Book #21 - Ark Royal

The start of a new space opera. In this one humanity is in space, settling multiple systems, with each mostly under the control of a single Earth country. The book is written from the perspective of the UK and when a system is destroyed after encountering an alien race, only the Ark Royal, an ancient British carrier is really ready to go and meet the aliens.

It's an old carrier, with much more armor than modern carriers, but the modern carriers were decimated by the aliens. The Ark Royal is pulled from its mothballed orbit around Earth and reconditioned. It's sent under the command of its drunk of a captain because he's the only one that can run the ship. With a ragtag group of troops, he heads out.

It's an interesting story, one that shows lots of humanities flaws and problems. It doesn't use the real world physics of the Lost Fleet series and many starfighters, in the tradition of Battlestar Galactica (with no relation to space physics) are used extensively. However it's a fun read.