BOOK REVIEW: Expeditionary Force Series -- Books 4 thru 6 (Craig Alans)
(Second Changes - Shinedown)
A very wise man, possibly the wisest man I've ever known, gave me one of the greatest pieces of advice that I've ever received in all my years:
All things in moderation.
That can be said in a bunch of different ways, but I've found that it applies to pretty much anything that you're considering, be it food, drink, entertainment, hobby, work, friendship, or love.
Alas, I'm not entirely sure that anyone ever murmured these words to Craig Alans. That's a shame, because he had a remarkably recipe for entertainment, one that far outshone his very apparent lack of compositional talent, and didn't know when to walk away from what he was doing.
I greatly enjoyed books one through three of Alan's Expeditionary Force books -- you can read my review here. I drilled the first book in two days. I drilled the second book two days after that, and the third book another two days after. I was greatly enjoying the escapades of the book's main character, Colonel Joe Bishop, his irreverent A.I. friend Skippy, and Merry Bands Of Pirates.
Then I got to book four, and things started to slow down. A lot. Book four took me four days to get through. Book five took me four days. Book six would have taken me another four days, were it not for the fact that I'd started skipping through huge chunks of it.
The "Why" behind these delays and skippages -- no pun intended -- falls down to one very real problem that Alans' writing suffers from. He only knows how to write one story, and he spends six books writing the same story over and over again. Yes, there are small changes between each book, and it's clear that Alans' world is RIPE for storytelling and character development. Unfortunately, most of the great things about Alans' world are hopelessly overshadowed by his almost manic recycling of content. His recipe for the books is predictable in the extreme:
Step 1: Problem A is uncovered, either due to the other races of space-faring aliens in the book that threaten Earth, or because Skippy the A.I. does something utterly irresponsible for a very nearly God-Level entity.
Step 2: Joseph Bishop must clean up after the aliens and/or Skippy. He must do this while frequently being heckled by his A.I. pal, Skippy in a manner that has long-since grown tiresome and repetitive by the time the third book ends.
Step 3: Joseph Bishop fails to clean up properly, and resorts to either going to work out, going to eat, or going to sleep. Doing one of these three activities results in his miraculously coming up with the solution.
Step 4: Before Joseph Bishop can solve Problem A, he must also solve Problems B, C, D, and E that have mysteriously cropped up in the least-convenient way possible. Alans has the gaul to joke about this several times in the sixth book.
Step 5: The book ends without nearly enough emotional payoff, and immediately identifies the next book's Problem in the last few paragraphs.
Step 6: Next Book.
This formulaic approach to writing might have served Alans in better stead if he was actually a good WRITER, but he's not. He has an entertaining idea, and that idea carries you easily through three books, but Alans' utter lack of ability to properly author a book, develop a plot, or grow his characters in a timely fashion begins to betray him by the time the fourth book ends.
Book five manages to ratchet up the stakes, albeit in an extremely predictable fashion, but Alans fails to deliver the proper level of payoff at the end of a very trying plot.
Book six is where things start to fall apart in a bad way by way of trying to re-introduce a second cast of characters into an already flagging story arc. Book six's big Problem is that new cast of characters being in trouble, and it establishes this through a flashback that takes up nearly a third of the book's total length. By the time the story comes back around to Bishop and the characters you've spent the last FIVE BOOKS following, you're ready for them get on with it. That's when you realize that you were actually only done with Step 2. I skipped through a lot of pointless and repetitive exposition and no-longer-witty banter between Skippy and Bishop in order to get through this book.
Alans' seventh book in the series was released only a few months ago. I'll probably read it as a 'last chance' for the series, but I'm afraid that I'm no longer holding out a lot of hope. That's a shame. The author has invented a great cast of characters and a very interesting world for them to exist in. He's just completely incapable of getting that idea down on paper in a fashion that makes you want to keep listening to him over the long haul.
HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!
Alright, Red. You asked what was bothering me, so here it is:
- I'm officially over Skippy. He was great for the first three books. He started getting old in book four, and then he fucks up in an utterly predictable fashion and book five is nothing but a too-long drawn out quest to try and fix him. The fix itself isn't gratifying in any capacity, and his growth as a main character is close to non-existent. He spends far too much time being an asshole and far too little time being Bishop's friend.
- There's just not enough 'victory' in books four through six. It's just plodding from one bad situation to another one while watching Skippy make poor choices and listening to him behave poorly. Never catching a break gets old.
- I am officially ready for the overarching plot in the books to advance and for the other shoe to drop. We know that 'Bad Things'(tm) were done by someone with Elder technology, and we know that Skippy used to be different. We've known this for five books now. I'm officially tired of waiting.
- I have a huge issue with the 'Paradise Crew'. You touch base with them again briefly in book three, but then you HAVE to read Book 3.5 'Trouble In Paradise' in order to get the background necessary to understand several references in the later books. That's sloppy writing, especially when you're going to stop an already flagging plot to loop that second cast of characters back in and slow things down even MORE. That's bad on its own, but the author hasn't taken nearly enough time with the Paradise Crew to make you want to invest in them, yet he's making them a big part of the sixth book.
Yeah.
A very wise man, possibly the wisest man I've ever known, gave me one of the greatest pieces of advice that I've ever received in all my years:
All things in moderation.
That can be said in a bunch of different ways, but I've found that it applies to pretty much anything that you're considering, be it food, drink, entertainment, hobby, work, friendship, or love.
Alas, I'm not entirely sure that anyone ever murmured these words to Craig Alans. That's a shame, because he had a remarkably recipe for entertainment, one that far outshone his very apparent lack of compositional talent, and didn't know when to walk away from what he was doing.
I greatly enjoyed books one through three of Alan's Expeditionary Force books -- you can read my review here. I drilled the first book in two days. I drilled the second book two days after that, and the third book another two days after. I was greatly enjoying the escapades of the book's main character, Colonel Joe Bishop, his irreverent A.I. friend Skippy, and Merry Bands Of Pirates.
Then I got to book four, and things started to slow down. A lot. Book four took me four days to get through. Book five took me four days. Book six would have taken me another four days, were it not for the fact that I'd started skipping through huge chunks of it.
The "Why" behind these delays and skippages -- no pun intended -- falls down to one very real problem that Alans' writing suffers from. He only knows how to write one story, and he spends six books writing the same story over and over again. Yes, there are small changes between each book, and it's clear that Alans' world is RIPE for storytelling and character development. Unfortunately, most of the great things about Alans' world are hopelessly overshadowed by his almost manic recycling of content. His recipe for the books is predictable in the extreme:
Step 1: Problem A is uncovered, either due to the other races of space-faring aliens in the book that threaten Earth, or because Skippy the A.I. does something utterly irresponsible for a very nearly God-Level entity.
Step 2: Joseph Bishop must clean up after the aliens and/or Skippy. He must do this while frequently being heckled by his A.I. pal, Skippy in a manner that has long-since grown tiresome and repetitive by the time the third book ends.
Step 3: Joseph Bishop fails to clean up properly, and resorts to either going to work out, going to eat, or going to sleep. Doing one of these three activities results in his miraculously coming up with the solution.
Step 4: Before Joseph Bishop can solve Problem A, he must also solve Problems B, C, D, and E that have mysteriously cropped up in the least-convenient way possible. Alans has the gaul to joke about this several times in the sixth book.
Step 5: The book ends without nearly enough emotional payoff, and immediately identifies the next book's Problem in the last few paragraphs.
Step 6: Next Book.
This formulaic approach to writing might have served Alans in better stead if he was actually a good WRITER, but he's not. He has an entertaining idea, and that idea carries you easily through three books, but Alans' utter lack of ability to properly author a book, develop a plot, or grow his characters in a timely fashion begins to betray him by the time the fourth book ends.
Book five manages to ratchet up the stakes, albeit in an extremely predictable fashion, but Alans fails to deliver the proper level of payoff at the end of a very trying plot.
Book six is where things start to fall apart in a bad way by way of trying to re-introduce a second cast of characters into an already flagging story arc. Book six's big Problem is that new cast of characters being in trouble, and it establishes this through a flashback that takes up nearly a third of the book's total length. By the time the story comes back around to Bishop and the characters you've spent the last FIVE BOOKS following, you're ready for them get on with it. That's when you realize that you were actually only done with Step 2. I skipped through a lot of pointless and repetitive exposition and no-longer-witty banter between Skippy and Bishop in order to get through this book.
Alans' seventh book in the series was released only a few months ago. I'll probably read it as a 'last chance' for the series, but I'm afraid that I'm no longer holding out a lot of hope. That's a shame. The author has invented a great cast of characters and a very interesting world for them to exist in. He's just completely incapable of getting that idea down on paper in a fashion that makes you want to keep listening to him over the long haul.
HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!
Alright, Red. You asked what was bothering me, so here it is:
- I'm officially over Skippy. He was great for the first three books. He started getting old in book four, and then he fucks up in an utterly predictable fashion and book five is nothing but a too-long drawn out quest to try and fix him. The fix itself isn't gratifying in any capacity, and his growth as a main character is close to non-existent. He spends far too much time being an asshole and far too little time being Bishop's friend.
- There's just not enough 'victory' in books four through six. It's just plodding from one bad situation to another one while watching Skippy make poor choices and listening to him behave poorly. Never catching a break gets old.
- I am officially ready for the overarching plot in the books to advance and for the other shoe to drop. We know that 'Bad Things'(tm) were done by someone with Elder technology, and we know that Skippy used to be different. We've known this for five books now. I'm officially tired of waiting.
- I have a huge issue with the 'Paradise Crew'. You touch base with them again briefly in book three, but then you HAVE to read Book 3.5 'Trouble In Paradise' in order to get the background necessary to understand several references in the later books. That's sloppy writing, especially when you're going to stop an already flagging plot to loop that second cast of characters back in and slow things down even MORE. That's bad on its own, but the author hasn't taken nearly enough time with the Paradise Crew to make you want to invest in them, yet he's making them a big part of the sixth book.
Yeah.
Comments
Post a Comment