The Setting

Arcane Galaxy is a space western LitRPG — Firefly with stat sheets, The Expanse with a System, and a crew that bickers more than they should given how often they’re shooting their way out of something. Rivers is an ex-SAS operator who arrived in this galaxy without the System everyone else grew up inside. He compensates by breaking things faster than the System can patch them.

The series is built around character chemistry. The crew’s competences are different enough to bicker and overlapping enough to need each other. The System is a fourth character — a force the crew has to manage, manipulate, or quietly subvert. Co-written with Troy Osgood, published in audio by Aethon Books with narration by Daniel Wisniewski.

Tone

Banter-heavy, gun-heavy, faster than it has any right to be. The kind of crew-on-a-ship LitRPG where the ship is the second-most-important character.

Comparable Reads

Firefly; The Expanse; Cowboy Bebop; any space western where the crew is more dangerous than the cargo.