In a society filled with perfect people what do you do with those born with blemishes and birth defects? Well, why not send them on dangerous missions to explore unknown worlds? Since they are not "perfect" they have become expendable -- Expendable Crew Members. And then how do you get rid of troublemakers and politically inconvenient people when an omniscient, omnipresent League of Peoples disallows "doing away with" someone? How about if you banish them to a planet that no one can escape from? There you have the whole Expendable story in a nutshell.

This book was interesting and had a good story. The sci-fi world that Gardner put together is compelling. The only drawback to this book is the language. Tons of it. And I'm not talking about English here. The tone of the entire book is so light-hearted and comic yet in a book of 335 pages there were probably at least 500 obscenities and profanities. Yeah, I know, that's just the way people talk in the real world. That's fine. It's just that after a while it grates on me. If books came with an "explicit lyrics" label this one would have been covered with stickers.

I liked the story and I liked the characters. Even the crude and adolescent imagery was bearable. But simply because of the over-the-top language I'm not planning to read any more in the series.

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