Singularity: Star Carrier, Book 3

Mr. Douglas' final installment in the Star Carrier trilogy started out exceptionally well. In the first two books we came to know and care about the main characters, Lt. Gray and Admiral Koenig and a few other minor people, so that when they reach this final denoument we're primed for an excellent story.And Mr. Douglas does not disappoint. There's plenty of action, lots of strangeness and here and there a Big Question tossed in for seasoning. I found most fascinating his treatment of the concept of Singularity, though I believe it was Ray Kurzweil who first capped the idea, not Vernor Vinge, but I could be wrong (it may be that I read it first in a Kurzweil manuscript which is why I have the attribution incorrect). Regardless, for us SF reader types this was like donuts, both glazed and jellied, placed, heaped in front of us--heavenly delight. I do agree that Vinge has popularized the concept in SF, but this is the first time I have read a story that looked at it from the inside, as it were.His technology, already established in the first two novels of the series, continued in their reasonable internal logic, though I have a problem (and always have had a problem) with the concept of acceleration by falling into a singularity (physical construct not spiritual/social construct) that is attached to the structure it is supposed to be accelerating. Alan Dean Foster tried the same concept for Flinx's ship and it didn't work for me then either. I had to kind of push my way through that idea to get to the rest of the story.Being a former Navy man, I particularly enjoyed Mr. Douglas' understanding of military (and especially Navy) doctrine and etiquette. He got a lot of things right that most people who have never been in a military culture, but attempt writing military stories anyway, get wrong. Relating his future "current" traditions with present traditions was a superb technique and I hope he does more of it. His experience as a Hospital Corpsman obviously shines through.(SPOILERS AHEAD)If I liked it so well, why did I only give it four stars? Well, because the ending was not all that satisfactory. Without spoiling it too badly, think of the Babylon 5 Earth-Minbari war, and how it finished. Well, let me simply say that Mr. Douglas must have really liked that B5 movie (it was called "In the Beginning..." and I don't blame him) but to me the reader, it was too much like ending the story when the good guys are down and out, by saying "...and they won the war."Two minor warnings: Mr. Douglas' society is sexually unregulated, and though most of it happens off camera, I found it a little distasteful as well as unlikely, though I found I could stomach it. And secondly, though I will probably find few who agree with me on this, his treatment of religion, that is, as an artifact of culture and no more, was also a bit distasteful. In fact I hope it never happens that way. In his defense, he was not hostile, just very modern and very Star Trekkie in his approach toward the concept of religion and how people might deal with it in the future.

I've read the first three books of this series to this point. I very much liked _book_one_ of the Star Carrier series; the author seemed to be making a good effort to keep his sci-fi realistic, the plot flowed well and the action was good. He made a very valiant effort with the science, I thought, even if there were some difficulties in scientific basics. Book two was a bit more of a struggle. If you like military sci fi, this series is certainly a decent example and the author is unquestionably good at the military part of military science fiction.Book three pushes the limits of my patience in many ways. To begin with, there are a number of inexcusable typographical errors. There are misused words and missed punctuations, both things that should have been cleaned up before publishing. Along these lines, also, the author had a problem with repeating background points over and over and over again. I found myself asking "How many times are you going to repeat this piece explaining about Gray's Prim-hood and his lost wife," or "How many times are you going to belabor how 'alien' alien is." or "do I have to hear again for the fifth time why the Sh'daar are after prohibiting GRIN technologies and preventing Singularity." There are many other points of repetitiveness in this writing, including the incessant counting down for everything. For instance, rather than backtracking through Gray's Prim-hood and early background, all well detailed in the first book, this book should have spent more time advancing the character, say by developing a dramatic interaction with the character of Ryan and giving him something to think about aside for continuously coming back to his humble beginnings. It seems to me that this book would've benefited from a thorough trip to the editor to cut the repetition and maybe point out to the author where he should have been advancing instead of belaboring. A tight version of this story would have been excellent. I think this story is a good example of what the boom of self-publishing is doing to literature; it's forcing people to jump the gun sometimes and publish before they're finished writing.As I originally wrote this review, I had a very strong reaction to the physics in this book, particularly the Sh'daar Strong Force weapon --an abuse of physics that simply cannot work as described in the book. As a physicist, I notice bad physics very easily and it doesn't take much for an author to push me the wrong way by getting physical details wrong. I originally wrote a fairly critical review of some broad general misuses of Special and General Relativity in this book, both in the near-light speed travel and in the rather constant use of gravitational singularities. On a positive point, the author made a great deal of effort to apply velocity boost time dilation to the travel of his ships and I believe he had help with the astronomy, but some of the astrophysical problems, the lack of general relativistic time dilation with the black holes and lack of understanding of frame of reference rankled me. I've debated how critical I can be on this point; on the one hand, I really do like the space battles and I really do appreciate the author attempting to use authentic details. On the other hand, I can hardly fault him for not having my skill set. Readers who are not as critical of physical details may be very entertained by the technology and the vision of this book, even if it is essentially pure fantasy. I've edited my review here to try to lessen the scope of my objections, which were pretty deep, but more or less totally unanswerable. I would love very much to see a few more authors make the attempt to be copacetic with physics when writing stories like this and I don't want to discourage them from trying, but I wish there were a way to put them in contact with physicists so that they can have critical feedback on basic structural characteristics of their universes before a work ever nears publication... there are certainly ways to hide the deficiencies seen here from someone like me, but it would probably take someone like me to suggest them.

Perfect

Having re-acquired a taste for space opera/military SF/whatever via the thoroughly enjoyable "Lost Fleet" series, I thought I'd try this. I'm glad I did. I have read all three books, so this is a verdict on all three as a series. Throughout all, Mr. Douglas shows much sound technological background extended by admirable imagination in the creation of his far-distant future world, where a spacefaring humanity has run up against a much more advanced alien confederation, which seems determined, for reasons unknown, to deny humanity further technological advancement, with the threat of extinction if it doesn't comply. The story is mainly told through two characters, an Admiral commanding a space battle group and one of his fighter pilots, the latter from a despised minority. Both show considerable ability to think "outside the box", and constantly to wrong-foot the technologically superior opposition.The one fly in the ointment is the end, which comes in a rush at the end of this book and which seems somewhat too trite and pat. It almost seems as if Mr. Douglas's prodigious imagination has finally let him down. Now one can take refuge in alien mindsets, which perceive things very differently from ours, but to me it doesn't quite come off.However, I still wouldn't let this put off potential readers - overall, the three books make a satisfying whole and a fine journey of the imagination. Since we regretfully will never travel to the stars like this, this is the best we can do.

A fan of pure science fiction, I like this series. This is book three in the saga of an unseen power which has many other races seemingly in it's power and will not allow human beings to develop science and technology any further because this may lead to transcendence. This last book takes you to the heart of their universe and reveals previously hidden secrets. I like the science bits and there are lots of new ideas in this series. The author explains the science in detail and also describes the battle tactics in detail. I like it when the science is explained and is somehow believeable. I gave it four stars only because the characters do not quite become as real to me as I would like. Because I read before going to sleep every night, the following night I find I have lost the plot and can't remember all the characters and what is going on. But that is just me!

This book is a supriser, i just bought the first one to get me through the day at the gym and when im bored, but i ended up reading it pretty quick, and bought the rest of them, and they are great the only thing i can say is a fault is that the author repeats information a couple times through-out the books but other that that its great!!

This is an enjoyable read that concentrates on action from a space fighter pilot's perspective. The book is a good read but the repetitive explanations of the same technology in several places in the book can be jarring. The read is not totally immersive and some of the attempts to make social comment in the book fall a bit flat.