Last Ride Release Date: Everything We Know So Far

Last Ride, the 20th Expeditionary Force novel by Craig Alanson, comes out on 8 December 2026. Podium Audio's listing says it concludes the Expeditionary Force saga and is narrated, as always, by R.C. Bray (source). Every listing so far agrees on that date, so there's no sign of it moving.

When does Expeditionary Force book 20 come out?

The release date for Last Ride is 8 December 2026. That's only a few weeks away now, which is a pleasant change for anyone used to counting the gap between books in months.

Podium Audio's own title page gives that date and lists the running time as "Coming Soon" (source). Amazon's Audible listings in Australia and the UK both show the book on pre-order for the same day (sources). FantasticFiction and Rising Shadow also give the same date (sources).

Has the release date moved?

There's no sign that it has. Podium, Amazon in Australia and the UK, FantasticFiction and Rising Shadow all point to 8 December 2026, and none of them shows an earlier date that was later changed (sources).

The listings found so far are for the audiobook edition (source). That fits the series' long run with Podium and R.C. Bray, who Podium says narrates the book "as always" (source). I can't confirm details for other formats from what's been published, so I'll leave those out rather than guess.

Is book 20 the last Expeditionary Force book?

Yes, according to the publisher. Podium's description says the book concludes the Expeditionary Force saga in book 20 (source). Rising Shadow lists it as number 20 of 20 in the series (source).

The title is about as unsubtle as it gets for a finale. After nineteen books of the Pirates being promised a quiet mission and getting the opposite, a book called Last Ride reads less like a hint and more like a warning.

What is Expeditionary Force book 20 about?

A quick warning first: the blurb for Last Ride gives away how Ground State (Unabridged) ends. If you haven't finished book 19, skip down to the recap of books 1 to 10.

The official description opens with the Pirates having destroyed the enemy and cut off its access to the Milky Way (source). Joe, Skippy and the Merry Band of Pirates have pulled off "yet another impossible mission" (source). They should be celebrating.

They aren't. The dying enemy had one final act of spite, and now an unstoppable force is consuming the galaxy (source). Coalitions are collapsing and chaos is spreading, including on Earth (source).

While everyone else deals with the increasingly violent chaos, Joe, Skippy and the Pirates have to take on the actual enemy, which the blurb names as the laws of physics. Even Skippy can't argue with those, which, given how much of the series he has spent arguing with everybody else, must be a fresh kind of insult. The description ends with the fate of the galaxy coming down to "one last solution" (source).

That's everything the publisher has shared about the plot. I'm not going to fill in the gaps with guesses about who survives or what the solution is.

What has been said about the book so far?

The clearest statements come from the publisher and the retail listings rather than from interviews. Here's what's on record:

• Narrator: R.C. Bray, who Podium says narrates "as always" (source).
• Publisher: Podium Audio, as shown on Amazon's Audible listing (source).
• Length: Amazon Australia gives a listening length of 21 hours 40 minutes (source).
• Status: it already carries a "#1 Best Seller in Military Science Fiction" tag on Amazon in the US, before release (source).
• Series position: book 20, and the end of the saga (source).

That running time means a finale of nearly a full day of listening, which seems about right for a crew that has never once handled a crisis quietly.

How anticipated is it?

On our calendar, Last Ride is number 26 of the 87 upcoming books with a confirmed release date, ranked by how many readers are waiting for it on Hardcover. That puts it ahead of 67% of them, with about three times the readers of the typical upcoming book.

That's a strong showing for book 20 of a series. Long series usually lose readers as they go, and Expeditionary Force does too: on Hardcover, the books' readership ranks line up exactly with their order, from Columbus Day as the most read down to Ground State (Unabridged) as the least. A 20th book still sitting in the top third of the calendar suggests the readers who stuck around are very keen to see how it ends.

Expeditionary Force recap: books 1 to 10

This part sticks to each book's premise, so it's safe if you're new or need a refresher. If you want the complete list with dates in one place, the full Expeditionary Force reading order is on our series page.

• Columbus Day: The Ruhar attack Earth on Columbus Day, then Kristang starships arrive to hammer them, and humanity thinks it has been saved. The UN Expeditionary Force hitches a ride with its new allies, and Joe Bishop's opening line warns that they were fighting on the wrong side of a war they couldn't win.
• SpecOps: Colonel Joe Bishop takes the captured alien starship Flying Dutchman back out, along with almost 70 special operations troops, pilots and scientists he didn't ask for.
• Paradise: The rest of the Expeditionary Force is stranded on the planet nicknamed Paradise, and the UN wants the Dutchman to find out what has happened to them.
• Black Ops: A simple mission to check whether the Thuranin are sending another ship to Earth gets sidetracked into securing a future for the troops on Paradise.
• Zero Hour: Having accidentally sparked an alien civil war, the Pirates are stuck thousands of light years from home on a ship that's falling apart, with Skippy in serious trouble.
• Mavericks: The humans on Paradise get a training mission with a ship full of teenage alien cadets, and it goes horribly wrong.
• Renegades: The battered Dutchman heads home for a refit and the crew hopes for a break, which you can probably guess they don't get.
• Armageddon: After trouble at home, the Pirates are sent out on another "simple recon mission". By book 8, that phrase works less like a description and more like a threat.
• Valkyrie: The Pirates accept that Earth may be doomed and try to save a few thousand people, or hit the enemy hard enough to make them regret meeting humans.
• Critical Mass: Hostile aliens notice something odd about the galaxy's wormholes, and their digging could lead them to a shortcut to Earth.

Spoiler recap: books 11 to 19

These descriptions come from each book's own blurb, but later blurbs reveal what happened in earlier books. If you're partway through the series, stop at the book you're on.

• Brushfire: Peacetime turns out to be a rough adjustment, especially when some aliens don't accept that the shooting is over.
• Breakaway: The Pirates offer the bad guys a ceasefire and are turned down, while the new UN Navy works with the Alien Legion to find humanity some allies.
• Fallout: Lying about having a super weapon backfires, because the enemy might either call the bluff or decide it has nothing to lose.
• Match Game: For the first time, Skippy faces an opponent with as much power as he has, and he may need help from the monkeys.
• Failure Mode: A mission ends in disaster with no plan B, and Skippy learns he was designed not to win this fight.
• Aftermath: An unexpected and complete victory should mean a rest for the Pirates, until something really bad happens.
• Task Force Hammer: The enemy turns out to be much worse than anyone thought, and the Pirates can't fight it alone.
• Gateway: Operation Olympic turns from a triumph into the worst failure the Pirates have ever had, and they need a miracle without Skippy.
• Ground State (Unabridged): Two of the enemy are loose in the galaxy with starships more powerful than Valkyrie, so the Pirates fall back on wacky ideas from a monkey's brain.

That leads straight into the setup for Last Ride, where the enemy is beaten but has left something far worse behind.

Do I need to read the earlier books first?

Yes. Last Ride is the final book of a 20-book story, and its blurb picks up directly from the end of Ground State (Unabridged). The stakes, the crew and Skippy's relationship with the "monkeys" all build across the series, so starting at the finale would mean missing most of what gives it weight.

The place to start is Columbus Day. It's the most-read book in the series on Hardcover with 1,070 readers, and while that sounds modest, Hardcover is much smaller than Goodreads or StoryGraph, so it's a big number for that site. The reading order is straightforward because the books are numbered, and our series page lays it all out.

If you're already caught up, this is a good moment for a reread or relisten of the last few books, particularly books 17 to 19, which lead most directly into the finale.

How to know the moment there's news

The date is set, so the main things left to watch for are the release itself and any final details such as other formats. Shelving Last Ride on Goodreads or StoryGraph keeps it in view, though neither will reliably tell you when something changes.

AuthorPing tells you when a series or author you follow has a new book coming out and shows a countdown to every release, including this one. It's free on iPhone and Android, which is handy for a series finale you'd rather not discover a month late.