As the third novel in the series, I think you know what you're in for from Jack Campbell. Everything that was a weakness continues: the novels are just a bit too short, the antagonists are one-dimensional feckless incompetents, and a lack of foreshadowing means that there's insufficient suspense. On the bright side, the protagonists are sympathetic, clever, and they win. It's a feel good novel with plenty of action and few flaws to be found in its primary goal of describing a military science fiction setting.

I'd normally give such a novel 3 stars, but Courageous does something different... and it shows how world-building can be shown without info dumps, and how very small changes can have cascading impacts. I'm also impressed by how much of the setting we're exposed to despite the Alliance Fleet being restricted in where they can go, as well as the viewpoint being restricted to Fleet Commander Geary. It's a pleasure to see and while I wish the villains can level up, I would be doing the novel a disservice to give it a mediocre rating.

Recommended.

I am not referring to the possible aliens and gates, but rather the revelation of how the Alliance's hero worship and focus on aggression resulted in a shift of talent wanting to captain Battecruisers, which in turn resulted in an effective policy of weeding out good people and protecting the idiots as they're on the Battleships. This goes a long way to explaining the current Alliance situation, and combined with the many organizational reasons (explored previously, but the core principle is that the navy has no organizational memory because they keep dying), showcases the tremendous subtle world-building that went into the Lost Fleet before page 1 of Dauntless was written.

Lovely stuff.