Undaunted

Kris Longknife #7

by Mike Shepherd, Dina Pearlman (Narrator)

Kris Longknife encounters some peaceful aliens who have come to warn humanity of an unidentifiable force that is roaming the galaxy, obliterating everything in its path-a path now leading directly toward the human worlds.

Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Military Fiction, Military Science Fiction, Fiction, Audiobook, Science Fiction Fantasy

13 pages, Audible Audio

First published September 23, 2009

About the author

A pseudonym used by Mike Moscoe.

Mike was born in the Philadelphia Navy Yard Hospital -- and left that town at the age of three days for reasons he does not presently recall. But they had to draft him to get him back there. He missed very little of the rest of the country. Growing up Navy, he lived about everywhere you could park an aircraft carrier.

Mike was one of those college students who didn't have to worry about finding a job after graduation. In 1968, his Uncle Sam made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Two days into boot camp, the Army was wondering if they might not have been a bit hasty. Mike ended the day in the Intensive Care Unit of the local Army hospital. Despite most of Mike’s personal war stories being limited to "How I flunked boot camp," he can still write a rollicking good military SF yarns.

Mike didn’t survive all that long as a cab driver (he got lost) or bartender (he made the drinks too strong) but he figured he could at least work for the Navy Department as a budget analyst. Until he spent the whole day trying to balance the barracks accounts for paint. Finally, about quitting time, a grinning senior analyst took him aside and let him in on the secret. They'd hidden the money for refitting a battleship in that little account. Slowly it dawned on Mike that there were a few things about the Navy that even a kid who grew up in it would never understand.

Over the next twenty years, Mike branched out into other genres, including instruction memos, policies, performance standards and even a few labor contracts. All of those, you may notice, lack a certain something. Dialogue ... those things in quotes. In `87, Mike’s big break came. He landed on a two year special project to build a digital map showing where the trees, rivers, roads, Spotted Owls and other critters were in western Oregon. The list went on and on with no end in sight and two years became ten.

Since there was no writing involved in his new day job, Mike had to do something to get the words out. He signed up for a writing class at Clark Community College and proudly turned in a story ... Star Wars shoots down the second coming of Christ.

Two years later, Analog bought "Summer Hopes, Winter Dreams" for the March, 1991 issue. Four years later he sold his first novel. In the ten years since then, Mike’s turned in twelve novels and is researching the next three.

Mike's love for Science Fiction started when he picked up "Rocket Ship Galileo" in the fifth grade, and then proceeded to read every book in the library with a rocket sticker on its spine.

Mike digs for his stories among people and change. Through his interest in history, he has traces the transformations that make us what we are today. Science launches us forward into an ever changing universe. Once upon a time, the only changes in peoples lives came with the turning of the seasons and the growing wrinkles on their brows. Today, science drives most of the changes in our daily lives. Still, we can't avoid the pressure of our own awakening hormones or hardening arteries. Mike is happiest when his stories are speeding across thin ice, balanced on the edge of two sharp blades, one anciently human, the other as new as tomorrow's research.

Trained in International Relations and history, salary administration and bargaining, theology and counseling, Mike is having a ball writing about Kris Longknife ... coming of age while the world her grand parents built threatens to crash down around her ears. These are books I think you’ll love ... and my granddaughter and grandsons too!

Mike lives in Vancouver, Washington, with his wife Ellen, his mother-in-law and any visiting grandkids. He enjoys reading, writing, watching grand-children for story ideas and upgrading his computer -- all are never ending.

Reviews

[Jacob Proffitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would have been nice if the series had stayed at the five-star mark, but I can't honestly be disappointed. This one is on the high side of the four stars, and I'm happy with it. I was worried that adding aliens (as mentioned in the blurb, so not a spoiler) would seem like authorial desperation and I'm happy to report that it didn't feel that way at all while reading.

And while it had two mostly orthogonal storylines as well, the first lingered (in a good way) and that made a big difference in the pacing. In addition, Nelly gets some great developments, adding whole new fascinating dimensions to her AI self. I loved creating little versions of herself for the crew and setting them up to grow as they need with their human companions, and the effects it had throughout the crew. I particularly liked that at least some of the crew found the Nelly spawn too intrusive and gave them a pass.

I'm not as sanguine with Kris developing even somewhat ambiguous, but still warm, "feelings" for an alien. That seemed a bit weird, not least with incompatible physiology. And it's past time for Kris and Jack to do more than moon about each other. This book has them both admit, at least internally, that there's a there, there, so it's time for them to act like adults and drag things out into the open. The chain of command is affected by their emotional attachment whether they talk or not, so it's past time to start communicating.

Minor annoyances aside, I was very pleased with the story and happy with how things are going. The world building continues to offer lots of lovely scope for developments and I can't wait to see how Kris and crew do.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a bit weirded out by the Ron/Kris aspects - I kept expecting there to be some sort of "oh, they're releasing pheromones" explanation but nothing. He's a frog. A FROG! It was weird AND unnecessary. Sorry, rant over. But that is why this is really a 3.75 stars review rounded up to four. I liked the addition of the Iteeche otherwise, it would be odd for two sentient species not to keep tabs on each other, especially after conflict, so it made sense to me. Also good to see Kris finally suffer an injury, it was way overdue. Seeing a bit of Jack and Penny's thoughts was nice, didn't particularly need to see Willy's but it did help the strory so all good. I'm still appreciating a clear long term story arc developing too. I look forward to more in the series.

[Aaron Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is where I give up. Mildly rebelling personal computers, 12 year olds on dangerous space voyages that can't be given up because she's become a mascot. This crap just keeps getting more and more annoying to me. I want to slap 9/10ths of the characters.

[Codrus · Rating 3 out of 5]

This whole massive series only barely rates 3 stars. It's a little bit young-adult space opera and although it does better than most space opera (I like hard scifi and usually can't stand space opera) there are so many inconsistencies that it becomes difficult to read for any critical thinker.

If you're a exceedingly casual reader and don't know much about space and basic physics and just want a romp, you may enjoy this series.

[Kathy Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was another exciting episode in the Kris Longknife series. Kris and the company on the Wasp are out on the Rim looking for pirates and scientific opportunities. They really don't expect to find an ambassador from their former enemies the Iteeche who is looking for help from Grampa Ray.

As Kris and crew get to know Ron'sum Pin'sum qu Chap'sumWe, they learn more about the war that ended more than eighty years earlier. Unfortunately, there are still military veterans of that war on both sides including Kris's Greatgrandpa Ray who have very strong hatred for the Iteeche. Which means that she needs to sneak Ron and company back to Wardhaven so that he can meet with King Ray and lay out his needs.

They take a brief detour on the way to Wardhaven to see Kris's Aunt Tru because her computer Nelly is developing some questionable characteristics. She seems to be developing a real mind of her own which is causing Kris some problems.

Once they get to Wardhaven, things don't go very well. Ray says essentially "I'll think about it," sends Ron and his entourage back home, and sends Kris to Texarkana to solve a political problem. Texarkana happens to be the home of two of Kris's college friends. Kris finds a sticky political situation. The original settlers who are farmers and ranchers are in conflict with later settlers who were industrialists. It seems that someone from outside is trying to stir up even more trouble between the two factions than their own stubbornness is causing. Kris finds herself victim of an assassination attempt on one of her old school friends.

Kris does manage to find a solution to the discord between the two groups using Longknife charisma and Longknife money. But Ron's problem is far from being solved and Kris keeps get pulled away from it by King Ray's needs leaving Ron's problem a dangling plot thread for another book.

[Unwisely · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I am way, *way* too emotionally involved in these books. I can admit that. This is the only series that I purchase new - not because they are the best books of all times, but their protagonist is a 6 ft tall female who has Dating Issues and they're pleasant enough books. (With terrible, terrible copyediting.) Somehow I had missed that this book had come out, and there's actually another one out. Except it was shelved somewhere else and the Bunns and Noodle woman gave me terrible directions, plus I wasn't sure I would want to read this.

Mostly because of Cara. Look, it's super-awesome that your 12 year old granddaughter got written into your series. I have read SF novels since I was a 12 year old girl, and I know that there's not a lot of representation of that demographic. (Offhand I can only think of Peewee from Have Space Suit-Will Travel and Podkayne (from Podkayne of Mars, of course), but I was a Robert A. Heinlein fiend for ... quite a while.) But. But! Seriously, adding her like 6 books in has really just been annoying. The previous book was mostly Cara-free, and wow, interesting things happened. Cortez (yes, really) is an interesting character, and that whole Kris-him dynamic gave me hope.

And then this book. Cara still hasn't been shipped off to *anywhere else*, and the entire book was taken over by the most annoying aspects of Nelly, plus a new Iteeeche character. Which, OMG, when I wasn't yelling about Cara, I was yelling about him.

Look, this world doesn't have multi-species interaction. The Iteeeche are the only alien species they've encountered, the interspecies war was a huge traumatic action in the world, and there's been almost no interaction since. So this dude shows up, and despite being non-mammalian is stroking Kris's hair? And they're flirting? And ... What. The. EFF.

Pretty much no one else did *anything* in this book. (I guess Jack gets some time, but ... barely.) The book managed to have the typical structure, and I think slightly fewer egregious typos than previous books in the series. I guess I'm getting the next one anyway...but if *that* one pisses me off this much, I think that's it.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is book seven in the Longknife series. Kris and crew aboard the exploratory ship USS Wasp have blundered into an encounter with an Iteechee vessel. The Iteechee is the race with which humanity had a war 80 years previously. They are so mysterious the cause of the war is still unknown. Kris’ great- grandparents King Raymond and General “Trouble” both fought in the war. The Iteechee death ball vessel wants to speak to Kris, as an envoy from great-grandfather King Ray to plea for galactic safety. Kris takes the delegation of Iteechee to meet with King Ray. Kris is sent off to a planet on a diplomatic mission (with the Iteechee delegation on board her vessel). As usual she is walking into trouble.

The book is well written with a good strong plot. There is lots of banter as usual between the characters. Shepherd has created an enjoyable cast of characters to play foil to Kris. The strength of the story is the strong supporting cast of Kris’ crew and friends, including her computer Nelly, who is developing her own personality in interesting ways. Nelly created her ‘babies” and each of the key people of Kris’s crew were given their own super smart computer. Nelly created a way to hook them to their owner’s mind without the surgery that Kris had. Of course this external attachment does not work as completely as Kris and Nelly’s. Nelly made it clear that none of her “babies” are as smart as she is.

My only complaint is I am getting tired of hearing “one-of-those-damn-longknives” repeated over and over. It is starting to get annoying. This book has less action than prior books but still has lots of suspense. It is great the story is breaking away from the Peterwald feud and is opening up to the galaxy for Shepherd to play with. I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. Dina Pearlman is doing a good job narrating this series.

[TRXTRMXTR · Rating 3 out of 5]

For those of you familiar with the Kris Longknife series from Mike Shepherd, this book has the least amount of military action of any so far. That said, I really enjoyed what Shepherd has done with bringing in the Itechee, the "bug" villains from the previous generation's defining war. While he spends a lot of time developing their character and culture which I found fascinating, there are some issues I had with the story, mostly a few situations that were so sparsely described I had a hard time "seeing" what was happening, as well as a few plot items that weren't really holes, but more like forgetful mentions of what's happening to other main characters while we're following the action. Still, I love the Longknifes, and especially Kris. She is one of my favorite strong female characters out there in Science Fiction and she continues to hold her own. I'm looking forward to seeing where the hints dropped in this book take us further in the series.

[Nathan Balyeat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did understand the need to finally incorporate the Iteeche aliens into the plot and it started off well - and even the ongoing interactions were plausible and well suited to build on for future books.

BUT - some of the things that Kris Longknife thinks and does are a bit... odd. They do help to explain her lonliness a little, but in a context that is... odd.

It didn't detract too much from my enjoyment of the book, so I can still recommend this book as a page turner in the same vein as the rest. Definitely worth reading in the context of the series as a whole.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat light on the action compared to other books in the series. We get to meet the Iteeche, the race of aliens that nearly wiped out humanity some 80 years before. And things are not what they seem. (are they ever?)

Lots more talking in this book than normal, and we only get one ground-based battle that's really little more than a skirmish. But the characterisations are good and there are some interesting turns. Good build-up for the next book, but not one to read out of sequence.

There's also a nod to Jack Campbell's 'The Lost Fleet' series. :)

[Stephen Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd prefer to give this two and a half stars rather than three. Once again it's two novellas rather than a novel. The political novella centered around the Iteeche is an interesting look at the backstory of the universe, though the cultural baggage of the Empire is pedestrian. The second novella is distinctly poorer; the questions raised within it as to the identity and motivations of the villains are essentially ignored. There's also no particular reason that the Texarkana episode occurred at the same time as the Iteeche episode. There should be more linkage between the A and B plots.

[Per Gunnar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book series is really a bumpy ride. This one is definitely a downhill one. Most of the book is planetbound and political bla bla. The concept of the some "peaceful aliens", who turn out to be the Iteeche, and a powerful enemy sounded promising but nothing is really done with that in the book It's almost a side story.

I would say that the official short description of this book is not at all correct.

[Barb in Maryland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, it finally happened. I just totally lost interest about a fourth of the way through this book and didn't pick it up again. Sorry Kris--good luck in your future adventures, but I just won't be along for the ride.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off rather slow but better towards the end. Sitting the fence if I will read another. Spoiled reluctant princess with mouthy computer is the troubleshooter in the family. Others do it better but not bad

[Lance · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit I enjoy reading the series. It is fun, but when one stops to think about this one starts to wonder that the advancement of technology would produce individuals who would not use it. Nice lead in to the next in the series and if I can get it at the library I might read it.

[Jordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel much better about Shepards writing in this book, in the way that it feels he's more focused on the story he wants to tell although he still adds a side story that he rushes through. There were some odd quirks with the way Kris reacted to the Iteechee Ron I thought were a little odd.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

My least favorite book in the series. OK but it feels like it is setting up for the next book more than a stand alone title in the series. Second read through.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read! 4 solid stars.

[Steven Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unexpected forced convalescence has allowed to pick up on my reading of my favorite space opera series.

I like how Kris Longknife's character is maturing and learning. In this book I also like that Kris is not necessarily the focus of the assassination attempt. It is also nice to see at least one planet where Kris is welcome to come back, unlike many others were she is persona non grata.

Lots of politics in this book and the action does not start until about the middle of the book where stuff finally starts blowing up and the Marines demonstrate just how non-deadly they can be (a rarity for Marines in my experiences).

As usual Kris gets stuck in the middle, and nearly dies because she ditched her protection detail. But if she hadn't ditched her protection detail, then most of them would have died because they were not wearing armor unlike Kris.

Some really stupid business choices in this book as well. A whole planet that refuses to build a space station, because that would allow other ships to dock and open trade and competition for goods on the planet. Ignoring a market out of spite is not sound business principles, but then neither is blowing up the opposition.

[Mike Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still enjoying the series immensely. it's not atechnical series with lots of science. Straight forward storyline with ' the space ship got us from whoa to go with no problems'. I don't need the science behind the stardrives or the laser cannons. Just drive and shoot.
Simple story lines, so I am there with the characters.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread binge going well

Binging a reread that I haven't read Antenna 12 years. Loved the series originally but had to wait between each book. Much better this way. Awesome. Nobody wants or should be around one of those d@%n Longknives including one of those Longknifes. Sweet.

[Freyja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some more fine action and a few giggles and some threads left hanging. Another must-read.

[Woody James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Left it in a cliff hanger.

[Volpot · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars

[Polly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great addition to the series. Kris and her crew see lots of action, and, become frenemies with representatives of Humankind's arch enemy.

[Saraj Goldberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book. Didn't realize it is the 6rh or so book in a series. Will have to get the rest now.

[Art (aka Whistler Reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual: 3.7*'s

I'm binging this Series, and watching the Quality of editing decay volume by volume.

It's disappointing to say the least.

At the $8.00 price range, One would expect better.

[Stan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume starts out as a standard space opera, but most of the way through starts moving to the philosophical. This may signal a change in tone for future volumes.

[Thomas Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

.It's a fantastic way to discover new books and engage in discussions with fellow book lovers.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

The aliens are finally here! Very glad the iteeche showed up, and shepherd does a decent job of showing how different they can be.