to go back and tell the story of that battle and how he became Jack Black?
I seem to recall that it does get expanded on a bit in one of the books but can't remember which might well be Relentless. If he does go back I think it might be a while off with the sequel series now in production as it were.
I finished relentless and as with the others found it hugely enjoyable. Damn, my card's expired and i don't have the paper to get the last book, Victorious. I have to wait until payday.
I am working my way through the series as well. I've just finished Courageous and started Valiant. I got to say I am enjoying them very much, just like Vertigo predicted. I am now sure that the Ancestor veneration and the Living Stars are most certainly a religion. They are not described as some hold over from the past but as something that many people believe truly effects their living.
From my religious point of view I would say that the ancestor worship amounts to something very like ancient Judaism (roughly 0-1000 AD) veneration of angels, while the living stars looks like a more believable version of Astrology.
I am having trouble visualizing the fleet maneuvers. I rather prefer David Weber's space battles at least as far as description goes, those I can follow. On the other hand not allowing the forces any FTL communication or detection throws a very realistic twist, one I hadn't thought about before. Also I think that the speed of the battles is also much closer to what a real Space Battle will look like (Days of posturing and planning, and a blink of the eye engagement.)
I finished relentless and as with the others found it hugely enjoyable. Damn, my card's expired and i don't have the paper to get the last book, Victorious. I have to wait until payday.
I am working my way through the series as well. I've just finished Courageous and started Valiant. I got to say I am enjoying them very much, just like Vertigo predicted. I am now sure that the Ancestor veneration and the Living Stars are most certainly a religion. They are not described as some hold over from the past but as something that many people believe truly effects their living.
From my religious point of view I would say that the ancestor worship amounts to something very like ancient Judaism (roughly 0-1000 AD) veneration of angels, while the living stars looks like a more believable version of Astrology.
I am having trouble visualizing the fleet maneuvers. I rather prefer David Weber's space battles at least as far as description goes, those I can follow. On the other hand not allowing the forces any FTL communication or detection throws a very realistic twist, one I hadn't thought about before. Also I think that the speed of the battles is also much closer to what a real Space Battle will look like (Days of posturing and planning, and a blink of the eye engagement.)
I think you have the religion pretty well figured there Parson. I do wonder why he bothered to invent a new religion, I still don't see it as important to the plot other than to have some religion to carry that part of the story. One wonders if he either thinks it is a "better" religion, more suited to future space faring humankind (though I can't really see that myself), or whether it is a belief that he tends towards himself.
The space battles are really what made these books stand out for me. I too had trouble visualising them, but then I had the same trouble with Weber's. Maybe I'm just not good at 3-d mmodelling in my head . However I did take the time to figure out roughly what was going on and I suspect they are not far removed from second world war naval tactics (without aircraft carriers like Webers CLACs) translated into three dimensions. What I liked most was how the physics of them seemed so well thought out and believable. In comparison I now find Weber's FTL comms and sensors to be a bit of a deus es machina. Not disturbingly so, but it is interesting to see how well such battles can be constructed without resorting to such physics. I will be a bit sad for Weber's books if we ever figure out that gravity waves aren't that fast after all
I think you have the religion pretty well figured there Parson. I do wonder why he bothered to invent a new religion, I still don't see it as important to the plot other than to have some religion to carry that part of the story. One wonders if he either thinks it is a "better" religion, more suited to future space faring humankind (though I can't really see that myself), or whether it is a belief that he tends towards himself.
My thought here was that he didn't want to alienate a part of the potential audience by having the "one" religion (not very realistic really) being Islam or Christianity or whatever. I also suspect that sometime in the process (perhaps not currently) he was thinking of making the "living stars" actually enter as another form of alien race.
The space battles are really what made these books stand out for me. I too had trouble visualising them, but then I had the same trouble with Weber's. Maybe I'm just not good at 3-d mmodelling in my head . However I did take the time to figure out roughly what was going on and I suspect they are not far removed from second world war naval tactics (without aircraft carriers like Webers CLACs) translated into three dimensions. What I liked most was how the physics of them seemed so well thought out and believable. In comparison I now find Weber's FTL comms and sensors to be a bit of a deus es machina. Not disturbingly so, but it is interesting to see how well such battles can be constructed without resorting to such physics. I will be a bit sad for Weber's books if we ever figure out that gravity waves aren't that fast after all
Actually my trouble with Weber is his incessant use of acronyms (CLAC for example). I always had to stop and figure out what they were again. As for the comms and sensors, I always felt that they were appropriate for the FTL drive, the one leading naturally to the other. My problem with Campbell's formations is like in Courageous he has "the five plate formation with the heavies on the bottom/edge" tangling with the box formation and I can't see how the one gives anything like the advantage that it seems to in the story, so I'm guessing my visualization is off somehow. I had a bit of this problem with Weber's ships of the wall and their necessity, but with the new carrier fleet the ships of the wall are rapidly disappearing from being the primary fighting force.
Hmm maybe you're right and he was just trying for a politically neutral reiligion. I guess that makes sense although most authors seem to go with all the current religions still being around in one form or another which I guess is equally "neutral".
And yes there were one or two of his battles that I just couldn't wrap my head around fully, but then the same is true for me of many SF fleet based battles from almost any author that has tried them. I think it is a very very difficult task to describe complex battle maneuvers without losing the reader in the process. The HH books are classic for this; in the early books the battles were mostly relatively small but as HH gets promoted the battles of necessity become bigger as she commands larger fleets. As this happened I gradually found it harder to follow them. Ho hum! See, if I'd been in the navy I'd have been an engineer rather than a tactician and indeed that's what I was in the army!
Nice one I'm afraid my relationship with the army did not last very long, I had a good time but ultimately we just didn't see things the same way . In the end I think they were as glad to see me going as I was to be going. They did their best to make me stay but I think that was more for appearnaces than anything else, although they did threaten to sue me for my education costs!
There are actually two different cover artists for my books: the first two from one guy are bad, so they got another guy for the last four and those are worse. What didn't you like about them? For me, it was ridiculous that the covers portrayed what must have been Geary (though he looked nothing like my idea of him - in all the varying depictions, as the covers are inconsistent in all specifics) as an armed and armored infantry man when he's a de facto/de jure admiral.
They are that but only the third to the fourth (IIRC) gave me that Empire Strikes Back serial cliff-hanger feeling of "You can't stop here!". Otherwise, they at least found stopping places. But I am glad I was able to read them back-to-back.
I must admit that i find myself very much wanting to finish the series before moving on to something else. Normally i need to move to another author after three books.
I am having trouble visualizing the fleet maneuvers. I rather prefer David Weber's space battles at least as far as description goes, those I can follow. On the other hand not allowing the forces any FTL communication or detection throws a very realistic twist, one I hadn't thought about before. Also I think that the speed of the battles is also much closer to what a real Space Battle will look like (Days of posturing and planning, and a blink of the eye engagement.)
I agree - I thought the STL combat was one of the best elements of the story. I've only read one Weber book and (sorry, Parson, I know you're a huge fan) I didn't like it, but I found Campbell's battle's very easy to follow (except the last one, for some reason - partly the actual visualization, but more the rationale and motives underlying who could do what in it).
In fairness I guess he does explain it away on the basis of the war having gone on for so long and as the attrirtion got ever higher there simply weren't any (or enough) experienced officers left to pass on the tactics and the young officers were simply getting killed off before they could gain their own experience. However, with that said, so much of space battle tactics are actually performed by computer and they don't forget!
I'd grant that it wasn't necessarily the most believable part of the story (though plausible enough) but one thing I loved about the series is that the tactics are executed by computer, but the strategy is purely human and the specific tactics derive from that and only then do the computers kick in and, even then, can be overridden (at least in the Alliance). Both sides utilize automation but generally keep it in its proper place, having a deep distrust of overdoing it.
Although I'm quite happy to suspend belief on most things when reading a good SiFi novel, I did find two things hard to take. Firstly the main characters keep referring to the 'living stars' and secondly, each space ship has a shrine to allow crew members to communicate with their ancestors. The living stars and the ancestors don't have any significant role to play in the story, so I'm not quite sure why they are included. If we do get to be a space faring species I expect that if we do have any religions, it will probably be a bit more sophisticated.
Oh absolutely a religion, and as you say a good opportunity for that bonding. My reference to the cultural bit was that, albeit a religion, I think the author is mainly using it to highlight the cultural gap between Geary's and everyone else's approach to it.
Also I must confess with some embarassment that Orson Scott Card is an author I've not yet read, he has been in my TBR for far too long.
My thought here was that he didn't want to alienate a part of the potential audience by having the "one" religion (not very realistic really) being Islam or Christianity or whatever
I agree completely. I think one of the motivations of this story is 9/11 and so I think he very much wanted to include religion yet abstract it from any particular one, especially either Christianity or Islam. So, needing a neutral religion and needing it, like a good writer would, to serve multiple purposes, he combined his sleeping hero story with an ancestor worship religion. This avoids making things up out of whole cloth (we have ancestor worship religions) and reinforces the situation of Geary himself being a living ancestor. So I thought that part was great. I will admit though, that the living stars seemed underdeveloped in these volumes. And I wonder if they bear any relation to our stars. Certainly... hm. I guess this falls under a slight spoiler.
Slight spoiler:
The humans react to novas in terms of human loss - there's no shock at the blasphemy of murdering a star. So I think the living stars may either be something more metaphorical or related to the light blobs in jump space (which is where Geary was sometimes imagined to be 'sleeping'). Maybe this was explained better and I just missed it, but that's what I suppose.
(Vertigo: on the Card: it's sold a million copies; it and its sequel swept the Hugo/Nebula in consecutive years; it's regarded as a classic; many people (including Parson) love it - and I hate it. I wouldn't feel bad about not reading it, though I understand that you might feel you have to.)
As much as i'm enjoying these, i can't believe that the two female characters Rione (a senior polition) and Desjani (the Flagship Captain) are bickering like two schoolgirls over Geary.
I thought he overplayed their bickering in that book. Some friction between them was necessary for the plot but it didn't need as much as he gave it and I found it quite annoying.
Generally speaking, I thought - something endemic to Analog-type writers - that the romance was about the weakest part of the story. Even if it had been done flawlessly, it was a bit out of place in my military SF. But it wasn't ruinous. This specific part, as depicted, I almost could buy. They didn't start scratching each other with their nails or anything, or do anything destructive to their other goals.
Spoiler:
I will say though that, if we were going to have romance, I infinitely preferred Desjani, so at least that came out right in the end, even if had to come in the form of a Weinbaum ending (as I think of it).
Pt.II
In addition to the elements discussed, I'd add a couple of points: one criticism of the books is the repetition between volumes, which Campbell does for those who might have missed previous volumes. While this is annoying to those of us who aren't missing any, it's explicable and forgivable. However, while I can't quote specific lines, some of the repetition in the second or third volume was done by repeating conversation between characters like they'd never happened before. This isn't acceptable but he seemed to stop doing it that way in later volumes. However, a better solution, to me, is to have extremely serialized books do like magazine serials and simply include a synopsis of the preceding story in an italicized chunk at the front of each book. Then it can be entirely read or entirely skipped as desired.
Another thing he did (for more books) before eventually stopping, was having Geary hear things said and then realizing it was he who had said them. This sounded increasingly crazy and reached terribly ironic proportions when talking to Falco. But, as I say, someone must have pointed this out to Campbell, because it went away.
What never entirely went away were certain annoying phrases he must have had macros for such as "He released the breath he hadn't known he was holding" although one time, he actually just released a breath he apparently did know he was holding.
But, other than minor, concentrated points like that, I really liked the way he wrote.
Also, while this thread's touched on the STL combat, the love triangle, the religious aspects, etc., I didn't notice anyone comment on the "do not become your enemy" theme - the conservative (in the literal sense) theme. The "honor to our ancestors" element isn't a rote phrase, but is vital, at least to an American, though I believe it can go back to our English ancestors and Magna Carta and all, as well as our Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Campbell depicts a century long war of increasing atrocity as both sides degenerate into barbarism. While Geary injects the necessary military chain of command that had degenerated into misplaced politicking, he just as vigorously obeys orders himself and subordinates the military to the democracy he defends. He exercises the virtues of humanity, not making war on civilians, not engaging in wholesale destruction, in seeking an honorable end to a seemingly eternal war, etc. I think all of this is well taken in light of some of the feelings and actions going on this past decade.
Lastly, I think it's fascinating that the Syndicate enemy is actually a society of unbridled economic power. Basically, the Alliance - an association of apparently democratic systems, is fighting a single corporation that controls multiple star systems. Admiral Geary and Senator Rione against CEO So-and-So. I find this interesting because military SF and some space SF and almost all "conservative" SF and the various other things that this story is, are almost invariably bound up with an economic libertarianism and identification of democracy, liberty, capitalism, and corporations. This is a rare (singular?) example that seems to say "if this goes on" corporate structures would not align with freedom. The corporate values of all-encompassing hierarchy and of profit without regard to other ethical considerations would necessarily conflict with the military chains of command, elected public representation, and whatever other varieties for whatever other segments of society and the religion and the mercy and the other values Geary (and the Alliance, less purely) represent). Note that the Alliance, as far as can be determined, is in no way non-capitalist, but corporations, like the military, seem to be subordinated to the elected representatives of the people. In the Syndicate, the corporation has destroyed, subsumed, or otherwise replaced any other form of anything. I think, if my impressions are correct, that this is an interesting critique of a common SF theme and sets this series apart from many others.
But, lest anyone be put off by that, the series is actually refreshingly free of too much specifics on politics, religion, etc., being more concerned with more abstract and longer-lived ethics. And nothing gets in the way of it being a page turner of a rip-roaring adventure.
After a months wait i finally picked up the Lost Fleet: Victorious this afternoon. I've about 50 pages of Ashers The Technician left to read and i'll read this next.
Good post J-Sun and I pretty much agree with all your points.
On the covers, my dislike of them almost exactly matches yours. Lets face it Geary never even left the Dauntless once throught the entire series (except at the very end of course) and I don't think he ever picked up even a small handgun, so having him wondering around totting huge blaster type guns was really just ridiculous. Incidentally in a brief email conversation I had with Jack Campbell (aka John Hemry) he stated that he disliked them as well but had no control over it. The UK editions are much better. I ended up with US editions as the UK publishers are dragging their feet seriously on putting out ebooks so I got them from a friend in the states.
On the battles, though I do like Weber's battles, I think I prefer Campbells I thought they were more realistic and dealt well with all the issues of battles fought at such speeds.
On the repetition front, this is something that I get incredibly frustrated with in, frankly, most series of books. I agree with you that a summary up front that you can ignore is very much my prefered approach, and yet very few authors seem to take that approach. Personally if I was doing the writing I think I would hate that repetition even more than the readers are likely to.
I think the politics, whilst not dominating the books were interesting and fairly realistic. The idea of a runaway corporate government is, I think, very plausible and very worrying. However I thought he over played the paranoia of the Alliance leaders about Geary himself, though I could live with it as it was an important theme throughout the books.
I think the politics, whilst not dominating the books were interesting and fairly realistic. The idea of a runaway corporate government is, I think, very plausible and very worrying. However I thought he over played the paranoia of the Alliance leaders about Geary himself, though I could live with it as it was an important theme throughout the books.
On the "politics not dominating", I thought that was one of the strengths - he had a lot of balls in the air but nothing dominated except the main point of "get home with honor" and its natural extension in the sixth book. As far as the paranoia about Geary, I could actually completely buy that - the thing that comes to mind most is Roman history where it became almost obligatory for a successful military leader to overthrow the current ruler and take his place.
That reminds me of one of my many favorite parts - the "bit part" of Admiral Timbale was an excellently drawn character (though necessarily minor and partial) and his and Geary's interactions were great.
-The exciting pace
-The very good and vivid depictions of space battles
-Some of the characters
-The sense of how a fundamentally decent society has been corrupted by years of war.
But also some negative
-The repetitive nature of some of the dialogue and plotting (for example when one 'awkward squad' in the group of Captains goes they are replaced by others very similar.
-Characterisation is not particularly brilliant for most characters and can make the world not seem fully realised.
-the books are simply too short for the money you pay, a shorter series of, say, four books would have far better value for money.
In terms of general themes the concept of losing skill over the course of a war might seem counter-intutive but has some basis on fact. The Wehrmacht of 1945 had nothing like the tactical ability of 1939-42 for example and the complexity of the space battles described are far greater than that encountered on the second world war battlefield. I would say it is exagerated in the books but possible given a very high attrition rate.
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(though they told me they intend do it but have no dates yet). Anyway I didn't notice any problems like this in my editions.
