The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast by Jack Campbell

(cover image from Amazon.com)

I've really been enjoying the Lost Fleet series (including the sequel and the Lost Stars offshoot) by Jack Campbell (the pen name of John G. Hemry), but I still wasn't expecting much from this book.

Well, from the description, it seemed like a bunch of odds and ends - filler, basically, until Campbell could think of a new direction for the story (the fleet, after all, having returned home long since). It starts on Earth, where the last book ended, and then there's a new assignment immediately when he returns - nothing important, just a way to keep John "Black Jack" Geary out of everybody's hair.

But it didn't read like that. The Lost Fleet Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast (2014) was just as interesting as all the other books. That includes the first 150 pages of the book, which is just them trying to leave Sol system, and it includes the minor task of repatriating Syndic refugees he's given next.

Of course, there's more to that than it seems, but any reader would expect that. No, what was particularly interesting was that it was a different problem. Campbell is still coming up with new situations, even after all of the previous books.

This is a middle book, though, ending with the discovery of a hugely dangerous situation which will undoubtedly be the focus of the next book in the series. I don't mind that, but I have to say that the situation was no surprise at all, really.

My only complaint about the book is that I figured out what was going on long before Admiral Geary did. After all, the whole book pointed in that direction. Of course, that's because it is a book. If it didn't give us some clues, if these things came completely out of the blue, that wouldn't seem right, either.

So I can't complain too much. It's still a very entertaining book. Just don't expect the revelation at the end to take you by surprise. :)

___
Note: My other book reviews can be found here.