Columbus Day Expeditionary Force Book 1 (Audible Audio Edition) Craig Alanson RC Bray Podium Publishing Books
Download As PDF : Columbus Day Expeditionary Force Book 1 (Audible Audio Edition) Craig Alanson RC Bray Podium Publishing Books
Nominee, 2018 Audie Awards - Audiobook of the Year
We were fighting on the wrong side of a war we couldn't win. And that was the good news.
The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the Native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon came ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There went the good old days, when humans got killed only by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits.
When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved. The UN Expeditionary Force hitched a ride on Kristang ships to fight the Ruhar wherever our new allies thought we could be useful. So, I went from fighting with the US Army in Nigeria to fighting in space. It was lies, all of it. We shouldn't even be fighting the Ruhar; they aren't our enemy. Our allies are.
I'd better start at the beginning.
Columbus Day Expeditionary Force Book 1 (Audible Audio Edition) Craig Alanson RC Bray Podium Publishing Books
I checked this book out using my KU account and from the title did not expect much. Oh how wrong I was.This book is an absolute gem. It has all the cliche story lines; a soldier on leave gets caught up in an alien invasion, the soldier fights back, the Earth is saved by another alien race, the soldier signs up to go fight the invaders for their new alien friends. Ho-hum. yawn, been there read that, but wait...suddenly totally new, never before scenes start to pop-up. You get an inkling when Barney (yes the horrible purple dinosaur from childrens TV) makes an appearance.
From there you are taken along on an hilarious ride of non-stop action, jokes, impossible situations, prison breaks, stealing a spaceship; etc; etc. All fun, fast paced and well written.Then there is Skippy....'nuf said!
Be cautious though, if you have a problem with the F word, skip this book. Same thing for anyone who cannot deal with coarse language, some gutter humor and are looking for hard science. But, for anyone that has been 21, and/or been in the military and been in situations you didn't understand, but just went with the flow, this book is for you.
Thanks for a great book Craig and for putting it on Kindle Unlimited, I probably wouldn't have read COLUMBUS DAY otherwise..
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Columbus Day Expeditionary Force Book 1 (Audible Audio Edition) Craig Alanson RC Bray Podium Publishing Books Reviews
I ended up enjoying the second half of the book enough to want to read the second one, but the first half is dry and filled with unnecessary details and jargon. They sci-fi aspects were decent and the author clearly has lots military knowledge, but the book would have been better if he hadn't spent so much time going into every detail of the alien spacecraft and weapons or every nuance of military life. It wasn't only that the details were unnecessary, they were also presented in the most boring way possible with long detailed dialogue either between characters or in the protagonist's internal monologue. In fact the story is almost exclusively told like it is a mission report being made by the character. That is a unique idea, but it was executed poorly in my mind. The sad thing is that it hides an otherwise interesting concept and some enjoyable characters, especially later in the story. I almost abandoned the book, but I saw a couple of reviews suggesting that it picked up at the midpoint, which was true.
They audio book narrator did a great job, especially with an understated, but fairly authentic Maine accent for the main character.
This is a simply outstanding series. I am very glad that I discovered it AFTER he wrote four books so that I wouldn't go into serious withdrawal issues upon completing Columbus Day. It's original, clever, funny, and a real delight.
You have an ordinary Joe who just wants to serve his country and go home, but he finds himself in the middle of an interplanetary invasion by...hamsters. Yes, the aliens are similar to bipedal hamsters. Alanson had me right there. Hamsters?
He gets a scratch team together and manages to capture two aliens. He treats them well and turns them over to the authorities, figures that's the end of it. The war goes on, and another alien army shows up. They conquer the hamsters and seem to enlist Earth as an ally. They're lizards, and you know you just can't trust lizards.
Earth sends military forces out with the lizard ships, ostensibly to be trained and used in the war against the hamsters, but they end up on the hamster planet as occupation forces. Joe is semi-famous for capturing hamsters on Earth, but here he's considered trouble, and the plan is to station him at a remote area where he can't make more trouble.
He befriends a hamster official who turns out to be in charge of the hamster government, and learns a lot more about their supposed allies, the lizards. They aren't allies...just slave labor in training for the lizard overlords. Yet another alien nation is participating in this messy war, but they're mainly support and transport. They don't get into the messy stuff, just deliver lizard ships and supplies.
You can't tell the players without a score card in this interstellar war zone, and Joe realizes humanity has been duped into helping the equivalent of space Nazis in their regime. He tries to get the information to the decision-makers, only to discover that he's in more trouble...and then in jail, awaiting execution. He's locked in a makeshift cell with some stuff stored in it, and there he finds an ancient alien Artificial Intelligence unit who is millions of years old, knows everything, and is bored out of his little metal gourd. He actually occupies a huge volume of space in another dimension, but in this one, he's manifested as something like a silver beer can with an attitude.
With the help of Skippy, the AI, Joe and a few other prisoners escape and try to save themselves...and planet Earth, a wormhole away from their present location.
I love this series, and in fact, went ahead and bought all four of the main books so that I could find out how this all went. There are some minor editing issues (you and your, omitted words, phrases that were "test-driven" and not used, which should have been removed. The story is good enough that I'll put up with that stuff just to find out what happens to our merry band of space pirates next. After all, that's what they are. Pirates operating under the guidance of an ancient intelligence who can manipulate computer systems, wormholes, and so much more, particularly with the help of the "monkeys," his term for humans.
A really fun book, and listening to the audiobook really made it come to life. Skippy is the best AI I've run across anywhere, and the narrator really brings his character, and Joe's, to life. I left off one star for constant run-on sentences, but the narrator overcomes that by reading the run-on sentences as the multiple sentences they should be. This is fun, funny SF take spanning multiple species and ships and planets, with enough humor to keep it all pleasantly light. I know there is a genre of whodunits called "cozy" mysteries; is there such a thing as "cozy" SF? If so, this book qualifies thanks to Skippy!
Get a copy editor, Craig, and it will really help tour work. The stories and characters are fun and well-donr but if the copy editing isn't cleaned up, eventually you'll lose readers.in the meantime, hang onto your wonderful audio book reader -- he's a gem who helps immensely by his fantastic voice characterizations!
I checked this book out using my KU account and from the title did not expect much. Oh how wrong I was.
This book is an absolute gem. It has all the cliche story lines; a soldier on leave gets caught up in an alien invasion, the soldier fights back, the Earth is saved by another alien race, the soldier signs up to go fight the invaders for their new alien friends. Ho-hum. yawn, been there read that, but wait...suddenly totally new, never before scenes start to pop-up. You get an inkling when Barney (yes the horrible purple dinosaur from childrens TV) makes an appearance.
From there you are taken along on an hilarious ride of non-stop action, jokes, impossible situations, prison breaks, stealing a spaceship; etc; etc. All fun, fast paced and well written.Then there is Skippy....'nuf said!
Be cautious though, if you have a problem with the F word, skip this book. Same thing for anyone who cannot deal with coarse language, some gutter humor and are looking for hard science. But, for anyone that has been 21, and/or been in the military and been in situations you didn't understand, but just went with the flow, this book is for you.
Thanks for a great book Craig and for putting it on Unlimited, I probably wouldn't have read COLUMBUS DAY otherwise..
.
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