Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force #1)
- Author: Craig Alanson
- Page count: 305
- Started on: 2026/08/05
- Finished on: 2026/08/13
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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Expeditionary Force is by now a 19-book series that follows a US soldier (Joe Bishop) when Earth gets pulled into an interstellar conflict. Joe discovers an ancient AI of mysterious origin (which he names Skippy), who is as sarcastic as he is brilliant.
In this first book in the series, Joe and his band of space pirates first fight the hamsters alongside the lizards, then switch sides and help the hamsters fight the lizards, before finally freeing Earth from its occupiers and Joe setting off into space to help Skippy find the other ancient AIs.
Columbus Day mixes space opera pulp of the purest kind with splashes of Hitchhiker’s Guide-esque absurdism, and that’s not a bad thing. The story is very readable, the plot moves fast, and the interaction between the characters is funny and functional. I enjoyed this book for what it is, but wonder how its lightweight nature and (so far) lack of character development hold up across the series.
