Get ready for a long, long ride with this book in this long series. There’s going to be a lot of, in my opinion, useless dialogue mostly between Skippy and Joe Bishop, but you should be used to that. Now, having said that, you get to the opening chapter to find out that Skippy, the super intelligent Elder AI in a beer can, has gone silent. That should be a relief for Joe Bishop and the crew of the *Flying Dutchman* starship, but it’s really not.
Without Skippy telling them what to do and running the ship, they are most adrift in deep space. The last time this happened, Skippy was gone/silent for about 17 hours. That amount of time has come and gone with no sign of Skippy. Fortunately, Skippy had made arrangements to make the ship somewhat self sustaining, but not everything was working as it should. Some of the cleaning bots aren’t doing their jobs and it’s creating problems for the crew.
Also, the scientific team has been attempting to figure out how to get the jump drive working so they can possibly go to an inhabitable planet. If worse comes to worse and Skippy never comes back, then they could at least go down to the planet and begin living a very basic life, but not having to worry about freezing to death in space.
Then Skippy comes back, but in a slightly subdued manner. He’s still Skippy, a**hole, smart mouthed, arrogant, AI that he was, but his powers have been extremely curtailed. It seems he’s fighting against a worm that invaded his beer can when Skippy went exploring. Now that worm is set on killing Skippy. Skippy has managed to setup a firewall against the worm but it’s taking a lot of his processing cycles and power to keep the worm out. So, now he’s only able to marginally help the humans aboard the *Flying Dutchman*.
Skippy starts looking at fixing the ship after his absence and is appalled at what the humans have done to it. Still, he manages to get it working and then tells Joe that he needs something to fight against the worm. That something is an Elder *conduit*, something only Skippy knows anything about. He tells Joe that he believes there are two possible locations they can reach where a conduit might be found.
So off they go looking for these conduits. They have to go to a planet occupied by an alien species called the Wurgalan. This is not highly advanced species but they have space flight so that puts them on a scale above humanity. Still, Skippy figures they can get into the place they need to go and get back out quickly without being seen. And that is a central part of all their missions. They cannot let anyone know that humans are flying around in a stolen Thuranin starship. To do so could result in the destruction of Earth and all humanity.
Needless to say, most of the plans they make are not going to go well. Joe Bishop has an uncanny way of coming up with solutions to problems even Skippy can’t solve. But the one problem Joe can’t deal with is that Skippy is losing power and he will die when that power runs out because the worm will get him. That time is called Zero Hour, thus the title of this book.
As you have to realize by now, Skippy and Joe have a very weird relationship. Skippy is so arrogant that he continually boasts about his intelligence although now he’s nothing more than Skippy the Meh instead of Skippy the Magnificent. But that doesn’t stop him and Joe from having useless conversations about nothing pertaining to the story for long periods in almost every chapter. I found myself wanting them to just move on with the story. Numerous problems come up that could have been solved quickly using common sense, but Skippy has none and Joe has to continually listen to Skippy berating him that it’s a wonder he can think of anything!
That doesn’t mean the books are totally bad. They are interesting and if you’ve gotten this far, you’ll want to continue reading the rest of the series. I know I will continuing with book 6, “Mavericks”, not available on Amazon.
==[Note 1 (12/23/2025): I’m no longer associated with Amazon and will no longer provide any links to books from that website. You can usually find books that you like at your usual source.]==
==[Note 2: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be posted on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. ]==