The Doublecross Program (Star Risk #3)

by Chris Bunch

2004

Status

Available

Publication

Roc (2004), 352 pages

Description

M'chel Riss and the Star Risk, Ltd. team find themselves in the middle of a strange assignment: a staged bank robbery that involves putting money back. But the job soon takes an even stranger turn when they get caught up in a full-fledged war over an addictive new consumer product. The roguish mercenaries will need to rely on every resource possible to make a buck and make it out alive - in this fast-paced tale of hard-hitting action and a double-cross or three ...

User reviews

LibraryThing member euang
Double, Triple, Quadruple, Anyone?: Chris Bunch has always written books that blend action and intrique with complicated political situations. In that, this third book of the Star Risk series is no different. Every word is worth it though!

M'chel Riss, partner of Star Risk, Ltd wants to hire her
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firm to invesitgate the death of someone she knows. Luckily, the parties involved need someone like Star Risk to advise and to win the war they are involved with their neighboring systems.

However, Star Risk is being setup for a double cross, and they don't particularly like their employers either. Nothing's stopping them from contemplating working for the other side...

Bringing peace to these systems while ensuring regular shipments of the main export - a new addictive crop - to the galaxy while keeping the Alliance off their backs may prove to be a bigger job than they can handle. Filled with incompetent rulers, huge battles, non-stop action, doublecrosses galore, and more - could this be the final mission for Star Risk?

This was an excellent followup to the first two books in the Star Risk series, "Star Risk, Ltd" and "The Scoundrel Worlds". The characters have proven they work well as a team in the previous two books. But now you see even more character developement as you learn more about M'chel, Grok, Chas, Jasmine, and even Friedrich as they take on the biggest job of their lives. Chris proves that he has the deft touch to blend action, politics, romance, and solid world building into a seamless whole. This is some of the best 'military' sci-fi being written out there.
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LibraryThing member booklog
Star Risk ltd #2. Even more cavity-causing. Poorly written grammatically and literarily. As with many of these future adventures, Bunch chooses an uneven mix of "remembering" old things and "forgetting" them, with no apparent rationale. Also as usual, the maneuvering of the starships violates all
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known laws of physics, even excluding the "warp drive". I hereby christen (plagiaristically no doubt) this branch of pseudo-science "fysix".
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LibraryThing member scottcholstad
I was somewhat disappointed with this book and that surprised me. I really like Chris Bunch and I really liked the first two books of this Star Risk, Ltd. series, so when this one seemed to be sub-standard, it was a real surprise and, as I said, a disappointment. Basically, M'chel Riss and the Star
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Risk, Ltd. mercenary team are hired by one planetary system to train and lead its armed forces against a neighboring planetary system, only to double cross them and go to the other system for the same deal. And back again. And so on. It's an entire book of double crossing. And it doesn't really endear the group to me, I've got to say. I mean, I know they're mercenaries, but still, have some ethics in how you do business. If you have a contract, do your damn job! I thought better of these people.

The thing that makes Chris Bunch books good is not only are they action packed military sci fi novels, but they've got intrigue, and plenty of it. There's a mystery and it's a good one. And there are plot twists and you wonder how the heck the protagonists of his series' are going to escape whatever predicament they're in. That was the case in the first two books of this series, as well as all of the Last Legion books. Not so with this book. It's plenty action packed. A lot of tension, I suppose. Perhaps. Maybe not. I mean, you know your heroes probably aren't going to be killed off, so really, how much tension is there? So, in this case, the book seems to be mostly a straight ahead military action novel. No real intrigue, no real mystery. No wondering who did what, who's going to do what. No real wondering how they're going to escape, other than how they're going to either end this war or get away from it, which is frankly anti-climactic and when it does "end," it is anti-climactic. And for once, they actually don't conclude their job, technically. It's a fairly dissatisfying ending to a dissatisfying book. I'll be starting the fourth book in the series in a little while. I have hopes that it will be an improvement and will return the series to its normal status of excellence. Because this is not typical Chris Bunch. If you're reading this series, I guess you might want to read this, but it's not essential. I don't think you'll be missing a lot by not reading it. And frankly, if you're not reading the series, I see little point in reading it, although it can be read as a stand alone book. Whatever the case, not recommended, sadly.
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2004-07

Physical description

352 p.; 4.4 inches

ISBN

0451459865 / 9780451459862

Barcode

1600640
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