The Expeditionary Force series by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole, wait, actually this is Craig Alanson’s series, a sprawling military sci-fi saga that follows hapless soldier Joe Bishop and an unexpectedly sarcastic AI named Skippy as they blunder and genius their way through an alien-threatened galaxy. Audiobooks are the perfect format here because R.C. Bray’s narration has become inseparable from the series itself, his deadpan delivery turning Skippy’s arrogance into something genuinely hilarious.

If you’ve ever wished space opera had more personality and less self-seriousness, this is your series. Listeners who stuck with it from the first book, Columbus Day, released in 2015, tend to become obsessive fans fast. The humor lands harder when you hear it, and the action sequences hit with real momentum. Bray and Alanson together created something that reads well but sounds even better.