Craig Alanson's "Expeditionary Force" Series: "Armageddon"

Amazon Customer: I'm giving this book a five star rating despite the poor editing, the numerous misnamed characters and small timeline inconsistencies.

The story is back on track, most of the "contrivedness" is smoothed out, the pace is good and all is well in the Skippyverse.

United States on Jun 22, 2023

Gomez Addams: You should know a little about the background of this reviewer first. I have been a speculative fiction aficionado since before they came up with the term "speculative fiction". Back in the day, I read damned near everything that had been published, from Frankenstein onward. My parents were SF fans and we had a lot of it in the house. One grandfather was good, lifelong friends with many of the SF writers based on the East Coast and some others besides. He himself appeared as a character in some big stories. I will not say who, because that would be name dropping. I aspired to publish some SF myself, but life happened and that aspiration is kind of back burnered. My idea of a great SF story might be written by Ursula LeGuin or Samuel R. Delaney or Stanislaw Lem or Roger Zelazny or PJF or Niven. On the other hand, most of the output from each of those authors does not qualify as truly great SF and does not qualify for five stars from me. So, you know I am picky and some might say my tastes are snobby. I do not think so. I am just conservative about keeping the highest rating from being devalued from overuse. Also, I grade on a curve. I have read volumes of SF criticisms and...

United States on Dec 01, 2019

Sean Bai: This book was wonderful.

Some people think this series is getting stale, and that there's always some crazy event to react to. This book ups the stakes. There's a reason why this book is called "Armageddon". There are some revelations, and ideas I haven't heard of in other science fiction series.

Craig Alanson really portrayed the rivalries between different countries in his series quite well. This series has really good representation and diversity, and alien species feel very unique.

This series also has some good character development. Joe Bishop often questions himself and has many doubts, and it makes him human.

There have been so many events that the Expeditionary Force had to deal with, that every time the author references them, I start getting them mixed up. It would be nice if there was a list of events that have happened so far. A timeline would be nice. Maybe a map of the galaxy would also help us imagine different locations in space. Overall, there were some moments that were confusing, such as why the main characters had to cancel a cover story.

However, there is an event mentioned in this book that is quite confusing. There is...

United States on Sep 23, 2019

Zatoichisan: Half way through and I am thinking "Enough already!" Same basic plot and ideas, same dialogue and jokes over and over! The last few books I have hung in there hoping against hope that the author would learn and develop, that the rich vein of the the early books would mature and grow. I am sorry that I continue to be disappointed.
So far Mr R.C. Bray has saved the Audio series by the nature of his marvellous narration but without it the text is getting pitiful and has now become a pure cash cow of repetitious unimaginative turgid sadness.
Where is the editor? Please please learn not to run through each plot development over and over every time a main character has a thought trying to advance the story an inch or two! It's soooo annoying! Maybe 15-20% of each book could be cut away without suffering in anyway. OMG Joe is now getting to be a tiresome pushover and self depreciating bore! He is stuck with no real character growth, everyone treats him with such easy contempt. Surely by now he could have grown a little real leadership and toughness ? I loved these guys it's such a shame.
I cannot understand many of the glorious reviews now, it's rinse repeat! it does the Author...

United Kingdom on Sep 08, 2019

William S. Morris: We make up these names but can't figure out how to spell them. So the merry band goes out to research a beta site. With a few problems indicating that the beta site was there for our use only we find a pristine earth like planet untouched by any hands but it's right there where the elder long distance wormhole comes out. We decide to go back and get colonists when we discover Gateway, the wormhole to earth is blockaded, and the Maxolhx are planning upon sending a battle fleet to figure out why no one comes back from earth. We figure we need to steal a bigger better warship. We do. Then we figure out that stealing is counter productive to stopping the Maxolhx. So we figure out how to stop the fleet. Well now we figure it'll take another year for the Maxolhx to figure that their fleet is missing. In the meantime we've got some tension worked up between the Maxolhx and the above, however you spell it. We've got the two of those apex races at each other's throat so not so interested in us. Besides that we discover that there might be a boogeyman out there that had the elders a bit worried. We find a barrier around the galaxy using elder technology that prevents wormhole travel. Either...

United States on Sep 03, 2019

Jarrak: The eighth novel in the Expeditionary Force series exceeded my expectations to a level then even Skippy would have trouble calculating. Any long running series has to deal with the need to keep things interesting without falling foul of repeating plot points or making things too stupid to retain the narrative which captured the reader in the first place, Armageddon achieved this.
I will admit I was a little lost with all the talk about their previous mission (convinced myself I had skipped a novel) but once I had that figured out I fell right back into the swing of things with the merry band of pirates. I am not going to go into any plot points because well nothing I can say would be a surprise to a regular reader and if you are not yet been lured into the adventures of Joe and Skippy then by all means grab a copy of Columbus Day and welcome to the family.
So my review, this novel was exceptional in that it delivered everything you would want from this series but presented it with icing and a bow, maybe even balloons. That said the knife got twisted good a proper but again you can't realistically have this sort of long running tale without the fact that there are...

United Kingdom on Aug 21, 2019

Aad Dekker: De vorige boeken in deze reeks vond ik steeds minder interessant worden. Voor mij is het sterke uit deze reeks vooral de interactie tussen Skippy en Joe maar zeker ook de vragen waar Skippy vandaan komt en wat de Elders nu precies waren en waar zij zijn. Op die vragen wordt in dit boek iets meer verteld (en je ziet daar alweer een volgende deel in). In dit boek komen gelukkig niet veel ellenlange beschrijvingen van ruimtegevechten (ik blader daar snel doorheen om te zien hoe het afgelopen is (tip: eigenlijk altijd goed)) en iets meer "science". Ik hoop dat de schrijver in het volgende boek tot een mooie afronding komt rond Skippy, de Elders en de dreiging van buiten. Het heeft lang genoeg geduurd.

Netherlands on Aug 18, 2019

Kindle Customer: If you haven't started on this wild ride, please, start with Columbus Day. You won't regret it.

At the time of writing this, there are a ton of typos and puntuation/grammar errors. HOWEVER, when you consider that the author has released 3 books AND an audio drama this year, AND he plans to have at least 1 more finished for publication before the year is out. A few mistakes are forgivable because we, the dedicated fans, are not having to wait a year or more between books! And I'm sure they will be rectified in the near future.

As for the story, how do I prove how much I enjoyed this book without giving spoilers? Oh ffs, just read it, you'll see! And yes I'm totally getting the audio version when Bob finishes narrating it.

United Kingdom on Aug 18, 2019

Calista: First third of the book = 2 stars - it dragged a bit for me
Final third = 5 stars
So I settled for 4
I’m eagerly waiting for the audio version as always.

Okay so my initial thought after reading about half the book was that it should have been called “Red Shirts”. Armageddon features the largest ever crew aboard the Dutchmen with the least number being named or having actual lines. Even Hans Chotek who makes a (for me) welcome return doesn’t actually speak.
I was really glad to see Chang back too but he also is relegated to a background character and along with Chotek, Friedlander and a whole group of nameless others doesn’t appear in the second half. I miss the closeness of the Spec Ops Team before they became the Star Force and Friedlanders jokes and Giraud offering to throw Skippy out an airlock.
As far as story goes if I say “Joe and Skippy must find a way of stopping an enemy ship getting to Earth” you would be right in saying “but wasn’t that the plot of every other book in the series (except Zero Hour)?” And yet - here we are again. Skippy and Joe must do the seemingly impossible and stop a top tier species flying to...

Australia on Aug 13, 2019