Audiobook. It was good, the Mavericks are an interesting bunch and I really enjoyed the story telling he does with them instead of the perpetual problem solving that happens with the Merry Band of Pirates. But in the end I just don’t really care about them much...I LOVE SKIPPY THE MAGNIFICENT!! And the pirates. But give me MORE SKIPPY and give me more AWESOMENESS!

More of the same really, with a little side story going on. Which is kind of a good thing, and kind of a bad thing. While I appreciate the author adding in more characters to try and mix it up, and giving us more characters to care about, all while Joe and Skippy doing their thing, the story still feels like it is moving along at a turtles pace. I felt more detached with this book than previous ones, with myself feeling like i’ve skipped chapters and not really missing much to the main storyline...

A Skippy Shandy!Six books in and still going strong but this isn't going to make everyone happy. The thing that makes theses stories really pop is of course Colonel Joe and Skippy the inter-galactic beer can. Their banter and zany problem solving are the heartbeat of these books and it starts off with a classic example of just that. However, they then take a back seat for more than half of the book as we turn back to follow the characters back on Paradise as they set up a situation requiring mor...

Two words: "too long".Halfway through a crisis on the Flying Dutchman, the book cuts to Perkins and talks about the B-plot for (are you sitting down?) more than half the book. Usually I'm glad that the ExFor audiobooks last me longer than a week, but this one was sort of overstaying it's welcome. The main plot didn't seem to move at all.

Ok but more a side storyWhile I loved the first books in this series, this book fell a little flat. More than half the books is a side story that while a bit entertaining and does set the possibilities of a side series or something, it wasn’t what the book promised.During the later half of the book many of the incidents and interactions between Joe and Skippy felt forced, more for the sake of having to put something in than actual substance. It didn’t help that many of the romantic parings felt

October 2021What a pleasure to really take my time with this the second time around. I only listened while swimming laps in the pool, so it took a couple of months. But I love this world and can't get enough of Joe and Skippy.June 2020The saga continues! Skippy is back on track and scores are settled. There's even a hint of romance! Some dicey moments happen and Joe continues to do his best to be a Colonel and not a regular soldier. I love this series. RC Bray is amazing.

My rating is based on the structure of the book. The first part is the usual Joe and co. dealing with problems and more problems, etc. Then it switches to many, many chapters about some characters that were left on Paradise and what happens to them as they deal with problems, and more problems, etc. And that section was not as satisfying to me. It seemed to last forever before we got back to Joe and Skippy. Which made me understand one of the main reasons I continue to read this series, even tho...

Despite what felt like a long digression to the Mavericks and not as much Joe and Skippy, I enjoyed this instalment of the series, and my biggest complaint is that the next books in the series aren't out yet.

Definitely action filledI've seen a few people complain that this is more a trailer for the spin-off series Mavericks than an actual ExForce book, and I don't entirely disagree. That said, this is still a high quality, action filled Expeditionary Force book .The Merry Band of Pirates is yet again faced with problems concerning their frankenship. While they're solving that particular issue, Joe has time to read up on what's been going on with Perkins and the rest of her team on Paradise. It's lik...

A lot of this series has been very fun. This book expands significantly on the characters on Paradise and ventures away from the main story for a bit more than 50% of the book. It has countless references and feels like it is probably an extension of "Trouble on Paradise," which I did not read because it is a side story and I did not feel it was worth an audible credit. Based on this there were countless moments where I just flat thought about not finishing the book. The audio performance was as...

I like the split focus of the humans on Paradise/ " The Toaster" and our intrepid space born heros. Finally brought up the issue of humans dating in space. I like how we got a little bit more nuanced descriptions of the alien cultures. Minor details gave me pause- setting up far flung plot lines seemed extravagant, interesting ideas kinda petered out, and then we still are playing with " are we subordinate to military command or are we pirates". Also seems like a bro veteran got ahold of a thesa...

Ex For (book 6) MarvellousMarvellous: Story rolling along but the big question remains will Joe get home before the Dutchman runs out of cheeseburgers.

I've often wondered if the reason that subsequent books in a series are rated higher than previous books is because the readership is being distilled to only the true fans.This book being rated so high is a indication that this is, indeed, the case.Everything starts off well enough with Joe and Skippy encountering problems, as is par for the course for these books. Then, for almost the entirely of the narrative, the pov shifts to Col. Perkins and her team. 10+ hours of something that could have

Just found out that my previous review never saved and it said I never even read this one. My least favorite out of the series so far. What happened? This was basically a side quest. Don't get me wrong, I like Colonel Perkins, but her side story could've been summed up in a single chapter. It was straight up boring. Skippy and Joe didn't come back into the mix until like 12 hrs into the story, and then that was basically filled with Skippy singing more than usual. It's books like this one that m...

I enjoyed the Joe and Skippy parts of this book as much as all of the other ExForce books. But for some reason, Alanson decided to devote 60% of the middle of this novel to a band of side characters. These characters have been in the series before, and I had no problem with their sections.... but this time, more than half of this novel was devoted to them. A little investigating, and it turns out that the author did this to launch a spinoff series featuring these characters.You want to start ano...

This book has confirmed my problem with the series, and it is that outside of Skippy and Joe the cast is rather lackluster and boring. The book starts off with another laughable Star Trekkish problem of the week, an energy virus that made me almost cringed in embarressment, can we please have a problem that isn't another 'ship in trouble'. How hard is it to just give the Merry Band a breather or doing something that isn't so pavlovianly predictable. The crew of paradise is rather uninteresting,

This book will try to pull these swerves where it will kill characters and expect you to think everything is going wrong, the problem is if you want to pull that shit you need to start in book 1 with killing some main characters, showing that people die in this universe. As only a handful of no name/character having people have died you know that no plot characters will be harmed, least of all off screen.It's disappointing and lazy, add to this that the plot drags along with nothing happening, a...

This was like half a book focused on our normal main hero and half a book dealing with what's going on with the Mavericks, a specific group of human soldiers left on Paradise. It was still quite enjoyable and when it ended I found myself looking forward to the next book in the series. Still, it seemed a little "off-focus" in that it focused so much on what that other team was doing for such a good portion of the book. It was still a fun read, but...yeh, a little disappointed in how that worked o...

Just as interesting as the others in this series. While I understand some of the other reviews stating they feel like this is not as good because of the 'side' story of the Mavericks (oh hey, that's the title of the book...hmmm). I like Skippy and Joe as much as anybody, but I actually feel like this 'side' story helps flesh out the universe these characters live in. It can't be all Skippy all the time - despite what Skippy may say about it.That said, I think the Mavericks story is actually more...

Overall - a good continuation. The only thing I find weird is how the author decided to switch between "Skippy story" and "Mavericks' story". I think it would have been better to switch to and fro, instead of telling one story a bit, then telling the other whole and getting back to the first one. Other than that the comedy was there, the action was there, all I could have expected from the expeditionary force :)