This is a dense book, with a lot of information; but despite that, the pace is really fast and never flags for an instant. The action is near non-stop, but the personalities of the various characters are well brought out despite that. This is true masterful writing; and I am going to take some time explaining the context.
The Alliance worlds have been at war with the Syndicate worlds for a hundred years. It’s been a war of attrition, and all rules of war have been long dispensed with. Skirmishes show no trace of military tactics or formations, and resemble brawls. The Alliance worlds are nominally a democratic, though the civilian leadership is in constant fear of a military coup. The Syndics are authoritarian, with each entity run as a corporation headed by a CEO. Both sides travel between planetary systems using Hypernet Gates, which are operated using keys installed on ships. The Alliance gets a syndic hypernet key from a supposed spy, and musters up the entire fleet for an attack at the syndic home world. On the way, they pick up a derelict Alliance shuttle which has been adrift for nearly a century. It contains a sleeping Captain John “Black Jack” Geary, an early hero of the war, someone thought long dead, and the whole fleet looked up to.
The syndics ambush the fleet, and execute all the Alliance senior naval staff. Black Jack is now the oldest serving Captain in a fleet of over 200 ships, and becomes the de-facto fleet commander. The hypernet is now blocked off, and Geary uses an older technique of “Jumps” to get out of the syndic home world, something which was so unexpected that the syndics never thought to guard that escape route. Their rear-guard is protected by a ship captained by his great-nephew, and his ship does not make the jump point.
Geary has to come to terms with a vastly changed military, where decisions are made like a democracy with all captains weighing in. Geary re-establishes a chain of command, brings back simple courtesies like salutes, teaches the whole fleet the basics of fighting in formation and how to use jump points, all dead skills. With his guidance, they easily manage to overcome their pursuing force and live to fight another day.
The author John G. Hemry (Jack Campbell is a nom de plume) is a former naval officer, and brings in a lot of knowledge of tactics, scaled up to the three dimensional environment of space. He factors in a lot of physics principles like relativistic distortion, time dilation and gravity wells. A lot of interesting ideas like how war is more about waiting to fight; the actual fighting is done in the blink of an eye. An excellent, thoroughly enjoyable read; I have not enjoyed a book like this in a very long time.