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A review by ergative
Dauntless by Jack Campbell
3.0
A solid space opera romp. There was nothing subtle about it; the character arcs and relationship were fairly predictable. Geary's prepetual rejection of his mythic status as Black Jack Geary is a bit hard to take given that he faces nothing but success after success in his encounters, and I find it incredibly hard to believe that the forgotten military tactics learned during peacetime training are so much better than the tactics employed by fleets that have been at war for a century. I simply cannot swallow the idea that millions of people have become so brainwashed by the 'aggression against the enemy!' mindset that they ignore tactics that win battles, and instead adopt individutalistic 'charge right at 'em!'. And on both sides? We're given to believe that the Alliance adopts that strategy because they misapply what they see as the fighting spirit of Black Jack Geary. But then why are the Syndicate fleets doing the same thing? It seems far more likely to me that the first fleets to take the individualistic Black Jack Geary approach to the Syndics would be utterly spanked by the traditional, better tactics, and quickly learn, 'oh, yeah, maybe I'd better keep doing what I learned in battle school.' And even if there is a path for both sides to adopt the misunderstood approach attributed to a dead commander who's only a hero to half of them, in a century no fleet commander thought, 'huh, I wonder what happens if I try something this instead of that'? There have been no advances in tactics?
I get that the final battle has to show how Geary can offer something novel to help the Alliance fleet win. But there's an enormously better route to do that. We learn a lot about how the advances in technology have changed travel since Geary's time, because people use hypergates now instead of system jumps. And the reason we've got a whole series of books is that Geary is taking the MacGuffin back to Alliance space through the slower jump gates because it's not safe to use the hyperspace gates, and he's encountering a lot of worlds and systems that have been mothballed or deserted because of the changes in how people travel through space. So why can't we just have a contrast between hypergate-based battle tactics (modern) which don't apply given the fleet's decision to take jump gates home, and Geary's traditional methods, which were built around jump gates, and so are uniquely suited to the battle situation that is now unfamiliar to the Syndics? In other words, allow the Alliance to be smart and capable, but simply untrained for the specific situatoin that Geary has the expertise to excel in rather than forcing them to have turned stupid in 100 years through an unbelievable development. That would also support Geary's self-doubt, because he would know that he's not 'better' than them (as he is in the book as written), simply trained for a situation that happens to match what they find themselves in.
Anyway: As you can tell from teh above musings, I was engaged and entertained by this book, and I have every intention of listening to the rest of the series. There's nothing too demanding, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the hints of ALIENS!! are going to play out.
I get that the final battle has to show how Geary can offer something novel to help the Alliance fleet win. But there's an enormously better route to do that. We learn a lot about how the advances in technology have changed travel since Geary's time, because people use hypergates now instead of system jumps. And the reason we've got a whole series of books is that Geary is taking the MacGuffin back to Alliance space through the slower jump gates because it's not safe to use the hyperspace gates, and he's encountering a lot of worlds and systems that have been mothballed or deserted because of the changes in how people travel through space. So why can't we just have a contrast between hypergate-based battle tactics (modern) which don't apply given the fleet's decision to take jump gates home, and Geary's traditional methods, which were built around jump gates, and so are uniquely suited to the battle situation that is now unfamiliar to the Syndics? In other words, allow the Alliance to be smart and capable, but simply untrained for the specific situatoin that Geary has the expertise to excel in rather than forcing them to have turned stupid in 100 years through an unbelievable development. That would also support Geary's self-doubt, because he would know that he's not 'better' than them (as he is in the book as written), simply trained for a situation that happens to match what they find themselves in.
Anyway: As you can tell from teh above musings, I was engaged and entertained by this book, and I have every intention of listening to the rest of the series. There's nothing too demanding, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the hints of ALIENS!! are going to play out.