The novel “The Lost Fleet: Victorious” by Jack Campbell was published for the first time in 2010. It’s the sixth and final book in The Lost Fleet series and follows “The Lost Fleet: Relentless“.
After many battles against the Syndicate, Captain John “Black Jack” Geary must assert his loyalty to the authorities of the Alliance. This means keeping some of his officers at bay, as they’re ready to follow him even in a coup if he were interested in taking power.
Being promoted to Admiral of the Fleet is a burden for John Geary, also because it adds another problem to his personal life. The knowledge that there’s a non-human species that constitutes a threat to both the Alliance and the Syndicate pushes him to accept the new assignment.
“The Lost Fleet: Victorious” concludes a military science fiction series that tells a single great story that must be read in its entirety to understand the characters and events. It offers a conclusion to some subplots that were intertwined over the course of the five previous novels.
A legendary hero like John “Black Jack” Geary accomplished an impossible feat, and for this reason, an aura was created around him with connotations that are sometimes even religious. Throughout the series, Jack Campbell illustrates various aspects of an ancestor-based religion and explores the relationship between the military and religion. Geary is almost a god incarnate, and dealing with that situation is one of his problems due to the various consequences.
The beginning of this final chapter deals with the political consequences within the Alliance of John Geary’s status. In some ways, it’s the most obvious part of the story and in my opinion, Jack Campbell did well to resolve it in the initial part to quickly move on to other parts of the plot.
Over the course of the previous books in the series, increasingly important clues to the existence of a non-human civilization emerged. In my opinion, the developments connected to this potential threat are the most interesting part of this novel. The presence of a power that acts in a covert and unfriendly way generates a growing tension when John Geary seeks open contact. From this point of view, this book isn’t an ending but a new beginning.
For me, the least interesting part of the entire series was the one connected to the romantic element. This is an element that has become increasingly important book after book and can be said to have its climax in this grand finale. If you have read the previous novels in the series, you already have a certain idea of what to expect.
Of the entire series, in my opinion, the many space battles and the strategies used to fight them are memorable. They give an idea that seemed realistic to me of how space fleets could be managed when they have to fight in areas of space so vast that the delays due to the speed of light are significant. Communication between different spaceships in the fleet and detection of enemy spaceships have always taken this factor into account.
“The Lost Fleet: Victorious” concludes The Lost Fleet series but also serves to lay the foundations for a subsequent series Jack Campbell wrote in the following years. The author has experience as an officer in the American Navy and used it to develop the various themes connected to honor and duty, which include respect for the law and for the democratic system. These are the themes that determined the success of the series and led to its expansion with some spinoffs, so I recommend it to anyone interested in those themes. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
