My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Goodreads rating: 4.26 with 14,231 ratings (as of 8/10/2020)

We were fighting on the wrong side, of a war we couldn’t win. And that was the good news.

The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the Native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon come ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There go the good old days, when humans only got killed by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits.
When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved. The UN Expeditionary Force hitched a ride on Kristang ships to fight the Ruhar, wherever our new allies thought we could be useful. So, I went from fighting with the US Army in Nigeria, to fighting in space. It was lies, all of it. We shouldn’t even be fighting the Ruhar, they aren’t our enemy, our allies are.

I’d better start at the beginning…. …Synopsis from Goodreads

200 Word Review

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review. The opinions are entirely my own, and any quotes are taken from the ARC and may be different in the final published copy.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, The Martian by Andy Weir, and the movie Independence Day all have one important aspect in common – humor. Without the levity, all three would be boring and forgotten works left in a drawer somewhere. Reading the humorous description of the first book in Craig Alanson’s Expeditionary Force series, Columbus Day, I knew I had to read it and wondered why I had not read it before now.

The Ruhar attacks the world on, you guessed it, Columbus Day. We thought we were saved when the Kristang flew in and attacked the Ruhar. We else were we to do but pick the side of the guys who saved us. As we quickly learn, we made the wrong move.

Having the narrator of The Maritan, R.C. Bray, narrate Columbus Day was a stroke of genius. He again proves he can skillfully deliver snarky, “American” humor while making the end of the world as we know no laughing matter.

To date, there are ten books in the series, but Alanson ended it at a point in the story Columbus Day could work as a stand-alone novel, although readers would be remiss in not continuing,

This review was published on Philomathinphila.com, Smashbomb, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon on 8/10/20. When available, the review will be published on Scribd.com, Barnes and Noble, and, using Overdrive, will be rated in 9 libraries.

Genre: SciFi, SciFi & Fantasy
Run time: 16 Hours, 23 Minutes
ISBN: 9781772302424
Publisher: Podium Audio
Publication Date: December 13, 2016

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