My husband and I bought the whole series years ago, and finally now are reading these mm pbs before our eyes get any worse. I was afraid that hundreds of SF novels later I would be disappointed in them, given that we bought the series based on reading one of the middle ones and loving it. I wasn't.

It's not perfect, and it's not for everyone. But it's really smart, and thoughtful, and thought-provoking. And engaging & suspenseful. There's not really quite enough Sense of Wonder, but the the What If there were a League of Peoples who grounded non-sentient beings on their own planet is a fascinating one. I'm def. looking forward to the rest of the series.

I like the tiny details. A person sleeps through normal alarms, so they have the noise set to change each day. "In the preceding week, I had awakened to the hum of a million bees, the drone of bagpipes, the love songs of Wales, the demolition of an office tower, the screams of earthquake victims, and the national anthem of some obscure Fringe world Nation.... It made for the damnedest dreams."

"'Shit,' muttered Chee. "I toldthe council we shouldn't let... officers take Pulp Literature as an elective."

The big ideas are fascinating too. But I don't want to spoil this for you by saying more. ( )

Pleasant writing style. I found the story to be a bit farfetched at times, but it did have physically flawed people as main characters, and good female representation. ( )

I don't know what I expected this to be, but I loved it. Expendable is, by turns, funny, snarky, intelligent, thrilling... everything you'd want from a ripping good space yarn. ( )

I really felt this book was a lot of fun, and was genuinely enjoying the experience...until the scene changes about halfway through the book. I kept slogging, thinking that possibly it'd pick back up, until I realized I was page flipping about eighty pages from the end. Blargh. Not worth continuing with if I'm going to be doing that. :/ ( )

Interesting piece of world building which promises to be an equally engaging series. Gardner's approach not only to FTL travel and exploration but to the social/political/military hierarchies it engenders is novel, to say the least, and he complements the story's biological stretches with enough droll humour to make it all seem plausible. ( )