Teaser

Lieutenant Selene Genji watches the Earth explode, only to be thrown forty years into the past. Can she change the course of history and save the world, or are there sinister forces at work beyond her control . . ?

Review

I’ve been a fan of Jack Campbell for more than a decade now, and he is yet to write a bad book. His Lost Fleet universe has now racked up an impressive twenty-one volumes across five distinct series, but now he’s put that universe on pause to write a brand new duology, a time travel adventure called, somewhat ominously, The Doomed Earth. If the opening half of this series is anything to go by, it’s a very different reading experience.

Once again, Campbell’s protagonists are serving members of the military. but for the first time, the book as a whole is not military SF. At least, not by my definition. Instead, it’s a fairly straightforward adventure. It takes time travel as a starting point, throwing a character forty years into the past, but from there becomes a lightning-paced chase sequence, with the occasional pause to take a breath and consider the nature of paradoxes.

There’s part of me – a small party – that wonders if this is a step back for Campbell. The plot is simple, the prose light as a feather, the moralising basic, and the romance between leads is as rapid as it is inevitable. The complexity built up over two decades of The Lost Fleet is evidently lacking. And yet, that stripped back storytelling, that reliance on tropes and familiarity, is a large part of the appeal. Sometimes all you want to read is a fun adventure story. Sometimes you don’t want a will-they-won’t-they romance to drag on for an entire series. The Doomed Earth isn’t offering a hearty gourmet meal, it’s offering a burger and fries, with plenty of salt and a big dollop of ketchup. Honestly, that’s more than enough. I like burgers.

One thing that works in favour of In Our Stars is the pacing. We go into this book knowing it’s the first half of a story, and knowing that the second book will be out next year. Campbell’s reliability extends to quantity as well as quality. That means this book doesn’t have to serve as a prologue to a lengthy series. It is all building action, one sharp and exiting climb towards a cliffhanger that will be resolved in short time. In Our Stars doesn’t dally around building a world. It dives right in, jumping from one location to the next. The smaller scale compared to Campbell’s previous novels works in its favour. The desperate pursuit of our protagonists never feels implausible, even if they are betrayed with alarming regularity.

On the time travel front, I do find it interesting that both origin and destination of the travel are both well in our future. There is no reference to present day politics, though the influence of current events is clear in certain passages. Not through allegory, but through the superior art of applicability. The prejudice displayed towards the alloys is not a stand-in for any particular ethnic or social group in our own world, but a more general symbol of what it means to be an outsider. It might come in the form of a heartpounding adventure, but In Our Stars is still doing what science fiction does best. It shows us a diufferent way of looking at our own world, and entertains us while doing so.

As a huge fan of The Lost Fleet, I’m more than happy to take a break with this slightly lighter fare. For those of you who are not familiar with Campbell’s work, this might not be wholly representative of his output, but it’s a brilliantly entertaining book, and a good place to get started if you don’t fancy committing to a longer series.

Book Stats

• The Doomed Earth #1
• Published 2024 by Titan Books
• 384 Pages