I also liked Out of Shadows despite Ripley's involvement which I was sure would kill it. At times it comes off as silly, but it still was ok "what if" scenario (that had already been done before in the old DH comics).
I'm about sixty pages into Charybdis, and I will say that so far I am enjoying this book much better than Cold Forge. Better world building, and likeable characters.
Some of this is my own brains doing. I can watch movies about dickhead characters all day, but I hate reading about them.