Jack Campbell has at last finished his Lost Fleet series with The Lost Fleet: Victorious, and yes, he sticks the dismount.

It’s hard to review the last book in a series without giving important details away, but I shall try. First, since I’ve not reviewed most of the intermediate books, the premise. As the first book begins, the Alliance Fleet arrives in the capital system of the Syndicated Worlds, intending to take them by surprise, destroy their fleet, and end a war that’s been going on for the past century. But it’s a trap. The Syndics are expecting them, and most of the Alliance fleet is wiped out, along with its admiral. The captain with the greatest seniority is one John “Black Jack” Geary. But Geary’s situation is a little unusual.

In one of the opening battles of the war, Geary, then a lieutenant, takes acting command of his heavily damaged ship after the captain is killed. He sends off most of the crew into escape pods, and keeps fighting the ship until the last possible moment. He barely manages to reach an escape pod, which puts him into hibernation until such time as he can be recovered. But the Alliance was forced to flee the system, and in fact his pod is not recovered until a century later…by the Alliance Fleet on its way to the Syndics’ capital system. During his hundred year sleep, he discovers, he has been promoted to captain, and turned into a legendary hero. He’s the senior captain, all right: 100 years of seniority. But he has only commanded a ship for a matter of hours.

And yet, with all his inexperience he’s in many ways more experienced than anyone else in the fleet. Casualties have been so heavy for so many decades that most of what was once known about how to handle fleets in battle has been lost: those who knew it died in battle, and those who came after had no time to learn. Geary, though, was trained when the Alliance Navy was at its peak.

Following the debacle in the Syndic home system, Geary must try to get the remnants of the Alliance Fleet back home. The route used for the sneak attack is closed to them; it’s going to be a long, hard journey. “Black Jack” (a name he despises) has his work cut out for him.

The Fleet arrives home at the end of the fifth book—that’s not really a spoiler, narrative causality dictates that it was going to happen eventually—but there’s more to be done. Will Geary attempt to ride his success to control of the Alliance government? What about the war with the Syndics? And then, there have been signs of potentially deadly aliens on the far side of Syndic space, aliens who might have more to do with the Alliance than any of the Alliance leaders realize. And how about Geary’s love life? There are quite a few loose threads, and Campbell ties them all off for us.

Taken as a whole, the Lost Fleet books aren’t quite as entertaining as David Weber’s Honor Harrington tales are at their best (though some of the more recent of those have been dreadful). But Campbell keeps up the quality all the way through; if you like the first one, The Lost Fleet: Dauntless, you’ll enjoy the rest of the ride.