This time Kris might have bitten off more than she can chew. Her plan to take a group of scouts into the unknown to look for the aliens who are eating Iteeche ships, is "improved' by the addition of battleships from Greenfeld, Musashi, and Helvetica - all commanded by Admirals. And Wardhaven has sent a new secret weapon of immense power with her too.

They discover a planetary system where the unknown invaders have killed the population and strip mined the planet of everything including the air. That made them all a bit more cautious, but when they sent survey ships through one jump, they found a mothership the size of a rather large moon and thousands of ships attached bigger than even their battleships.

When they try to get around them to work their way home, they discover another settled alien planet that is in the path of the invaders. Kris proposes reversing by one jump and trying to ambush the invaders as they jump through. This plan has quite a bit of opposition from the Greenfeld delegation who favor running for home and letting the innocent alien planet fend for itself. Kris convinces them that they shouldn't do that, but the battle causes very large losses among the human fleet, and leaves Kris and just a few of her ships running for home chased by invaders.

When Kris does make it home after a harrowing voyage and with many more losses, she finds that she has been convicted in absentia of crimes against humanity. But King Ray and his advisors want to put off any thoughts of a new war until they have more time to win over the people and build up resources.

When the story ends, Kris is being sent off planet again to get her out of the way. ( )

Nope. You are not allowed to just randomly change your character's nature which you've established over the past few books. Not sure of why all this was or what the point of the slaughter of some of some of the second tier chars was all about. All in all about the worst of the series for me so far. ( )

There's a bit of a different feel to this one - still fast-paced to frantic action, but Kris is dealing with near-equals here (actually, since they're various admirals, she's swinging a bit above her weight) and has to persuade more than direct. And I'm not sure what's up with Krätz - he seems to be at loggerheads with both Vicky and Kris now, very abruptly after his firm alliance in previous books (including the last one). The problems and threats are bigger too, and the moral dilemmas. Permitting genocide or causing it... and the risk to human space on top of that. Some interesting puzzles, which may or may not ever produce answers (those babies are a neat device - they don't give any cultural information). And what Kris points out at the end - how she was manipulated...politics, again. Next, please! ( )

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com by express permission of this reviewer.   Title: Daring Series: Kris Longknife Author: Mike Shepherd Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: SFF   Synopsis: Kris heads out into the vast reaches of space to investigate the area where Iteechee ships are disappearing. She wants a quick, small force that can get in, look and get out like hell was on their tails. Due to politics however, she gets saddled with ships from all the main political groups [United Sentients, Peterwald Empire, etc, etc] and must forge them into one unit while keeping command herself. And when the aliens are found, and found to be humanlike, but so hostile that they kill themselves, families and all, before there is even the chance of capture, Kris must decide how to play this. Does she start the next interstellar war, or does she toss in the chips and let the politicians at home make the decision.   My Thoughts: This was a pretty good action/adventure story. However, the death of billions of the aliens by Kris's hands was a hard pill to swallow. What kind of man is Shepherd that he thinks up a scenario where his character has to kill BILLIONS of people all at once to survive? The setup made it the correct and the ethical choice, but that scope? If this story was real life, Kris would soon go crazy from the guilt of her actions, no matter how right. That scope of death is not something that can be lightly shouldered.   The emergence of the romance between Kris and Jack is no surprise, to anyone. It really felt more like a plot device than anything else.   And the ending, where Kris is going to have face a court for her "crimes" against the aliens? It is a great setup for the next book but it really sucks as an ending for this one. " ( )

Review 28 November 2015: whew, i had to reread the entire series (because i had forgotten just about everything) before i could read this one and the following ones.

heh heh reading them all again i notice that Kris is always getting into messes and never seems to have any down time...which i find kinda unrealistic that she and her crew would still function as well as they do with so few breaks from combat/assassination attempts.

also just noticed that abby was black. why i never pictured her as black before but now that she is it makes me mad. esp when he is so obvious when he puts other non white USA cultures in the book. like he really tries to include them and respect their cultures and only show the positive sides, yet he still does stereotypes. some of the stereotypes are positive and some are negative but stereotypes all the same. apparently we don't mix that much even with over 600 planets. (yeah, um ok. i can sorta see that since humans do tend to gather in groups were we all look the same and kinda act the same and like the same stuff.)

the stereotypes i noticed are the black gals are the ones from the bad part of town and speak the most slang, the muslims that help her out are taxi drivers and restaurant owners, the russias /germanic folks(greenfields)are prejudice and act like nazis or communists. so far he hasn't done the negative stereotypes with the oriental, native american, or the hispanic folks...at least not yet. or i didn't catch it since i am not that familiar with their cultures.

and reading them all in a row you can see the formula... it's a formula i like but his books are becoming a tad predictable. basically whenever Kris has some down time and things are a lil peaceful in about a minuter shit is gonna hit the fan. it will be a David vs Goliath space battle or it will be a hidden political/corporate agenda guerrilla warfare type fight. Kris will have to make really tough decisions that will get her in hot water and folks killed but is the right thing to do. civilians and close friends from her crew will die and get injured but Kris will defeat the evildoers and reveal the evil politicians/corporations. there will be lots of planning sessions. there will be lots of smart alckey remarks. nelly will do some magic. kris will be blamed for something or another. kris will have girly moments where she flirts with guys, dreams about jck, and wishes she was curvier.

seriously it's a formula but i like this formula. so i am still reading and looking forward to more. although the formula has caused me to look ahead in the books. he does have a few surprises. like some surprising deaths and some surprising tech and some surprising alien stuff. bad ass females in scifi military with humor and alil but of romance. a formula i love. ( )