[SPOILERS AHEAD] Craig, please take a break.....

I honestly wasn't going to pick up the new book after how disappointed I was with Valkyrie; but I hit a book drought and saw nothing but praise for Critical Mass on the audible reviews and on the subreddit, so I decided to give C.A. a chance at redemption.

The main reason I decided that I didn't like Valkyrie is because the book was almost entirely filler content with an information dump in the form of a bullet-point list at the very end, and Skippy abandoning everyone in the crew at the finale just felt so thrown together at the last minute and went against everything established thus far in the series.

Now, my almost immediate problem with Critical Mass is when Skippy just "decides" to care about his friends again and the Quachines honestly felt like bullshit. C.A has become the king of deciding that anything in his previous works does not matter which for a listener makes me feel like I shouldn't care about anything that happens because at any given moment, he can just decide that past experiences and exposition do not matter anymore. For Joe to forgive Skippy so early on due to the fact that "20% of his decision was original programming" was insulting, and it felt like it became an unfunny running joke for the rest of the book. I understand that Joe believes he doesn't have an option as they need Skippy to do anything; but that's only because C.A. wrote himself into a corner on his own. On that note....

Simms convincing the hostile AI to switch sides was so promising, it had potential to stop relying on Skippy and the dynamic seemed like it would have been interesting and could have opened some options as to where the story goes as well as entertaining interactions with the crew/Nagatha. Instead the build up of Simms pleading for it to change sides was thrown out almost as soon as it started which again made me wonder what the point of giving this AI a small "redemption arc" was, but later in the book when Bilby was introduced (I personally think "stoner" humor is very lazy so I'm not a fan of Bilby) I was left wondering why we couldn't have just kept the Maxolhx AI as Bilby just seems to be comedic relief; but so is Skippy? So what's the point of having two?

After being introduced, Bilby doesn't really do anything? I blew through the book in 2 days so maybe my brain isn't recalling anything meaningful that he did. At one point near the end Skippy was boasting about something awesome he did and Bilby chimes in to say "ugh dude that was actually me mannn" and I paused the book and wondered why he is even a character..

The book then followed the same formula of having almost no progression in the story and it took nearly 75% of the book just for the end result to be that the ships and everything was right back to the state it was in during Valkyrie and everything up to that point was just them recovering from the poorly written ending of the last book. This to me is C.A. padding his 4 hour story into a 19 hour slog. The side plot of Adams and Bishop was non existent with the author even saying that people are tired of the "will they, won't they" back and forth so it was stopping now. Half of the time I forgot about Adams until Joe would say "oh by the way Adams is on MY ship now"; okay? You've already established that nothing is going to happen in the department in this book so why are you constantly bringing it up? Again, I felt like I shouldn't be caring about their relationship or lack thereof because C.A. has told me not to care about it anymore.

With what feels like nothing happening for most of the book, again C.A. formulates some artifical drama with the gas giant near Avalon which accidentally saves the day kind of.... maybe..... because the next book might start by saying the Elder weapons plot doesn't matter anymore.

So, I'm left once again disappointed with his work, the front page of the subreddit has a post giving it a 10/10 calling it the best book in the series. I'm wondering what I'm missing? Everyone seems so impressed that he's pumping these books out quickly; but nobody is talking about how he is basically writing 7 chapters of story progression and 31 chapters of filler..

I'm sorry for the wall of text, I'm passionate about this series and I'm just extremely disappointed with the direction it's going.

12 people found this helpful

Awesome

Great continuation of the adventures of those crazy pirates. Not that I didn't like the last couple books, I certainly did, but this book is a bit better then them. It feels fresh.

1 person found this helpful

Loved it!

A fantastic final (?) chapter to this series. Twists and turns all over the place. Sad if this is the end - great series all around.

1 person found this helpful

AMAZING as usual for this series!

AMAZING as usual for this series!

loved every minute of the story and as usual RC Bray was an amazing dirty monkey!

1 person found this helpful

Why aren’t you reading this book!!!!

You may ask yourself why am I writing this when I titled this review Why aren’t you reading this book!!!! I don’t actually know, anyhoo

First off Id like to take this time to point out that Craig Alanson is a royal Butthead. That cliffhanger in the last book was epic, and things don’t immediately resolved in this book either......grrrrrr

Really at this point I don’t know why you have not purchased this book and started listening.

Oh and we all know this will be another homerun in the series. Go skippy the Meh

1 person found this helpful

really enjoyed it!

This book was excellently written and expertly performed! I highly recommend the whole series!

another home run

RC Bray continually keep you on the edge of your seat I'm not a big science fiction fan but man I love this series keep up with the bloopers they're freaking hilarious

One chapter ends, another begins.

I think this might be my favorite book in the series so far. It's one of the more exciting and well paced books in the series. It ties up a number of plot lines in a way that is deeply satisfying. One could easily stop reading here and feel gratified, but it also opens the door to the next major story arc, where everything is out in the open, there are no more secrets and collaboration between humans and other alien species has exciting potential. As always RC Bray is amazing.

Finally ... some closure

There is more to come of the Joe and Skippy show, as Fandom records for 2021, but for now I can say thank you this episode was well done and did NOT disappoint.

don't listen to blah blah guy up there

youve made it this far into to series for a reason... this book is THE reason to keep on listening

there's a really long review in this thread ..
some guy blah blah blah

DO NOT LISTEN TO IT

you have to build plot and have some character development IMO

best one so far, chapter 16 CRUSHES!

if you like these books for the military style banter and chirps, pop culture refs, this one won't let you down

RC - embraces his inner spicoli