Kris Longknife: Resolute

by Mike Shepherd

Ace Books, New York, 342 pp., $7.99

After Kris Longknife: Mutineer/Deserter/Defiant comes Kris Longknife: Resolute.

Princess Longknife was a trial to her relatives. Her naval career was inconvenient. They had found her a quiet niche in Training Command for her last posting. Trouble found her and she saved the day. But this time they placed in a backwater where nothing had happened for at least 20 years. They dumped her in place as commander of Naval District 41, a command so unimportant that a lieutenant had commanded it with only local reservists for staff for over 20 years. Here they thought she could find no trouble and trouble could not find her. Little did they know…

She arrives and finds her Headquarters at High Chance Station abandoned with a quite impressive antique derelict battle cruiser orbiting with it. She immediately acts to reactivate it and the station and sends minions out who hire a suspiciously well armed cargo ship to haul supplies. Her AI and its alien chip find evidence of new and peculiar gates. She investigates in her supply ship. She finds alien pay dirt. She returns. Her old Nemesis Henry Smythe-Peterwald shows up with a Flotilla of ships. Things get really complicated. Ultimately she saves the day, in part, because of unwanted support from veterans and children.

The book is delightful space opera with enough military realism to keep the military buffs happy and enough action for the adventure junkies. The tension between Chris’s newcomers, the civilians, the retired stationers and old war veterans is well drawn. When Peterwald arrives they all work together marvelously against almost impossible odds.

This is a book which will be enjoyed by most military, adventure and hard SF fans. – Gary Swaty