When Syndicate treachery massacres most of the fleet officers, Geary is left as commander of the Alliance fleet. He has no experience in leading a space fleet. And the troops, after a century of war, are inexperienced young hotheads. They expect Geary to perform a miracle and overcome the superior Syndicate force. Geary knows he's no legend—just a flawed mortal. Can he stop the surviving Alliance soldiers and officers from worshipping him as a near-god—or deciding he's a dangerous, untrustworthy interloper who will destroy them all?

And Geary has another problem. The ravaged Alliance fleet is far from home and can't get there directly. Barred from the interstellar hypernet by the Syndics, the Alliance ships must use their old system—jump drives. This technology can be up to a hundred times slower than the hypernet, and it requires the use of gravity wells. This means the Alliance fleet must jump to nearby stars, where far faster Syndic ships may be waiting to wipe them out. And, Geary realizes, there may be a third party in the century-old Alliance-Syndicate war: an enemy previously unknown to the Alliance, who may lie between the Alliance fleet and its only path home, and who scares even the ruthless Syndicate Worlds. ...

A future without a future

Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet: Dauntless opens rockily, with Black Jack Geary resisting both his legendary status and his post-hibernation ennui. His long century's nap has left him feeling "cold" and "empty" inside. The protagonist's numbness seems a convenience, permitting the writer to avoid dealing with the wrenching emotions of loss and exile. This avoidance is unfortunate, because strong emotions work far better than numbness in drawing readers into a novel.

The muted opening is further weakened by Geary's resistance to being a legend and fleet commander. While believable, his resistance goes on so long that many readers will begin wondering if he knows much about fighting or command. In fact, Geary is an inspirational leader and strong tactician. Unfortunately, some readers may bail out before this solid novel hits its stride and delivers its rousing military-SF action.

The Lost Fleet: Dauntless represents a recent trend in SF: novels that ignore everything that's happened in SF since the 1960s' New Wave. Readers of The Lost Fleet: Dauntless will find a rigorous adherence to relativity, but no singularity, nanotechnology, quantum states, cyberspace, posthumans, multiculturalism, complex antiheroes or even strong language. If sent back in time, The Lost Fleet: Dauntless could be serialized without a hitch in John W. Campbell's Astounding SF. This isn't a book for seekers of cutting-edge SF, but it should please many fans of old-fashioned hard SF. And it may be a good starting point for media-SF fans looking to expand their SF reading beyond tie-in novels.