Book Review: Renegades (Expeditionary Force Book 7) By Craig Alanson

I love reading different types of books. I go from non-fiction about personal goal setting, to how to launch a book, to super duper nerdy science fiction novels. My favorite books to listen to are currently of the science fiction variety, and anything performed by R.C. Bray (the narrator of the Martian) is right up my ally.

Renegades is book #7 of one of the best science fiction series I’ve read. It’s funny, thrilling, and hard to predict. It’s an enjoyable book to listen to while out walking or going on long runs. 

Here’s my review with the good, the bad, and the great. 

The Good

The book is #7 in a series, and thus doesn’t need to start from scratch in building out great characters. The characters are likable but real in a raw way. The way I like to judge my relationship with the characters is to ask if I would be saddened by their deaths. Normally this question rings true for the main character and maybe only one or two others, but the author has created a world with a great supporting cast that I don’t want anything bad to happen to. This isn’t easy to do and I appreciate the character development needed to do so. 

The Bad

Almost all of the books in the series (especially the last 3-4 books) follow the same sort of structure. The Earth is in danger of being caught by other space faring species. Something has gone really wrong. More things go wrong. Joe and Skippy work together to come up with a solution to the problem. They fix it against all odds. At the end something even more impossibly horrible presents itself.

While I obviously enjoy reading these stories, I get particularly annoyed when the overarching story seems to go nowhere. It makes you feel as if loose ends wont tie up, and seemingly significant events were nothing more than smokescreens. I like it when their is a bigger overall point being made behind the scenes. That might not be happening with this book and series. 

The Great

The book is humorous throughout and it doesn’t drag. It heats up and the solutions the characters come up with are both ridiculous and highly probable. R.C. Bray does a great job narrating and making the book come alive. It feels like you are living it as you listen and it’s worth every second. 

You can pick up the book on Amazon here. 

Enjoy and best of luck in all of your sci-fi reading endeavors 🙂

-Jordan