Review of the Star Carrier Series - Earth Strike, Center of Gravity, Singularity, and Deep Space

Mini-review #12
This is a series of short reviews for military SF and mecha SF.  You will not see a review of something I don't like as it isn't worth writing about in that case, but I will tell you what works for me and what doesn't about the stories I did like.  

Star Carrier is a well written series of space navy books by Ian Douglas who is actually William H. Keith.  The author has already written a few trilogies and has a list of writing credits a mile long so you know the guy has honed his craft.  People have described this series by relating it to Battlestar Galactica as there is a STAR CARRIER (wow, that was a shocker).  I would say that is where the similarities start and end myself as I liked this a heck of a lot more than the new Battlestar.  Earth and its colonies are under attack by multiple alien races working for the Sh'daar and is losing the war.  Colony after colony is being stripped away from us and Earth is the next target. The politicians and HQ hesitate on the next best move, but one man, Admiral Alexander Koenig, decides to take the fight to the aliens before they can mass and destroy us. 

The story focuses on the Admiral and one of the fighter pilots Trevor Gray.  You get the action from the fighter cockpit and from the bridge of the carrier so there is plenty of variety to read about.  Both of the characters develop over time and each has their own personal demons to overcome.

The stories move along fairly quickly and are good action reading.  The author does tend to go into explaining the tech a little too much and the battles with the capital ships tend to flow the same way.  A few naval battles have a strike fleet do a high speed flyby of an enemy fleet at near lightspeed and hammer them.  Basically an AI controlled drive by shooting with big railguns and other heavy weaponry.  The battles are well done, but tend to be standard with a few extra surprise moves.  I'll talk more about the fighters later on in the review and they are probably my favourite part of the series.

I highly recommend this series for anyone who likes reading about well thought out space combat and likes cheering on the human underdog.  And it is priced reasonably on the Kindle.

Does it have a cast of characters listing? 
No.  There are really two main characters, with maybe a half a dozen key supporting characters.  Action tends to center around the carrier America and its crew.  Fighter pilots tend to die a fair bit, but so do the capital ships with their nameless crew of hundreds.

What is the scope / scale of the story? 
I'd say the story is epic in scope with a fleet on a desperate mission within a larger galactic context.  There are many mysteries to the Sh'daar.  The naval engagements are between fleets of 50 to 100 ships with hundreds of fighters involved.

Does it have likeable characters?
Admiral Koenig is a brilliant strategist who needs to deal with both aliens and the idiotic government back on Earth.  The man is very likeable as a leader.  Gray is the outsider in Naval aviation.  He come from a primitive fringe in the US that rejects nanotech implants and big government.  A practical man, he puts up with constant ribbing from his squadron mates, and still saves the day.

Does it have an entertaining storyline?
Yes. It is pretty much one long thrill ride with breathers to do character development, political subterfuge, and world building.  It is a long campaign to save the Earth from aliens and itself.

How is the internal consistency / plausibility?
This was well done.  The setup for the story and the politics on Earth sounded real and not far fetched.  There is the main Confederation faction on Earth that also has dissent as it was really formed out of expedience and not a full desire by the various nation states to integrate.  By book 4 you will know what I mean.  The aliens are pretty cool with everything from gas bags to tentacled critters that are not humanoid and don't think like we do.  The tech is nicely done and the use of nanotech magic is consistently and usefully applied.  In fact, the Sh'daar are fighting us as they are worried about continual human development of  GRIN (Genetic, Robotic, Information, and Nano processes) that might enable us to have a Technological Singularity Event and transcend to something more powerful.

If there are any criticisms to level it would be with the chain of command and the aliens.  It seems like the politicians and naval admirals are idiots on Earth and the aliens are too predictable in their strategy.  This applies to all the books.

What cool bonus features are there?
The big ships are mushroom like in shape with big armoured domes of ice at the bow for fuel and protection.  The star fighters are very cool as they are pushed / pulled by micro-singularities to enable massive accelerations / decelerations in the tens of thousands of Gs.  They are made out of a nanomatrix hull that can change configuration for high speed, attack, and even atmospheric combat.  Nanotech implants in the pilots allow them to control many systems by touch and a thought.  I like the term "thought-clicking."

Ships fight at very high speeds and the tactics employed reflect this (e.g. shooting sand as a weapon). There are railguns, nuclear missiles, particle beams, kinetic gatling guns, and all types of energy weapons.

Finally, the three points I list below are not criticisms of this series, but are issues with most space combat SF.  Kudos to the author for describing the tech so well that I actually thought about these things.  The tech is sufficiently advanced in this series that I wonder:

1. Why aren't the micro-singularities used as weapons (had a similar beef with the impenetrable drive fields in the Honor Harrington books).  Nothing stops a singularity missile that can rip through a capital ship's shields and armour and it's cheap. 
2. Combat is sufficiently deadly that I wonder why large crews are still required for anything, and is even a single human pilot required to die in a star fighter when the AI and nanotech is so sophisticated.  They can assemble a starfighter in a supply ship in half a day and can nanofacture food and anything else (people?).
3. How do you protect a planet from enemies who can hurtle projectiles at you at near lightspeed?  Big catastrophic, ecosystem ending event occurs next.  Stealth the big rocks and shoot thousands and thousands of them.  Who needs specialized bombardment ships to do this from orbit or even ship to ship combat?