Saturday, May 6, 2017

Five top books featuring fleet actions

Robyn Bennis is a scientist who works in biotech but dreams of airships. Her debut novel, The Guns Above, is now available.

One of her five favorite books featuring fleet actions, as shared at Tor.com:
The Lost Fleet: Dauntless by Jack Campbell

We’ve all been in embarrassing situations. Admiral Bloch’s is that he rescued a legendary hero from a drifting cryo-pod and promptly suffered a crushing defeat under the man’s nose. Awkward. The hero in question is John “Black Jack” Geary, missing and presumed dead for a hundred years. What do you say to a man like that, when you’re a space admiral with so much egg on your face? Apparently, you say, “You’re in charge now, kthxbye.”

So, on his first day at a new job, Geary leads a fighting retreat, pursued by a large fraction of the enemy’s entire navy. Worse, with the way home cut off, the only line of withdrawal leads them deeper into enemy territory. Trapped, demoralized, and with an armada following on their heels, half of Geary’s captains want to surrender while the other half would rather charge the enemy and die in glory. He must bring them to a happy medium between capitulation and suicide, and use every trick he knows to outwit the enemy during a harrowing chase through multiple solar systems.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue