James S. A. CoreyReviews

Continuing adventures in the asteroid belt, Mars and Earth threatening war, Holden, Naomi, Alex and Amos bucanneering in the Rocinante

The first book in "The Expanse" series, covering, in space, the destruction of the Scopuli, Holden's broadcast blaming the martians, escape from the Martian ship in the gunship, and docking at Tycho Station. At Ceres station, Miller enforces the rules and is asked to search for Julie Mao, who was held on the Scopuli and infected with the protomolecule. The story goes on to the infestation of the Eros asteroid, the transformation of it to a ship heading to earth, then the drama of Miller convincing Julie Mao's protomolecule body to aim Eros at Venus instead.

Confusing

And so we reach the final volume of The Expanse. Winston Duarte has undergone a transformation, and is now seeking to fight off the entities that destroyed the gate-builders - but at a terrible cost to humanity. The options are to either be destroyed, or subsumed into a hive-mind of Duarte's making, the perfection of the order imposed by the Laconian Empire across all the human-settled worlds - now back-footed following the events of the previous book, Tiamat's Wrath, but still possessing powerful assets. Against this is pitched the crew of the Rocinante and Dr. Elvi Okoye, who following her experience of the protomolecule on Ilus (as depicted in book four, Cibola Burn), has been put in charge of research for the Empire. But as always with the Laconian Empire, failure is not an option, no matter how high your rank.

The fates of all the characters we have met so far, including Teresa Duarte and a Laconian Marine officer we meet for the first time in this book, are wrapped up, some more neatly than others. By the end, we have said goodbye to everyone, some more finally than others. It is hard to see how this could have ended in any other way.

I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the tv series, in particular the fact that the series ended with the dramatisation of book six, Babylon's Ashes. Many people are holding out hope that the final three novels might be dramatised at some point; and given that there are thirty years between books six and seven, this would not be impossible, if the same cast could be re-assembled some years down the line. The main issue would be accommodating Cas Anvar's absence, as his character - Alex Kamal - was written out of the show in season 5. But as Alex's son and his new family play a fairly direct role in this book, some plot gymnastics would be necessary. It's also interesting to see how some of the short stories - collected in the volume Memory's Legion - are shown in the tv show, to the extent that anyone coming to this book without having either seen the show or read the collected stories will find two quite important characters suddenly appearing and playing a central role apparently out of nowhere. So - on to the short stories!

Totally a shame isn't in book 2.

Humanity has finally gone through a gate and settled on the first world in another solar system, but the settlers are being classed as illegal squatters by the corporation that believes the planet to be legally there's.   So when the corporation ship turns up with the intention of taking everything away from the settlers, the settlers have a surprise waiting for them and all hell breaks loose.

Avasaralla thinks it'll be a great idea to send Holden to mediate and sort things out, because she thinks Holden will make such a disaster of it that it'll scare everyone back in Sol system away from leaving for other new worlds.

And on top of all this, or maybe because of all this, the planet is waking up from its billion year slumber.

While that all sounds really good, which it is, the telling of this story just drags on and on and on and on.   This book would have been way, way better if it had lost a few hundred pages.   And on top of all that, it's a really depressing story from beginning to end, showing up Homo sapiens at their very worse.

It was so tedious i kept on having to take breaks and read three whole books just to break this up into manageable chunks of depressive dragging on.

Let's hope the next one, Nemesis Games, is better, eh?

(5 Stars)

I can't express how much I really love this series. I watched the televised series and started reading the books after, and both are excellent! This second full book is a great follow-up to Leviathan Wakes. It grows the characters and even introduces some new ones. The characters have depth, personality, and are consistent. The descriptions are vivid, imaginative, and plausible.

If you like space opera, hard science fiction, or even space-based action/adventure you should love this book. Don't let the number of pages scare you, and don't be overwhelmed by the number of books out there. This series is paced perfectly, so there are no boring "filler" parts, and the events are memorable and unique enough that you don't get confused about overlapping sequences or disconnected backstories. It is all handled perfectly.

I bought this science fiction novel, and its sequels, on the basis of having watched the first season of the television series The Expanse, which covers about half of the action of this book.

It’s always interesting to consider the differences between a novel and a movie or television series based on that novel. A novel, of course, has the leisure to deal in much more detail, and to fill in elements of back-story which even a lengthy television series can’t fit in. On the other hand, of course, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, and a visualisation can give us new insights.

I did find it worthwhile to read the novel, however, as it clarified a good deal which I had found very obscure in the television series. (Partly my difficulty with understanding the television version is down to the fact that the version I watched came without any subtitles, on which I have grown to depend because of poor hearing).

This is solid ‘hard’ science fiction, dealing with the expansion of humanity into the solar system and the colonisation of Mars and the Asteroid Belt (and a few of the outer moons of Jupiter and Saturn). A good deal of the interest is in the depiction of the political tensions between Earth, Mars, and the Belt (whose ‘capital’ is the dwarf planet Ceres).

It begins as a mystery story, complete with an updated gumshoe-detective in the form of the Ceres-based Detective Miller, who is tasked with locating Julie Mao, the missing daughter of a wealthy family. Tied in with this is a parallel story following the remaining crew of the Canterbury, an ice-hauler ship which is destroyed in an ambush by mysterious forces after investigating an emergency beacon on an abandoned spaceship—as it eventually turns out, the ship on which Julie Mao had been travelling.

All the various strands eventually come together to reveal a uniquely existential threat for humanity, several billion years in the making.

Space opera, perhaps, but very engaging. I’m looking forward to reading the sequels in the series to see where it all goes.

Really good space opera; similar to Iain M. Banks' stories but closer to our time frame and just inside the solar system. Characters were well-drawn, with a noir-ish detective on an asteroid and the remains of crew that's reminiscent of way-back-when futures.

The ending seems a bit rushed but mostly reasonable to me, but seems to end a little too upbeat for what's happened. Still, the author(s) have a good recipe with a lot of science fiction spiced with a murder mystery and a pinch of horror. I'm definitely moving on to Caliban's War after finishing this one.

I left my book at home when we went on vacation. We stopped at a bookstore and I picked this up on a whim. I hadn't watched The Expanse, but wanted to ... I figured maybe I'd read it first (despite being almost 600 pages).

I was hooked almost immediately. About 1/4 way into it I discovered this is #1 of 8 (with a 9th planned). Wow.

I love the universe Corey (pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) has built. It's a "not too distant" future in which mankind has been colonizing the solar system but hasn't ventured out any further. A mysterious ship, an act of war, a missing person, intrigue, action, suspense, memorable characters. A little bit of everything. I stayed up too late many nights just to get to a good stopping point. So glad I picked up this book.

I liked the first few volumes in the series

Another side story, this time concerning the prisoners that the Belters captured from the original Protogen project in Leviathon Wakes.

All the prisoners have been put into one large room and are continuously watched over from above by the Belters who guard them.   For them, after their crimes, there is no future, nothing at all, beyond the walls of this room.

And then, one day, or night, the man from Mars turns up and begins to offer hope, if only to one of them, but which one will it be?

A really good novella, that can be read as soon as the Belters have taken them prisoner, or anytime thereafter.

Next up in the series is Cibola Burn.

I just finished like five minutes ago, so no coherent thoughts yet, because I'm still crying, so I'll just say IT'S SO GOOD.

Really enjoyed the plot, characters, the Expanse! of the series½

Wow. A great bit of writing that puts Fred into context and adds a lot of insight into his role in the Belt.

A Horror take on the early days of Laconia settlement. It works, but not quite as well as other novellas in the Expanse world.

The best book (so far?) in this fantastic series.

Worthy and powerful finish to a classic series. I’m sad this tale is over, but I’m satisfied with how it ended.

3.5 stars out of five on reread/audiobook listen this time. This was a little bit caricature-ish. Caricatures of the freedom fighters, the big bad isn’t all that smart this time around unlike last book, some big plot holes. Totally totally still love the series, but this book holds up less well on reread that I had hoped.

Picking up where Persepolis Rising left off, we find the crew of the Rocinante scattered across different star systems and doing different stuff. Laconia is consolidating its position as the pre-eminent expression of humanity in the galaxy, but along with that goes a massive dollop of hubris - a scientific mission to survey many of the gate worlds is intended to find new weapons, whilst Dr. Cortázar has sold High Consul Duarte on the unquestionable benefits of life extension via protomolecule. What could possibly go wrong?

What indeed. Laconia's belief that the gate builders have the same motivations as humans and can be manipulated by displays of force in the same way as traditional human politics suggests blows up in their collective face, just at the same time as the Sol system resistance gets a lucky break. Things go downhill from there.

This instalment definitely kept me reading on into the small hours of the morning to see what happened next! There are some sad surprises and one revolving door, but overall the story is still on target. (Though I did raise an eyebrow where Chrisjen Avarsarala's grand-daughter commented on the old woman's likely reaction to her Laconian state funeral and then had to explain - for the benefit of some younger readers, I suspect - the significance of "you could power a planet by hooking a turbine to her right now"...)

I'm also increasingly finding that exploring the logic of Empire is causing the writers to slip some quite important realpolitik lessons into the text, which many people, especially those who would benefit the most from such lessons, will miss because this is "just" science fiction. Sigh.

Slows down a bit from the first two books, while keeping the twists coming at the end. Sets the stage for the leap into the unknown.½

I didn't find this book as good as the previous ones, which i put down to a character thing.

Too much christian waffle: i live in hope that by the time Hominids are travelling the whole solar system we'll have gotten over this all the organised religion thing and seen it for what it truly is.   I found it beyond tragic that people were still clinging to this twaddle.

And i also found Clarissa just tedious and annoying: like a lot of spoiled rich brats that i've known in my life.   I really don't like reading about them and having to endure their thinking.

Still, it has it's good parts, which do balance the few crap characters and religiosity out and offer some redemption (pun intended) for those expecting something better.

I've now dived straight into The Vital Abyss, which is much better and more like what i expect from this series.

Nine massive books, with some pretty big events covered from start to finish. Trying to finish this series satisfactorily was going to be challenge for any writer, but these guys pulled it off.

Somehow staying true to the themes of cooperation vs. greed that has driven the entire narrative, and although leaning deeper into the more speculative science compared to the rigorous 'hard sci fi' of it's beginnings, it none-the-less never lets up in it's narrative promise to make things difficult for it's characters.

A natural place for these stories and characters to end.

This book is a ride, and if the rest of the series follows suit, I can see why it’s been so popular.

I had been looking forward to this book and series for a while… and so I did my best not to find out anything about the story or setting beforehand.

I had a vague sense this would be gritty, realistic sci fi. And that there was a division between those that live on Earth and Mars and those that live beyond… but that’s it.

All that is there, but packed inside is a noir detective story, a horror story, a strange Star-Trek-Star-Wars Firefly mix, (without the whimsy) and a plot that never lets you settle into a status quo for it’s characters. And to never feel as though any one particular character is safe from danger.

That last point is probably the thing I was most impressed by. Things constantly change for all the characters and it keeps you very engaged. The ‘what is going to happen next’ drive is not unlike the Sun’s gravity well, it keeps tugging you throughout the whole story no matter what.

The multiple plots converge in satisfying ways that also don’t feel telegraphed, which is particularly difficult to execute. The characters interact naturally to their extreme situations which is also part of the appeal; you grow to care about these characters and so you’re invested in their reactions to the world and to each other.

The Miller (detective) story finds a way to mix idealism and justice into a depressing and beaten-down character, and while living inside the detective mold, things are just different enough, between the setting and the plot, that it avoids feeling like we’re just watching a detective trope play out.

The Holden (ship captain) story really does mix the scoundrel/working class hero vibe of Star Wars and Firefly and the idealism of Star Trek… which again needs to be commended as that idealism could have seemed naive. Instead it comes across as the only response that Holden is capable of in a world of grey choices… which is frankly inspiring.

I’ve been hankering for (and writing) some ‘hard’ sci-fi where I try to keep the science as authentic as possible. I’ll admit I was looking for that here, and though they make some solid gestures in that direction, it also doesn’t hold onto it too tight. At first I felt disappointed, but it’s not a failing of the book; it’s not trying to get the science right and failing. It’s pretty clear that their tone demands an element of realism, but only an element. What’s mixed in there is horror and space-opera as well, and those demands flex against pure scientific modes.

The only quibbles I have with the book are around rhythm and and it’s prose. A few times the writing will reach for a moment of pathos or drama in it’s description in ways that the rest of the story and writing can’t match, so they don’t land. And the rhythm of it’s plot, driving forward as it is, means that some of the major moments pass by a little too quickly, including the end. Considering how much time we’ve spent with these characters (it’s a long book), I would have appreciated at certain moments, including the end, a chance for both the characters and readers to catch their breath and take in everything that’s happened up to that point.

Three books in to a series based on near-ish sci-fi in our solar system, where major system-wide crises happen and things often get very bad before they somewhat resolve into something tenuously balanced, not necessarily better.

The series has done a great job so far of having an enormous scale to the events but a very human scale to the stories. Even though some of these characters have become celebrities within the narrative, things feel grounded and chaotic, which is probably the biggest ingredient that gives this series it's sense of realism.

One theme that does feel emergent is a struggle between passionate progressiveness and destructive, sociopathic, extractive capitalism. So many of the struggles involve characters trying to save lives from the behaviour or people who are essentially selfish.

Loving it so far! Without spoilers, the end of this series expands the scope of things, and perhaps pushes it further into speculative sci fi away from it's more 'hard sci fi' roots.

The only critique I have is that the macguffin element of the plot doesn't have the psychological impact that I would expect on the characters and societies in this world... but even that might be something that happened elsewhere in the story then in the moments depicted, so it's not that big a problem.