Immediately prior to reading this book, I read David Weber’s new Safehold epic, A Mighty Fortress. After nearly 700 pages of densely-printed, convoluted, expositiony and -- ultimately -- unfinished world-building (not that I didn’t like it; it’s David Weber!), a return to the undemanding future of Jack Campbell’s series The Lost Fleet was exactly what I needed. Victorious was like the palate-cleansing Evian after the full-bodied Shiraz; the plain vanilla ice cream that leavens the rich chocolate cake; that minute of gentle hand brushing they give you at the end of a deep tissue massage. After hours and hours spent concentrating and focused, overwhelmed by the flavors, textures and sensations, I was ready to kick back, relax, and have some fun.

And fun I most certainly had.

One misunderstood description that can be applied to the books of The Lost Fleet is that of “pulp fiction”… but pulp can be a good thing. A very good thing. They are pulp in the classic sci-fi sense of the word, when writers like H. Beam Piper and James Schmitz and E. E. “Doc” Smith plied their wares to a burgeoning fanbase for 50 cents apiece. We regard these novels as true classics of the genre now, landmarks in the evolution of a whole new kind of storytelling, revolutionary and remarkable, but at the time they were throwaways, expected to be consumed and then forgotten.

What Jack Campbell (AKA John G. Hemry) has done with The Lost Fleet is to recapture that feeling, to bring back the Golden Age of Science Fiction. An age when the stories were simple, and often not subtle, and frequently unsurprising. But just really, really fun.

This is science fiction writing for the sheer joy of it. He’s not giving us elaborate prose or deep allegory or esoteric scientific rumination; he’s just telling us the story of how one man can affect the course of a war by displaying honor, duty, courage, smarts and a respect for the lessons of history. How a series hero can be a paragon of all the virtues without being tiresome. Campbell’s “Black Jack” Geary feels like a protagonist out of another time not only because he is an antique in his reality, but an antique in ours; we haven’t had a tale like his is a long, long time (and, as Hemry told us HERE, it is a very ancient tale indeed)... and rarely have we had one told so enjoyably.

Geary is a classic pulp SF hero – incomparable, ingenious; an all around good guy surrounded by baseness and villainy but who can Do No Wrong -- and his story is told in classic pulp fashion. And not only is there nothing wrong with that, there is everything right with it. Victorious, like its predecessors -- both in the series and in the genre -- is a very fast read, and a kind of breathless one at that. The Lost Fleet novels even hearken back to those classic pulp novels in that the book jacket has little to do with the tale it contains (just when is Geary in powered armor, and just when does he carry a big honkin' space gun?).

We kick things off in this latest rollicking adventure with a little light politicking. The Alliance Council, dunderheads to a one, plan to arrest, if not outright assassinate, Fleet idol Geary, fearing a military coup by this revered uniformed figure. Geary cleverly spikes their guns with a little judicious grandstanding and a potent display of Old World devotion. As a result, they not only let him live, but they make him Admiral of the Fleet and then give him permission to take that Fleet, until so recently Lost, back out into the wide black yonder in order to end the latter-day Hundred Years War that is the series’ backdrop. Now, considering the title of this book -- named, as are they all, after a ship in the Alliance Fleet -- it should come as no surprise that things go well for Geary and the gang. But it is how things go well that makes Victorious such an entertaining romp through interstellar warfare, internecine rivalry and interpersonal relationships. Campbell’s world is one of absolutes, where duty and honor and sacrifice reign supreme; where the enemy does have some advantages, but not insurmountable ones; where the odds may seem impossible, but there is always a way to even them out.

Again, very classic SF.

The other thing that feels more than a little Golden Age about The Lost Fleet books, and Victorious in particular, is its women. Ah, yes. The women. With the death of brilliant Captain/Scientist Cresida in the previous book, Relentless (an event that is refreshingly still much-mourned here), the two remaining female characters of any consequence are master of political intrigue Co-President Victoria Rione and much-admired military commander Captain Tanya Desjani. A brief glance at their job descriptions and one would think that The Lost Fleet treats its chicks well; but this is not entirely so. Of these two women, one is Geary’s henpecking former lover, the other is the unspoken love of his life (those damned Fraternization Regulations are still causing trouble many centuries hence, I’m sorry to report, Jack and Sam), and for all their competence in their particular areas of interest, they are also just a couple of bitchy little girls. Their constant bickering and jealousy is little more than a plot device to make it obvious how much they really recommend a certain course of action when they do, in fact, agree on something.

But my annoyance with these two women’s childish squabbling -- which, if I’m honest, probably is rooted in real feminine psychology -- is a minor thing, compared to how much pleasure I gained from the surrounding narrative. Space battles, scientific discoveries (made, but mercifully left largely unexamined), a mysterious alien foe and a satisfying conclusion to a long-teased romance--it went by in a whirl, and left a smile in its wake, and I can think of few conclusions to a multi-book saga that I have found to be quite so… concluded.

That said, and for all that Hemry told us here in this very publication that The Lost Fleet is not an “endless series,” he also told us that it will have two follow-on series -- oddly, not a contradiction. For while the door to The Lost Fleet is closed, there are several windows open, and I am certainly looking forward to climbing through them when the time comes.

‘Cause… fun!

  -- Rachel Hyland