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| Courageous (The Lost Fleet, Book 3) | 
 enlarge | Author: Jack Campbell
Publisher: Ace
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $2.95
You Save: $5.04 (63%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 6657
Media: Paperback
Edition: Ace Mass-market Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 4.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0441015670
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780441015672
ASIN: 0441015670
Publication Date: December 18, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: paperback in very good condition
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| Customer Reviews:
 Enjoyable but I am getting annoyed August 5, 2008
This is my first space opera series and it was fun. The premise is good, excellent. My complaint is in the extreme irritation in an author who continues to repeat sections via wholesale cut and paste. It is almost as though 20% of the book feels as though its a repeat. I find myself rolling my eyes. The characters who whine is ridiculous. The hero who is not asserting leadership and lets knuckleheads walk over him is ridiculous. The author who produces cardboard love scenes so stiff they could break like uncooked spaghetti is kinda amusing but I give him a wave for trying. It feels he was commanded to do so by his publisher.
The battle scenes were extra long. The bitchout sessions by his lover were getting tedious. This was not going in a positive direction at all by books end.
On a scale 1 to 5, Five is Best:
Villian: 4
Plot: 3
Creativity: 3
Uniqueness: 2.5
Humor: 1
Bringing the sexy: 0
Passion: 3 stars (for duty & honor )
Dullness setting in on Series: 3
Laughs & Amusement factor: 1
Silly Whiners getting on your nerves: 5
Lazy Author repeating too much from prior chapters: 5
The investment has been made now and I want to know what is going to happen next. I bought the first 3 as as books on tape (audiobooks). Now that I know the author has been a little lazy, I will not invest in an audiobook on book #4. I will buy that as paperback because I do want to know what happened but not at $24.00.
If the pattern continues, there will be a lot of cut and paste, not a lot of plot advancement and the characters chasing their tails and not going anywhere except someplace pretty durn depressing.
For that I can read in an afternoon in Barnes and Noble and not even buy the paperback for #4.
 ruffled around the edges August 4, 2008
Though extremly well written and graphically depicted beyond all expectations, i did find that much of what happens in the book must be simply accepted. For instance, HOW BIG are some of these ships, compared to actual objects, foot ball stadium? and is there artificial gravity or do they float around inside the ships. What's the propulsion system? does it have a name, is it gravity fed, ect, ect... Though these questions seem incredibly important, the books seem to glance off of the implied incredibly well.
Wonderfull Mil-Sci-Fi July 29, 2008
Wonderfull book, wonderfull series. Very deep and beliveble characters and very realistic space phisics, in a story arc very well planned. I didnt want reaching the end of the book because so delicious and please was the reading.
Well written, tied together, lots of themes developing that will lead to future story lines, without sacrificing the current book. I have great hopes for the next one.
Go Black Jack!
You could start reading the series with this one. July 22, 2008
You might want to read the books in THE LOST FLEET series in order. But if for some reason you can't get #1 THE LOST FLEET: DAUNTLESS or #2 THE LOST FLEET: FEARLESS -- you can start with this one without fear of being bewildered or confused.
Even the characterizations are crystal clear so that you aren't wondering why this person does this or "who" this other person is.
And after you've read COURAGEOUS, you'll still want to read the previous ones if you haven't already. In fact, you may want to reread the previous ones!
This series is Military SF at its best - but it's not all plot. It doesn't read like the worst of the Arthurian Legend novels, detailing one battle after another until you don't care who wins. Each battle is set up perfectly so that the personalities of the Captains commanding ships in Geary's Fleet figure into the orders Geary gives.
It even matters, politically, who Geary is sleeping with (and who not) all for good reasons rooted in character as well as politics.
If you've had a little too much Fantasy interdimensional battle novels lately, you should try this one.
The writing is clean, compelling -- and trust me, it's hard to write a mid-series novel that's as "transparent" as this one to the compelling forces detailed in previous novels without spoiling the current one.
This Series takes its place beside Edward E. Smith, Ph.D.'s LENSMAN SERIES, but unlike the Lensman Series, THE LOST FLEET is not "space opera" at all. It's more like the Dragnet, or Columbo of Interstellar Warfare with a dash of THE DRESDEN FILES plotting thrown in.
THE LOST FLEET: COURAGEOUS is just pure enjoyment.
The Lost Fleet moves on! July 4, 2008
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Background to this book: John Hemry, writing under the pen-name Jack Campbell, began the series by introducing readers to a universe, far into our future, where humanity has spread out into space, colonizing many planets, and eventually separating into two main camps, The Alliance and the Syndicate. Competition and contrasting political structures result in conflict. In the first book, The Lost Fleet: Dauntless, the Alliance fleet is lured into an ambush, where it suffers great loss, especially in the upper military echelons. The command of the fleet falls to its most senior surviving office, John "Black Jack" Geary, who had long been thought to be dead, but who had just been rescued from an escape pod, where he had spent a century in cryogenic sleep. Black Jack Geary had become legend, for sacrificing himself to save his ship during the first outbreak of hostilities involving the Syndicate, and now he was seen as a hero, returned from the dead, to rescue the Alliance from a near-total massacre and a seemingly-endless war.
In this third book of the Lost Fleet series, Black Jack Geary faces the choice of either continuing to try to fool the Syndics, as the Syndicate fleet is called by Alliance military people, or making a quicker dash back to Alliance space, that could easily lead to another disastrous ambush. Through the first two books, Geary has successfully outguessed the Syndics, and has inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. This as caused further belief in the idea that John Geary is a resurrected hero, sent by the ancestors of the Alliance, to save the fleet. Geary has tried to avoid embracing the mythical hero role, that brings the impression of infallibility with it.
While trying to damage the Syndics and bring the fleet back to Alliance space, Geary also has to deftly deal with a subtly growing contingent, in his own fleet, of those who fear Geary and want him deposed as Fleet Commander. Another contingent idolizes Geary, almost fanatically, and want him to seize the mythos of Black Jack Geary and be much more than Fleet Commander.
For the first two-thirds of this book, it strongly resembled its predecessors, to the point that I was beginning to fear that the author had exhausted his supply of originality and creativity. The only real differences between the predecessors and the earlier parts of this book, was that the Alliance fleet was experiencing more resource shortages, and they were starting to get outmaneuvered at times, as the Syndics seemed to have caught on to some of Geary's tactics, and were becoming better at anticipating the next move and countering it.
Then, as Geary began to despair, he got what he needed, from two of his internal allies and, surprisingly, from an old internal opponent. In a thrumming crescendo, the last third of the book builds tension, then moves to rapid-fire action, complex military strategy and maneuvering, and shocking brilliance and boldness that will make John Geary the man into a legend, separate from the century-old Black Jack legend. Geary's last decision in this book is stunning, and creates an incredible cliffhanger that makes it impossible for me to not read the next book in the series.
Jack Campbell's writing is crisp, even when the story begins to feel repetitive, early in the book. It feels almost like John Geary's funk, and the advice that helped him pull out of it, also helped the author remember what made the first two books excellent reading, and writing those pep-talk passages had the same effect on Campbell that it had on Geary. The characters in this book, as in its predecessors, were varied, credible, and three-dimensional. The brilliant ending certainly ensured by continued interest in the series.
Those who enjoy these books, will also likely enjoy Old Man's War by John Scalzi, and its sequels.
-- Chris McCallister, author of Coming Full Circle
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