Kris Longknife: Intrepid

Kris Longknife should be far enough away from the centers of civilization to keep out of trouble. Assigned to The Wasp and packed with scientists who are exploring the Rim for new planets and new opportunities should keep her out of politics.

However, just because she's far away doesn't mean she's trouble-free. After all, pirates and slavers like to be away from the center of civilization too. She and her crew capture the Compton Maru and find it filled with cargo and slaves. She takes her captures ship to Cuzco in hopes of selling the cargo and ship for prize money and dumping the pirates on Cuzco' legal system. While there she has a chance to connect with a couple of old enemies - Captain Kratz and newly made Ensign Vicky Peterwald. show more

While stuck on Cuzco where the legal system makes the pirates look good, Kris and her crew meet Andy Fronour of Pandemonium - one of the illegal colonies beyond the Rim - and are convinced to take him and his cargo home on their way to doing the exploration the scientists are agitating for. Upon arrival, they find that the colony has been captured by another set of pirates hired by businessmen to loot the planet for their profits.

Kris and her crew come to the aid of the first group of colonists in retaking their planet with lots of nice maneuvers which make use of Kris's ingenuity. This second group of pirates is commanded by Kris's own first captain who left the Wardhaven Navy just ahead of his own court martial and who blames Kris for his problems.

After solving problems there, Kris and her crew go to Xanadu which has been settled by Abdicators who were agitating for all humanity to return to Earth to get away from alien hordes that they believed were coming. Only they have gone beyond agitation and have sent out a group of young fanatics to start a war between Wardhaven and the Peterwalds. It is up to Kris to find these terrorists and stop them. Since it is well known to her that a war between parties of equal strength doesn't do much beyond creating a lot of devastation and can have no clear winners.

Now Kris has to find a way to save her and her planet's greatest enemy before they can be edged into outright war.

This story was entertaining science fiction with a larger-than-life main character and many other intriguing characters too. show less

An interesting variation. Kris as military officer is better than Kris as Princess. I was going to say also that she shines in space, but she actually spends a good deal of the book fighting a land war - even a primitive land war. And gets - not exactly a new enemy but a refreshed one, then afterwards eases matters between her and one old enemy, and makes sort of friends with another. Complications, of a slightly different sort than her usual! Three - no, four planets' worth of problems, of widely varying sorts - from invasion to legal problems. Some notable character development - in Kris, Nelly, Vicky, Col. Cortez… a lot of people. There is a lot going on in this book, but it all makes sense in the reading. Very rich. I suspect I show more shouldn't read Longknife stories in quick succession - this one was less interesting at the start than Audacious, and I reviewed Audacious as boring and stereotyped after reading the whole series up to it. This one did lure me in by the end - and the last line got a genuine LOL from me. OK, interested in the next one again. 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."

This is the Sixth Book in the Kris Longknife series that I’ve read, and overall I found this one somewhat harder to follow than the others.

The characters seem less well defined in this installment, perhaps that’s because the Author is settled in to his stride with these individuals now, and doesn’t feel the need to describe them as well as in previous installments, but the ultimate effect is that you need to read this volume more or less directly after one or more of it’s predecessors in order to keep up with the action which starts pretty much straight away.

Shepherd doesn’t seem to have quite the same flair for Military style Scifi as Elizabeth Moon or David Webber, but he does a passable job describing the combat, strategy show more and tactics. On occasion the writing would have benefited from a more descriptive style, at least enough to give your imagination something to fire on. He does also degenerate in to acronyms all too easily, and only occasionally remembers to explain himself a few pages or paragraphs further on.

It takes until the last quarter of the book for Shepherd to develop the overall point of the novel in the series, (which I won’t give away here), but this kind of distances this volume from it’s predecessors. I rather suspect that he wrapped up most of his planned threads in the fifth volume of this series, and this is very much a bridge in to some new ideas which will give the overall storyline great boost in to the next novel in the series. show less

Lt. Kris Longknife has been sent out to the Rim on the Wasp, with a boatload of scientists, Marines, and independent spacers. Soon she if fighting pirates, repelling an invasion of a low-tech colony world, and trying to avert a war by keeping her worst enemy from being assassinated.

More military SF action in this enjoyable, long-running series.

It's always trouble wherever she goes. This time she ends up saving a planet and an enemy making an unexpected friend in the process.

unsolicited uncorrected proofcopy, white cover