Dauntless

Not a perfect book, the characters are not very deep, but it has one of those good enough kind of stories. Military space fights are definitely not my cup of tea, but the tale is well written.

The dialog is kind of forced sometimes, the main character is too much of a text book paladin. “I will treat them as according to the Laws of War”. The author clearly makes an effort to make him look more human, but this is still a very politically correct kind of book.

So, it is the future, and everybody became stupid. After 100 years of war, there is no more veteran soldiers to pass around good fighting tactics. So they all just rush head on into battle, the kill them all and take no prisoners kind of brutality you would expect from an unruly mob. Also, the military has become a democracy, and commanding officers take a vote to decide on the fate of the fleet. Which is always to attack the enemy, despite the odds.

Then comes a hero from the past, a guy that has been idolatrized beyond measure by the contemporary citizens of the Alliance forces. He find himself surrounded by people who either sees him as a god or hate every single thing he do or say, seeing him as a menace to their plans... of dying charging mindlessly against the enemy.

I enjoyed the fight scenes because of the tactics employed and the kind of unique introduction of realism in the form of realistic distortion due to high speeds, and taking into account the time delay it takes to give orders to ships spread across the vastness of space.