Dark Matter: Star Carrier, Book Five

I have purchased and read all of the books written my Ian Douglas. I like his stories and he writes a great tale when it comes to military space battles. This book is no different and at times it is a great story with a lot of action.What hurts this book and others of the series is a few issues.One is the constant repeating of data presented in past books. For those readers that have read all of the past books this is just too much filler and it is redundant.The second is Mr. Douglas' lectures on technology and science. I appreciate his in depth research and knowledge that he brings forth into the books but it is overwhelming. Tell a great story but don't try to make all the readers scientists or genetic engineers. I am sure that he loses a lot of potential readers because of the pages and pages of the book dedicated to physics and medical technology.Finally number three; there is too much politics built into the story. Some of it is necessary to the story to show that the human race is evolving but not yet intelligent enough to unite and become a motivated race determined to make its place in the galaxy. It just becomes too much of the reading material and detracts from the story at times.I still liked this book and I enjoyed reading it. It is a 4 star story. Ian is still one of the best military Sci-Fi authors and his books are entertaining and his imagination is amazing. I do wish that more details had been presented about the "star gods" but that is the next book. I hate it when a topic only exists on the first 10 pages of a book and on the last 10. I am addicted and I am waiting for the next book!

An uneasy truce with the alien races continues, while the Earth forces investigate a ring of six black holes of clearly artificial origin.Meanwhile the civil war on Earth reaches its peak, and the USNA forces resort to a very unconventional plan to turn the tides of war.The unexpected discoveries continue , and universe starts looking darker and vaster than ever before.If you have read previous books of the series, you definitely need to read this one.If you haven't - read all the previous books, just to get to this one. Yes, it's worth it.Now, don't get me wrong - I am giving this book four stars. That means it's a good-to-great book, something that is really worth the time. Why not five stars, then? I reserve five stars for the books that have the timeless quality - Frank Herbert's "Dune", Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" etc.This is a military sci-fi series. It's not timeless, but it is hell of a good read.There are many things that make (or break) this kind of books - the series gets all of them right: interesting and changing plot, good writing and the future military technology that is plausible and thought-through. The characters are likeable and easy to relate to, but overall the character arcs are the only thing that I would mention as just average.What I expect from good SF, be it military or not, is a fresh idea, something that will keep me thinking after I finish the book.I think this book has it - without too many spoilers, author shows how alien can another race be, and how much our human ethics influence our reactions to something that is not wrong, but just of a different evolutionary origin.Author managed to construct the alien psychology and behavior of the alien race in detail, supporting every trait with the evolutionary background that made it plausible. While the initial reaction to the alien race one has is repulsion, it was a surprise to me to realize it was my own narrow-mindedness and being conditioned to human ethics that caused the reaction, and that there is no objective "right" or "wrong" in the universe, just evolution in its myriad forms.It is usual for the SF series to wither and get worse over the course of the series - but not this one.Read it, enjoy it and wait for more books from this brilliant author!

I described this series to a buddy of mine who is a veteran with many years of experience in intel and combat planning. In describing the series I noted the solid science that has obviously consumed a great deal of the writers time, and his obvious knowledge of naval history and doctrine. When I got to my biggest complaint about the series (application of humans' advancing technology and 'new' discoveries of combat applications that are already in use today), he replied 'It sounds like he doesn't have much background in weapons and tactics' (the exploitation of any and all technologies as a weapon or force multiplier). That simple statement served to put my complaint into perspective and I remembered it as I began reading this entry in the series.Again, the aforementioned strengths have shone through and been solid, and as expected some things just didn't pass muster in the weapons and tactics department. Case in point: throughout the series, we have seen technological advancements in ship and fighter technology. We know new ships and fighters are not economically limited, it just takes time for them to be assembled from raw materials by clouds of nano-machines. In an attempt to explain why old tech may still be employed, the writer draws from current day military training regarding aircraft. Namely the pilot has to be trained for innumerable hours to become intimately familiar with not only the interface, but the capabilities of a given aircraft. The thing is; the technology available in this series obviates nearly all of that. There is no physical user interface as the connection between human and machine is handled directly in the brain. We have a technology concept today called 'abstraction' where an interface presented to a user can be adapted behind the scenes in such a way that the user is unable to discern that underlying hardware has changed. And most of the physical performance characteristics that atmospheric pilots have to be capable of dealing with don't exist in a vacuum/micro-G environment.My rant aside, I enjoyed this latest installment, and look forward to the next book.

Book 5 picks up some time after book 4. It was interesting finding out what all the old characters had been up to in the intervening years. The old enemies are still out there the sh'daar collective threatening from the shadows. The mysterious starlight aliens with their godlike technology are still a big unknown. But neither really come to the fore in book 5 as it concentrates on earths civil war and a new alien enemy that see us as a new food source. It's a complex and interesting story. Personally I end up skipping a lot of the technical explanations of how the tech works. It feels like each book has explained FTL and it's associated technology's to death, and I just cannot take any more, captain. Even considering the swathes of story you have to skim over if you not overly interested in alternate physics, there is a worthwhile story to be read here.

Warning, the storyline is good, the author is intelligent, BUT,I skipped probably a good third of the this and previous books due to repetition. He not only repeats in each book what he has written in previous books (much of it cut &pasted) but repeats stuff with the book over and over again. I could compress the story of the five books so far into one. Another annoying trait is half way through an action sequence, he will go off on three page dissertation about how the hero's laser pistol was developed. It's like watching an interesting film but with five minutes of ads every ten minutes, you just lose interest.

Good series thus far but getting expensive for a Kindle book. The next one even more so. Also, getting v.annoyed with excessive padding - there is a limit to the number of times I need to be reminded how the ice cap works or other technology mechanisms used throughout the series. At one point, there were 2-3 pages full of material covered only a chapter before. Smacks of Ian adding content for the sake of it to increase page count - certainly a little patronising for the readers who have had the same descriptions handed out for 5 books.

Having followed the Star Carrier series from its conception, I am once again astounded at the pure brilliance of the latest installment. As mentioned by other reviews, yes this book does visit a few of the background politics and the meta-plot. This, however, is very important as, contrary too what one of the reviewers mentioned, a anchoring point for the plot, re-defining what is actually going on within the universe of Men (Humans), bringing the vibrant and realistic internal strife of a species to the author.Many of the core characters make an appearance, uncovering a great amount of character development. Technology has been refined and boosted, thankfully not beyond believable means, straddling that thin line of hard and soft sci-fi, which Ian Douglas does so well. And of course the utter alien species that make this series stand out amongst the masses are once again slithering towards the inevitable, unthinkable first encounter.I hope that book 6 is already red-shifting in our direction, as I cannot wait!! What a great read!

More of the same, neither brilliant or terrible,the action scenes are nail biting and you can't help but be worried for the minor characters that the author follows.Sandy gray once again leads CBG 40 out into the dark to fight another unknown enemy and president Koenig faces the confederation with his forces on earth and in the solar system.Overran it's not a satisfying entry to the series, it doesn't move the story too far along and feel like a filler before something major happens.