I *love* the Expeditionary Force! And I’m glad to see it back in action. 🙂
One trap I felt like the Craig Alanson had fallen into with the last couple books in this series was that things were starting to feel a little repetitive: our merry band of pirates would get in trouble, Skippy would save them, along with some help from Joe, and that would…be the story. Deux Ex Skippy made me feel like no matter what, the stakes weren’t that high – and though I did enjoy his snark, it’s like eating a diet composed only of candy: you don’t appreciate the candy if all you eat is candy.
I loved the different take that Craig Alanson took in Mavericks, having us follow well..the Mavericks! I really enjoyed the novella earlier, and half the book felt like an expansion of the Novella with Perkins, Nert, et al. Plus, the Mavericks don’t have Deux Ex Skippy to bail them out, so the stakes seemed higher in their sections.
And the second half of the book, that *did* have Skippy was refreshing and nice and entertaining to read, as I’ve come to expect of Skippy sections. 🙂
Hopefully, the next book has this nice split again, and we get to learn even more about Skippy’s origins – his existential crisis introduced in this book was intriguing, where he’s afraid he’s going to go crazy and kill entire species, so he turns a little bit suicidal… I personally felt like that was a little out of character for an AI with as much self confidence as he has, but I’m intrigued to see where the author goes with this.
It’s been the highlight of my last few weeks. Thank you Craig Alanson for pumping out books on such a regular schedule! I love reading them, and I’m glad you were able to self publish on Amazon, for my life would be far less rich without the Ex Force!
Two More Pages! 