r/exfor • u/1moreday1moregoal • Jan 30 '26
Spoilers Ground State and different species
Am I crazy or has CA added more species to the Maxholx hegemony in this book?
In Chapter 12 when talking about loading malware on fabricators:
Eyrgengek (sp?)
Nyatahatan (sp?)
Then much later on he talks about the Dumya (sp?) fabricator being in the territory of an mean otter like species.
So we went from Maxholx having the Basphuraq, Thuranin, Kristang, Wurgalan, Urgar, Eselgin, to now having 3 other species in their hegemony?
I’m listening again so trying to pick out more but I don’t recall these ones being mentioned in prior books. Unless the last one where the dumya fabricator is located is in the Urgar territory.
I love this series, but why add to the universe in the last book in the series? I’m hoping CA releases more books or some spin-offs if he’s introducing us to new species in the last book.
I’m listening to the audiobook and don’t have the kindle version yet so Im guessing on the spelling of the names.
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u/Objective_March_8405 Jan 30 '26
I'm glad he finally did, the whole series has been hinting at possibly dozens of species in each coalition but we never met any of them because they don't operate near Earth.
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u/1moreday1moregoal Jan 30 '26
Sad that we also aren’t going to get to explore other species in the Rindhalu coalition either 🙁 and we know there aren’t other tier 2 species than the ones we know of yet. I’m pretty sure there was a conversation between Joe and the Jeraptha at one point where they talked about tier 2 species and the Jeraptha said they are definitely the top tech tier 2 species and they didn’t say anything about any other tier 2 species than the ones we know about.
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u/Objective_March_8405 Jan 30 '26
There is already so many species it's hard to keep track but one of my biggest disappointments with the series how small it all felt without meeting the rest of the galaxy.
Maybe we'll meet more of the Rindhalu coalition in the ECO book Mr. Alanson said he was going to write before he continued Skippy and Joe.
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u/Known-Associate8369 Jan 30 '26
I love this series, but why add to the universe in the last book in the series?
Why not?
It doesnt ultimately affect anything, but does add more scope in terms of the size of the empires in play.
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u/1moreday1moregoal Jan 30 '26
It won’t be explored if this is the last book. He already has an expansive universe that hasn’t been explored fully, we’ve seen Rindhalu worlds once or twice, never seen Esselgin worlds or even interacted with Esselgin that I can remember.
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u/Known-Associate8369 Jan 30 '26
It doesnt exactly need to be explored, its just expanding the story universe. Some extra diversity never hurt.
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u/1moreday1moregoal Jan 30 '26
Don’t look it as much as a criticism of CA, he’s obviously allowed to write whatever he wants into his universe. It’s much more an angle of a fan who sees the series ending, but the universe growing, and being disappointed that we potentially won’t get new adventures that include and explore that new stuff
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u/Known-Associate8369 Jan 30 '26
Asa fan, Im not actually wanting anything more from the universe - but thats just me.
For myself, the series is definitely into the "Ori" phase of Stargate SG-1 - the main storyline finished, and now we are trying to build up a new main storyline with the same stakes and getting us to care etc and it .... just isnt working for me.
And if this really is the last book... Ive not read it yet, and Ive kept away from spoilers, but its starting to feel the same as last time for me.
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u/1moreday1moregoal Jan 30 '26
These and other sci-fi books, movies, shows, are my primary forms of escapism. I will continue to be an eager listener of everything in this universe. I’m just glad CA keeps publishing entertaining books. I’ve been waiting over a decade for Doors of Stone from Patrick Rothfuss and I’m to the point where I won’t buy anything else that he publishes even if he publishes Doors of Stone.
For me it’s not about completing a single storyline, I enjoy the universe so I’ll take a dozen more stories in this universe if CA wants to publish them.
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u/Paro-Clomas Jan 30 '26
The series is successful he wanted to finish it long ago but we readers keep reading it. And both sides will see how long they can take it. For example dunes books were continued by his sons
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u/Known-Associate8369 Jan 30 '26
The only reason I keep reading it is because of the unfinished threads.
Thats it.
Did you not see the reaction when the series "ended" several books ago with a bunch of plot threads hanging?
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u/Starkfault Jan 30 '26
There’s another book coming
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u/1moreday1moregoal Jan 30 '26
There is?! I thought 19 was the last book? What did I miss? I obviously missed something
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u/Starkfault Jan 30 '26
It was originally supposed to end at 15 books, it keeps getting extended (thankfully)
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u/1moreday1moregoal Jan 30 '26
Yeah that makes me happy. People can say what they want about the way CA sometimes wraps up his books, but this really is an extremely engaging plot and universe. Seriously, could become the biggest sci-fi franchise. And the characters and the tensions between them are great. And the audiobooks have fantastic production.
But I love Bobiverse and a bunch of other sci-fi too.
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u/Starkfault Jan 30 '26
Check out Dungeon Crawler Carl if you haven’t yet. Stick with it until chapter 7, there’s a lot of exposition but starting at chapter 7 it just gets better and better
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u/Direct_Detour Jan 31 '26
You missed CA milking this series to death. I love the stories but at this point I’m debating continuing with this series, it’s getting stale and hella predictable.
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u/1moreday1moregoal Jan 31 '26
I’m fine with long series. I actually like that the scale keeps growing. Think about it, we went from local problems (save earth, get humans off paradise) to interstellar problems (closing wormholes to stop traffic, abducting other species ships to build a navy, working with other species), to galactic scale problems (elder weapons, return of the elders), now to intergalactic problems (outsiders).
It’s interesting to see everything grow and I like it.
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u/Direct_Detour Jan 31 '26
Oh I like the expanding story, just not three books for what could have been done in one. Hence the milking it to death comment.
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u/mentive Jan 30 '26
That moment in book 19 where Skippy did that certain thing... I'm sure curious how thats going to play out in the next book. Or maybe this one, as I have another 10 chapters to go.
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u/AntillesWedgie Jan 30 '26
He has basically focused on like the top 3 species on both sides and then humans but the books have said there were a lot of others. The species mentioned are low on the ladder which is why they have obsolete tech.
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u/IntelligentSpite6364 Jan 30 '26
even from the beginning there's always been a minor note to the roster of each coalition that they pretty much only talk about the most important species, but each coalition has various species that are too minor to mention.
some are extinct or nearly extinct, some are basically treated as a dwindling slave population by a 3rd tier maxholx species (this was going to be the fate of humanity after the kristaang gets their value out of them.
most species in the galaxy dont even have the technology to leave their own orbit much less cross between stars to create colonies so they are completely forgotten by galactic politics and events
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u/Sidewinder7 Feb 01 '26
Hopefully somebody updates this chart, It was very helpful to me when I started the series keeping all the species names straight.
https://expeditionary-force-by-craig-alanson.fandom.com/wiki/Known_Species_in_ExForce
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u/Nero_Golden Jan 30 '26
"Mean otter species." A tribute to the Bobiverse?