With over 400 audiobooks narrated, R.C. is the recipient of many industry accolades including the coveted Audie Award for his narration of one of the bestselling audiobooks in history which is no longer available because… money. a b "Craig Alanson answers your questions — Ask the Author". goodreads.com . Retrieved December 6, 2021. It would have been better if Joe had been surrounded by a few solid secondary characters, so we could hear them speak more. Joe had friends, but they came and went, first on Earth, then on planet Paradise. Just when I thought he finally had a little team of former army buddies, he was transferred. Then he had a group of three new soldiers placed under his command. But then he was called away from that group. So....no go. You get to keep a greater % of your book’s sale price. There is no publisher taking a big chunk of the revenue, and you don’t have to pay an agent 15% of the money you earn. The second half was more fun. Our main character, Joe Bishop, has been imprisoned by aliens in a makeshift planetside brig. Here he finds an ancient AI embodied as a beer can. The AI, who Joe dubs Skippy, is a snarky and absent minded asshole with amazing abilities (which it keeps bragging about). It helps Joe and a team of volunteers get off the ironically named planet of Paradise to

Columbus Day is one of those books that I connected within the first 5 minutes of listening and it is non-stop adventure to the end. It is no wonder that this book is a 2018 finalist of audiobook of the year. R. C. Bray is outstanding bringing this book to life.At this point, Bishop and the rest of the humans begin to learn that everything they thought they knew was a lie. Columbus Day has shades of David Brin's Uplift series (which is a very good thing, because Uplift is one of my favorite SF series ever). The Kristang and the Ruhar are both "client" races of more advanced patrons, and their patrons in turn have even more advanced patrons. Almost everyone in the war is just a proxy for a more advanced civilization. Humans are just a bunch of barely-civilized monkeys whose planet happened to be inconveniently in a strategic location at a critical time, and the Ruhar invaded Earth, not because they wanted it, but to deny it to the Kristang. And it turns out, the Ruhar are actually fairly civilized, while the Kristang don't take long to set humans straight on what the "patron-client" relationship means. Ascendant is a trilogy, and there are three books, so, no. However, my wife loves Ascendant and when she read the last line of the third book, she looked at me and said ‘You son of a bitch’.

Nope we've done that before, this time for the epic climax of the novel skippy just pulls the victory out of his shiny arse, with there apparently never having been any need for the mission prep work they did. There's this silly little 'conductors symphony' chapter near the end where skippy just 👋 solves the problem. And supposedly the reader is supposed to be very impressed? It reads like an author insert fanfiction. I don't think its actually supposed be a Craig Alanson author insert but just that last part of the arc, reads like a fanfiction where the author insert main character majestically conducts the events of the climax to ensure a happy ending.

Publication Order of Expeditionary Force Books

The plot is okay. There is lots of action and suspense. The book is irreverent and funny. It is hard to take the book seriously. The book makes a good “escape from it all” story. Of course, in my opinion Skippy is the star character of the story. From Outer Space to the Old West to a Post-Apocalyptic Hellscape, R.C. Bray is an expert guide. He is also a narrator. Bray switches settings and characters as seamlessly as a maturated Humphead Wrasse switches sex and color. No matter the genre, whether it be a story about human kindness and barbarism; a combat veteran’s struggle to cope with life at home; or saving the world armed with only a juice box and a snarky beer can, Bray utilizes his extraordinary range and unique vocal differentiation for each character to confuse publishers into thinking his consistent inability to meet a deadline is not only a good thing, but was their idea in the first place. Glad I did. Columbus Day is fun. It's well-written. The characters are fairly standard, the aliens equally so, the plot pretty much what it says on the cover. But I liked it. It's like a cheeseburger. (One of the running jokes in this book is how much the main character, Sergeant Joe Bishop, misses cheeseburgers.) You don't expect a cheeseburger to be an innovative new taste experience. You aren't expecting a culinary experience that transcends previous cheeseburgers. But a decent cheeseburger is tasty, and a good cheeseburger can be really, really good, and this is a good cheeseburger.