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Defender
- Kris Longknife, Book 11
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
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Defender
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Summary
Kris Longknife is back in the good graces of the brass - and to demonstrate that, they've promoted her to Admiral. Now her mission is to find the home base of the space pirates who are plaguing the fringes of the galaxy.
But no mission is ever simple when your name is Longknife. And this time the complications range from the military to the personal, as Kris finds herself - reluctantly - having to make some command decisions about her future....
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Azure Teal
- 03-03-23
I’m re-reading the 19 books I have
This is the romance book in the bundle . The story is getting better as there is another surprise at the end. Interesting things are happening to navy regs out in that other corner of the galaxy. I’m going through the 19 books I have so I can buy book 20 and listen to that
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Robert
- 01-04-23
By far the worst book in the series… but still readable for many.
The series takes a distinct dive downhill at this point, and this book is easily skippable.
While there are several very good sections and concepts (making them of average quality for the authors writing) and the expanded romance, detail of an alien culture and exploration of an actual command role are very good, they are let down severely by the way the titular Longknife acts.
If you wanted to know why Ray Longknife is hated, this would be the book for you, from running roughshod over civilian rights to summarily dismissing senior corporate officials without real cause, all to follow on Ray Longknife’s highly non-specific orders to protect the planet, Kris Longknife essentially abandons many of her tightly held beliefs and acts in a manner she would immediately have disobeyed earlier in the book, and not only does no one really object or get away with objecting, she also shows not one single moral qualm and is lauded as a heroine without a single real curse being thrown her way.
Up until this point the author has done a reasonable job of exploring the concept of a heroic dynasty (with a possible bobble or two) with particular interest in how generations of hero’s may act differently, how the worlds view of them can be very different from the reality and in particular asking the question ‘well, what does being a hero cost’ - with Kris Longknife paying that cost in blood and sweat.
To have all that thrown away is appalling and disappointing writing that takes away from the rest.
The romantic material is not particularly to my taste - but I do not regard it as particularly out of place or badly written.
The technical and military aspects are odd, but not poorly written, the smart metal ships that only half a decade ago proved so difficult are now essentially super vessels that can, without apparent drawback, be turned from a ship to a dozen boats to a cloud of nano bots and back into a ship. This seems… quite unrealistic, and it is notable that the author has the setting pushes back heavily against it in later novels. Further, lasers that previously took up turrets on hundred thousand tonne vessels are now mounted as spinal mounts on vessels that can move with the agility of fighter aircraft. These super-ships then destroy five hundred thousand tonne alien super vessels with over 10 to 1 odds, killing tens of billions of aliens in one attack. The number inflation is absurd. However, if you ignore the number inflation and mentally step aside, the systems and tactics presented are not dissimilar to other novels with similar themes, such as the Honour Harrington novels - lightly armoured fast craft with heavy spinal lasers acting as competent fast attack vessels in a setting previously dominated by heavy slugging vessels.
There are however numerous gaps in the application of this super science, it is made clear that ‘smart metal’ can become transparent, but it never seems to occur to make it highly reflective, or to make a slightly more dumb nano-material with a near perfect reflectivity and heat dissipation to take the place of ice, making the larger capital vessels equally viable. This can perhaps be forgiven in this book given the short time period, but the over-focus on the specific ‘small boats’ style of Kris Longknife in somewhat defiance of the settings proposed physics is as mentally disruptive as the absurd super-ships and Kris’ appalling command style.
Speaking of that command style, outside of the previously mentioned problems, it is very nice to see her with a real command and real flag rank - the step by the author to move away from the ‘twisty’ situations the character was put in for 10-12 novels is very positive, they were getting old. Approximately half of the pages spent dealing with her command problems and authority are a breath of fresh air.
This book can easily be skipped, as much of the material is repeated in the following novel in the first few chapters, pretty much word for word, and it also contains a great deal of interesting material regarding the Alien menace.
However, you will miss out on Kris’ Granny - I’ve avoided commenting directly on the Alwa Station plot, particularly with her GranGran and the Colonists, Roosters and Cassowaries (they call them Ostriches, but they’re Cassowaries) as there’s a lot of plot spoilers there, and these elements are some of the books stronger points.
But you do have to put up with some very setting-breaking material that the author very, very noticeably steps away from when he picks up writing again with Emissary.
And watching Kris Longknife tell innocent civilians (all of whom are depicted as easily tricked assholes or willing to sacrifice themselves for her) that they have to stay in the line of fire of hordes of aliens or literally be sent to starve on the planet below - an act she only follows up even more appallingly in later books by threatening to shoot the ships citizens from other star nations if the try to leave - because ‘it must be done’ and have everyone cheer her on, even foreign military powers not under her orders, is extremely out of character and poor writing - she bulldozes people with rank and force of personality without consequence, and not one person - including people from notoriously individualist planets - even really takes issue with her seriously, rather than throwing childish trantrums, never mind posing her an actual challenge and this rather sets the tone for how she approaches the majority of the command problems ‘my way or the high way, because the aliens will kill us all’ seems to be the theme, while she dispatched the aliens with such absurd efficiency that there is no real sense of threat from the aliens, it feels more like she is fighting scouting probes.
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