Expeditionary Force Review

Let us be honest from the outset: Craig Alanson's "Expeditionary Force" series, beginning with "Columbus Day" in 2016 and now stretching across seventeen mainline novels and several spinoffs, is not high literature. It is not even, by the strictest standards, high science fiction. What it is, with cheerful and unapologetic enthusiasm, is one of the most entertaining military sci-fi series of the past decade — a popcorn-fueled, audiobook-optimized, magnificently ridiculous saga built almost entirely on the chemistry between a wisecracking human soldier and a sarcastic alien AI who lives in a beer can.

The premise starts conventionally enough. On Columbus Day, aliens invade Earth. Specifically, the Ruhar — hamster-like aliens — attack, and are then driven off by the Kristang, lizard-like warriors who present themselves as humanity's saviors. Sergeant Joe Bishop, a U.S. Army soldier from Maine, distinguishes himself in the fighting and is selected to join an expeditionary force serving alongside their Kristang allies. So far, so standard military sci-fi.

Then the rug gets pulled. The Kristang are not saviors but exploiters, using humanity as cannon fodder in an interstellar conflict between two vast alliances of alien species. Earth is a backwater, humans are the lowest-status species in the galaxy, and everything Joe thought he knew about the situation is wrong. This revelation, delivered about a third of the way through "Columbus Day," transforms the series from conventional alien invasion into something more interesting: a story about a species that is hopelessly outmatched technologically, militarily, and politically, and has to survive through cunning, improvisation, and sheer audacity.

And then Joe finds Skippy. Skippy the Magnificent, as he insists on being called, is an Elder AI — a relic of an ancient, incomprehensibly advanced civilization — discovered in a canister that looks like a beer can. Skippy is, by any reasonable measure, a god. He can manipulate spacetime, hack any computer system, create wormholes, and outthink every other intelligence in the galaxy. He is also petty, vain, obsessed with human pop culture, given to elaborate insults, and incapable of going five minutes without reminding everyone how much smarter he is than every other being in existence.

The Joe-Skippy dynamic is the engine that drives seventeen books and counting. It is, essentially, a buddy comedy transplanted into interstellar war. Joe provides common sense, moral grounding, and the ability to come up with "stupid monkeyboy" plans that work precisely because no sophisticated intelligence would expect them. Skippy provides godlike technology and a running commentary of abuse, encouragement, and increasingly desperate pleas for Joe to stop doing idiotic things. Their banter — Alanson's strongest suit as a writer — carries the series through patches of repetitive plotting and formulaic structure that would sink a lesser partnership.

The military action is competent without being exceptional. Alanson clearly has respect for military culture and gets the camaraderie, the dark humor, and the "hurry up and wait" rhythms of service life right. The space battles are entertaining if not particularly hard-SF — Skippy's abilities mean that tactical problems are usually solved through technological deus ex machina rather than through the kind of meticulous fleet engagements that David Weber excels at. Ground combat sequences are more grounded and more effective, drawing on Alanson's clear affection for the grunt's-eye-view of warfare.

The series' greatest structural weakness is its repetitiveness. The basic plot of an "ExForce" novel runs roughly as follows: the Merry Band of Pirates (as Joe's crew christens themselves) faces an impossible situation. Joe comes up with an audacious plan. Skippy says it can't work. They try it anyway. It partially works, creating a new impossible situation. Repeat three or four times per book. The individual variations are entertaining — Alanson is inventive with his crises and creative with his solutions — but the template is visible, and by book ten or twelve, even enthusiastic fans may feel the gears grinding.

The supporting cast is likeable but thin. Sergeant Adams, the tough-as-nails SEAL who becomes Joe's right hand. Desai, the competent Indian officer who commands the ship when Joe's busy being a ground-pounder. Chang, the Chinese special forces operative. They are defined primarily by their competence and their banter, and while they serve the narrative adequately, none achieves the depth of characterization that the best military sci-fi demands. The female characters are generally handled respectfully but are rarely given the page time or interior life that the male characters receive.

Where the series excels beyond expectations is in its exploration of what it means to be a minor species in a galaxy dominated by elder powers. The Merry Band of Pirates cannot fight the Maxolhx or the Rindhalu in open battle; they cannot out-think the Jeraptha or out-negotiate the Thuranin. They survive by being unpredictable, by exploiting the rigid hierarchies of alien cultures, and by having Skippy — a variable so disruptive that the galaxy's power structures literally cannot account for him. There is something deeply satisfying about watching a group of resourceful humans outsmart species that regard them as barely sentient animals.

Craig Alanson's prose is functional and unpretentious. He writes clearly, paces his action well, and has a genuine gift for comedic dialogue. He does not, however, write with literary ambition. Descriptions are minimal, interior monologues are rare, and thematic complexity is not a priority. The series reads like what it is: a story conceived for audiobook consumption (R.C. Bray's narration of the series is widely regarded as definitive and is largely responsible for its commercial success), where pace and voice matter more than prose style.

The audiobook dimension deserves emphasis because it fundamentally shapes the experience. R.C. Bray's performance — his Joe Bishop is everyman weary, his Skippy is gleefully obnoxious, his military characters are gruffly distinct — elevates the material significantly. Passages that might feel flat on the page land with comic timing and emotional resonance when performed. It is not an exaggeration to say that "Expeditionary Force" is one of the series that has most benefited from the audiobook revolution, and that a substantial portion of its readership has never read a physical page.

The later books — "Fallout" (2020), "Match Game" (2021), "Brushfire" (2021) — attempt to deepen the mythology by exploring the Elders, the origins of Skippy, and the nature of the "higher" entities that manipulate events from behind the scenes. These revelations are interesting without being revelatory; Alanson handles cosmic-scale worldbuilding competently but without the philosophical depth of a Peter Hamilton or an Alastair Reynolds. The series remains most comfortable at the human scale, where Joe's pragmatic decency and Skippy's magnificent ego drive the narrative forward.

"Expeditionary Force" will not win literary awards. It will not be taught in university courses. It will not be remembered as a landmark work of science fiction that redefined the genre's possibilities. What it will be remembered as — and what it deserves to be remembered as — is proof that charm, humor, and a genuinely lovable odd-couple dynamic can carry a series across nearly two decades and millions of words. Joe Bishop and Skippy the Magnificent are not deep characters, but they are beloved characters, and in the world of serialized genre fiction, that counts for a great deal.

Shut up and trust the awesomeness.