Mike Moscoe

KRIS LONGKNIFE: MUTINEER begins a multibook series. It is space opera writ large. For me it was a combination of the Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold and the Honor Harrington series by David Weber containing the best parts of each.

Kris Longknife is a newly minted Ensign in the Navy. She's also the daughter of the Prime Minister of a powerful Rim planet and a descendant of powerful and well-known people who were and are the political and economic movers and shakers of her show more world. She's very rich. She is an alcoholic who suffers from survivor's guilt because, when she was 10, she couldn't save her younger brother from kidnappers who murdered him.

As this story begins, Kris is serving about the Typhoon and about to take part in a rescue mission to save the six-year-old daughter of Sequim's General Manager. When something goes wrong with the sled taking her and half of the rescue squad from orbit to the site where the kidnappers are holding the child, Kris uses her experience racing skiffs to save her people. She and her people rescue the child and Kris becomes suspicious of the circumstances of the planned rescue making her wonder if it was an assassination attempt against her and making her wonder about the motives of her superiors.

In thanks for her quick thinking and successful rescue, she's assigned to Olympia where a volcano has erupted causing massive climatic changes which means that those on the planet are starving. She lands to find that things are a mess. Food isn't getting to those who are hungry. The command structure is being overseen by an officer who just escaped a political court martial. Kris uses the skills gained in helping with her brother's political campaigns to get things moving the right direction. However, a call for help from an isolated farm which is also sick with a contagious disease that can kill any of the remaining survivors on planet, sends Kris and her crew to try to save them. Things go wrong with the smart metal boat they are using which might just be a second or third assassination attempt.

Back home on Wardhaven, Kris goes to her trusted people - a great aunt and two of her great-grandfathers - to try to figure out who wants her dead and why. An Ensign, even a rich, politically connected Ensign, shouldn't be attracting assassins. But politics is playing a role. Many planets are looking to end their relationship with Earth and go their own way and are doing all sorts of underhanded and above-board things to make the outcome match their goals.

When Kris is recalled to her ship, their destination is where a meeting has been convened with Earth representatives to see if their relationship can end peacefully. Except, there is a faction in the military who want to start a war and it is up to Kris to mutiny and keep the ship she is on from starting that war.

This was an exciting and engaging story. I liked the worldbuilding and really liked Kris. She's smart and honorable. I am looking forward to reading more in this 19-book series. show less

In theory, I don't like this kind of book: pro-military, supporting the idea of elite family dynasties that keep the rest of us safe, a thinly built universe with good guys and bad guys. In practice, it turned out to be a solidly written, entertaining adventure with moments of reflection on the challenges of command and the real meaning of duty.

In this book, the start of the Kris Longknife series of military space adventures, Kris is a newly-minted ensign in her planet's navy. She has joined show more the navy to escape her family. This is a challenging thing to do: her father in the president of the planet and her grandfathers are both senior officers who're actions have shaped recent history.

We follow Kris as she grows as an officer, meeting challenges ranging from rescuing a kidnapped child, distributing disaster relief, through to her first space battle.

The action scenes are well done, the military situations are credible and clearly described. The weapons are perhaps better defined than the society using them. The characters are a little stereotypical but they fit the plot well and I slowly built an affection for them.

I was surprised and pleased to see that the book included some reflection on the challenges of command and how an officer grows.

I came to this book by following the narrator, Dina Perlman, who does a good job on Joel Shepherd's Cassandra Kresnov series. At the beginning of the book, I thought she might have been the wrong choice for the book because she was emoting heavily on what was quite low-key scene-setting. After the first couple of chapters, she got into her stride and did a good job with one big, almost painful, exception: her Scotts accents are so bad, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry but either way, I was seriously distracted.

Still, the book was good fun. The next time I'm in the mood for military sci-fi, I'll be picking up the next one in the series. show less

A very different story. Kris isn't in charge of a ship - she isn't even in charge of herself, she's been shuffled off into nearly-prison after the disaster of the hunt for the aliens. But of course she escapes (with a little help from her friends...), and heads out to find allies for figuring out what to do with the threat of the aliens. Because between politics and head-in-the-sand, no one else is dealing with it (at least, not in any useful or wise way). A lot of running fights, a lot of show more hiding from the law - we get it from the police point of view too, which is interesting. She reconnects with Jack, as well as Penny, Mac, and Trouble - and things develop between her and Jack (finally!). She ends up standing trial (something the Longknifes didn't want her to do, for various reasons), but it's by her choice and in the court of her choice (sort of). And in the process, the full story of the expedition, and the aliens they found, comes out - so the US and others have to actually deal with it. It's Kris forcing a pivot again, this time on her own family (as the powers that be in the United Societies (or whatever the name actually is...still arguing)). Between truly facing the consequences, and events with Jack, Kris gets a bit pivoted herself, here. Quite rich. show less

Really enjoyed the ground based battle that comprised the first 2/3rds of the book then the space based battle was meh".

I think I enjoyed this more because Kris wasn't whining every 3 seconds about either her lack of boobs, her "hatred" of all things political or her lack of romance.

This was more action and less emotion. I liked it."