Get your space boots on cadet, for this week’s review, we’re blasting off with Mike Shepherd’s military sci-fi novel “Mutineer,” which is the first book in the Kris Longknife series.
***The Non-Spoiler part of this review***
What I love about this book:
“Mutineer” features a strong female protagonist that never stoops into the strong super serious badass woman warrior cliché or frilly girly-girl cliché who needs to be saved by her boyfriend. Kris manages to be a strong, capable character who doesn’t sacrifice her femininity or sense of humor.
With quite a few plates spinning, which the novel pulls off reasonably well, there are bits for many different audiences—action-adventure, political intrigue, military sci-fi, and even the suggestion of an unexpected romance subplot in this story. It’s certainly never slow-paced.
This novel’s liquid metal starships that can shift into different forms and configurations as needed is a cool science fiction technology that I haven’t seen used before in quite this way. For me, liquid metal shapeshifters have always been terminators. So I thought it was pretty neat how the Typhoon is described as a ship that can morph into various forms to suit its mission parameters or, while in battle, to compensate for damage.
What I don’t love about this book:
The main character, Kris Longknife, isn’t graced with my favorite protagonist name. So a kris is a type of knife, which means that her name simplifies to knife knife if you think about it—edgy. Okay, I know, cheap for even me.
I also don’t like the best friend character—and nothing else! Tommy is annoying most of the time. He oscillates between whiny to cowardly too many times to count. For example, when his rich, obviously beautiful peer, Kris Longknife, invites him to her homeworld, his first thought is to whine. Sure her forceful personality didn’t give this wet blanket much choice in the matter, but it’s hard to feel sorry for him as, oh no, they’re going to go sailing on the Longknife family yacht.
With the disaster relief mission, the whole middle of this book feels like marking time until we can return to the A plot that the book starts off with and ends on, obviously tying into a sequel. It isn’t that the book’s middle is a bad story per se but more like a character development subplot gone awry that dominates the novel.
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Author's Website: https://krislongknife.com/
***The Spoiler part of this review***
***Ye be warned to turn back now***
The quick and dirty synopsis:
This novel starts with our main character Ensign Kris Longknife suiting up with a detachment of space marines—it counts, they’re in space some of the time—to rescue the kidnapped child of a high-level functionary of one of the worlds of the society of humanity. The mission hits several hiccups, possibly sabotage, but Kris’s team ultimately saves the hostage and neutralizes all threats. Then there is a big party, which is incredibly uncomfortable for Kris because she’s always being compared to her famous family, the Longknifes.