A review by brettt
Bold by Mike Shepherd
4.0
In 2004, Mike Moscoe adopted the pen name Mike Shepherd and moved ahead a couple of generations in his "Society of Humanity" universe to start writing the adventures of Kris Longknife, a very young officer in her planet's Navy with a long family tradition of trouble, guts and glory. With 2016's Kris Longknife: Bold, Moscoe/Shepherd winds up the first main arc of Kris's life as he brings her to the negotiating table of her family's deadliest enemies.
Vicky Peterwald and her father, the Emperor of Greenfeld, are at odds -- mostly because the Emperor's new wife wants to kill her. Vicky has gathered several Greenfeld planets in support of her, but she does not want to completely break with her father to outright attack her stepmother. The Emperor has asked for a cease-fire and wants Kris to mediate it. Vicky and her father sincerely desire rapprochement. Her stepmother the empress sincerely desires Vicky's death and that of anyone who stands between her and power, which includes Kris Longknife. This won't turn out well for the empress.
Bold makes a few missteps -- the number of characters in the series who have been attacked in a motorcade should alert pretty much all of them to take the subway for the rest of their lives, and Shepherd drops another such incident here. He spends rather more time on the opulence of the meeting and conference room than the details warrant. The Greenfeld-focused action moves the main storyline away from the mysterious near-human race Kris has fought several times before in defense of her home star-kingdom.
But he keeps his heroes witty and brave without the suffocating level of sang-froid David Weber piles on in his "Honorverse." And by making Kris a mother -- it involved sabotage, so don't ask -- he's added a new layer to her character and new concerns for her as she tries to do the right thing and prevent others from doing the wrong ones. Shepherd says in an afterward that Bold brings Kris to a turning point in her life and adventures, and so the changing tone helps set the stage for the next chapters in the story.
Original available here.
Vicky Peterwald and her father, the Emperor of Greenfeld, are at odds -- mostly because the Emperor's new wife wants to kill her. Vicky has gathered several Greenfeld planets in support of her, but she does not want to completely break with her father to outright attack her stepmother. The Emperor has asked for a cease-fire and wants Kris to mediate it. Vicky and her father sincerely desire rapprochement. Her stepmother the empress sincerely desires Vicky's death and that of anyone who stands between her and power, which includes Kris Longknife. This won't turn out well for the empress.
Bold makes a few missteps -- the number of characters in the series who have been attacked in a motorcade should alert pretty much all of them to take the subway for the rest of their lives, and Shepherd drops another such incident here. He spends rather more time on the opulence of the meeting and conference room than the details warrant. The Greenfeld-focused action moves the main storyline away from the mysterious near-human race Kris has fought several times before in defense of her home star-kingdom.
But he keeps his heroes witty and brave without the suffocating level of sang-froid David Weber piles on in his "Honorverse." And by making Kris a mother -- it involved sabotage, so don't ask -- he's added a new layer to her character and new concerns for her as she tries to do the right thing and prevent others from doing the wrong ones. Shepherd says in an afterward that Bold brings Kris to a turning point in her life and adventures, and so the changing tone helps set the stage for the next chapters in the story.
Original available here.