Book Cover
Title The First Casualty
Author Mike Moscoe
Cover Art Scott Grimando
Publisher Ace - 1999
First Printing Ace - 1999
Book Cover
Title The Price of Peace
Author Mike Moscoe
Cover Art Scott Grimando
Publisher Ace - 2000
First Printing Ace - 2000
Book Cover
Title They Also Serve
Author Mike Moscoe
Cover Art Scott Grimando
Publisher Ace - 2001
First Printing Ace - 2001
Book Cover
Title To Do or Die
Author Mike Shepherd
Cover Art Scott Grimando
Publisher Ace - 2014
First Printing Ace - 2014
Book Cover
Title Rita Longknife: Enemy Unknown
Author Mike Shepherd
Cover Art Scott Grimando
Publisher KL & MM Books - 2017
First Printing KL & MM Books - 2017
Book Cover
Title Rita Longknife: Enemy in Sight
Author Mike Shepherd
Illustrator Scott Grimando
Publisher KL & MM Books - 2017
First Printing KL & MM Books - 2017
Category Science Fiction
Warnings None
Main Characters Ray Longknife, Terrence Tordon, Rita Nuu, Ruth, Izzy Umboto, Mary Rodrigo
Main Elements Military SF
Website ---




Click to read the summaryThe First Casualty

Click to read the summaryThe Price of Peace

Click to read the summaryThey Also Serve

Click to read the summaryTo Do or Die

Click to read the summaryRita Longknife: Enemy Unknown

Click to read the summaryRita Longknife: Enemy in Sight




I decided to read the entire Kris Longknife series this year, but since that part of the series was already long I decided to save the Jump Universe for another time. But the more I read the Kris books, the more I wondered if I was missing something I should know about Ray and Trouble. A couple generations have passed, so in the Kris books we hear the legends they became, but not the men they were. Thought it might be interesting to go back to the beginning, after all the Jump Universe books were written first so as a reader I'm sort of expected to know this stuff already.

Now this is military SF. See I started the Kris books since I needed to fill a "Military SF/F" slot in a reading challenge BINGO slot, and at 8 or 9 books in, I couldn't find one where it was really hard military stuff, she's mostly playing the princess or off going rogue and not following the rules. She's navy but other than donning the uniform from time to time, it didn't really feel it. The First Casualty solved that problem, definitely all military. You've got your space battles, your ground battles, finding ways to survive when the military had to cut corners and didn't provide what you needed. How you can go from wanting to make peace to wanting to wipe the enemy off the face of the Earth, and then realizing what that actually means if you do that.

It was interesting going back and learning about characters that were already great-grandfathers by the time we meet them, here they are as young men, meeting their wives to be. In particular I enjoyed meeting Ruth, I'd wondered about the story of the farmer's daughter who became a marine's wife. Trouble is different too, he gains a sense of humour somewhere along the way but he's all business here. And the third book mentions the Three for the first time, and the planet Santa Maria (which the character Tom came from) which has alien tech. I enjoyed this one the most. By the time I got to the fourth book I'd seen our protagonists go in and clean up a corrupt planet several times before so there was nothing really new here though it left a nice teaser in the last couple of pages.

However like the Kris Longknife books, they were good but I didn't adore them. One big critique is that the villains are very two-dimensional moustache twirling sadists. The woman in The Price of Peace was just over the top, I mean sure there can be people like that, but it makes a story so much more engaging if your villain isn't pure evil but you can almost see their point of view. This continued a bit in the Kris books, a few characters managed to grow out of their caricature but the villains ran an empire of planets as if they were Nazis or Communists (and hey, most characters from those planets had German or Russian names, go figure). Same here, if someone was bad, he was really really bad, outright insane. The one interesting quirk was that while there were two sides to the conflict, it wasn't one side or the other that was the "villain", in fact we'd jump back and forth between both sides, making us care for both of them. It was the ones manipulating things.

I was excited however to learn more about how the Itichee war came about. Not sure about the covers though, Rita is Navy, not commando, if you're looking for the main character to whip out some weapons while being leather-clad, you'll be disappointed.

The series also doesn't end. Shepherd clearly intended a third Rita book but guess it never happened. I mean we know what happens next, more or less, from the Kris Longknife series. But just as we finally get to really meet the Itichee for the first time, we're left to fill in the blanks ourselves.

They were great for a one time read but I'll pass them along to someone else to enjoy as there are just too many to invest time in a second round.




Posted: April-November 2024

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