Pros
- Another new adventure starring the one and only Jon Ryan and his best AI friend
- Story has different perspectives, making the protagonist seem less lonely
Cons
- After facing so many powerful enemies, especially the gods from the other universe, all other enemies seem somehow less threatening
Ryan’s Gambit Review
Ryan’s Gambit by Craig Robertson starts yet another exciting adventure starring the one and only Jon Ryan whose immortality, humor, and antics readers have come to love and expect. It wouldn’t be a Jon Ryan adventure without some kind of back and forth between one of his companions, and in this case, Ryan returns with his longtime grumpy and cantankerous friend, Al, the ship AI.
But this time, these two friends are joined by an even more annoying ship AI whose loneliness and desire to please his passengers make for some fun and exasperating conversations.
In this series, Jon Ryan, fresh off an adventure to restore Earth from nothingness and saving the galaxy from The Clan with time-erasing technology, yearns to fix the damage that he has caused to time. That is, Ryan wants to restore the timeline to his original universe even though everyone he has talked to discourages him from attempting to accomplish this seemingly impossible task.
Besides, it’s more likely he’ll further damage or worsen the timeline rather than fix it, but the risk of somehow making his timeline worse doesn’t distract Ryan from his ultimate goal: to correct the timeline and return to the original.
The problem is that no one quite knows how to do this: all of Ryan’s powerful tools have the ability to warp through time and travel vast distances in the blink of an eye, but none of them quite have the ability to move in and out of the parallel universes that make up the timeline.
This leads him to a shady weapons dealer who sells Ryan a universe-hopping times ship that, of course, doesn’t work as advertise, leaving Ryan stuck in a different universe and time. And on his attempt to return home, Ryan makes some powerful enemies who further obstruct his mission of returning home.
One nice change for the story is that this time, Ryan isn’t quite alone in the story. While Ryan is getting into trouble, Sachiko is fighting her own political battle to maintain control of the most powerful ship in the universe: Aramthella. The changes in perspective, while sometimes bothersome, do add a sense of community and friendship—Ryan is no longer fighting to save the universe alone.
Ryan’s Gambit by Craig Robertson is another fun and humorous adventure with the lovable, immortal android Jon Ryan. While the dangers he faces this time around may seem less threatening than the powerful, god-like foes he faced in previous stories, those dangers in no way make the story less enjoyable.
Read reviews of other works by Craig Robertson below.
