Shattered Spear is the fourth book in Campbell’s Lost Stars series, a spinoff from his Lost Fleet series. Led by President Iceni and General Drakon, the Midway star system continues to consolidate its rebellion against the Syndicate Worlds. The threat of those Syndicate Worlds is compounded by the hostile alien Enigmas setting up a new base in a neighbouring star system and the appearance of an apparently hostile warlord in the next system over from that.
With the Midway space fleet now much more established the emphasis of this book has moved more towards Space Opera with ground based operations only making a relatively minor contribution to the story. This is once again good intelligent military science fiction but sadly it really felt very much like just more of the same with constant reminders of how different everything is compared with the days of Syndicate rule and constant trust issues between the main protagonists, somewhat alleviated by some interestingly different space actions (including one involving four different groups, each hostile to all the others).
It is still an enjoyable read but the lack of variety means I may shortly draw a line under these books and I’ll probably not move on to the prequel series Campbell has now started set during the early days of the Alliance.
3/5 stars
With the Midway space fleet now much more established the emphasis of this book has moved more towards Space Opera with ground based operations only making a relatively minor contribution to the story. This is once again good intelligent military science fiction but sadly it really felt very much like just more of the same with constant reminders of how different everything is compared with the days of Syndicate rule and constant trust issues between the main protagonists, somewhat alleviated by some interestingly different space actions (including one involving four different groups, each hostile to all the others).
It is still an enjoyable read but the lack of variety means I may shortly draw a line under these books and I’ll probably not move on to the prequel series Campbell has now started set during the early days of the Alliance.
3/5 stars
