Book Review: Leviathan Falls

An excellent finish.

This is the third book in the final trilogy of trilogies, the last book in the series.

At the beginning of this book Duarte remembers how to remember and is inspired. His protomolecule infused brain is certain that he now knows how humanity can defeat the protomolecule builder killers (PBK). Once he goes missing, Admiral Trejo authorizes Colonel Tanaka (whom we met in Persepolis Rising) to find him at all costs and by any means necessary. A task she takes to with reckless abandon.

Tanaka seemed like a reasonable person back in Persepolis Rising before she was relieved of duty for not being ruthless enough towards the inhabitants of Medina Station. But here, we learn how damaged she is and how ruthless she can be when trying to accomplish her mission.

Meanwhile, the Rocinante crew are busy with managing the underground and trying to find a safe place for Teresa to further her education and hide. And Dr. Elvi Okoye is desperately trying to figure out who the protomolecule builders were and how they perished before the PBK can figure out how to end humanity.

One theme running through the book is the strength of long term relationships. Elvi is running herself ragged and pushing herself, primarily coaxed onward by her all too willing test subject, Cara, to keep going. Her husband, Fayez, is her rock. He's always there, willing to be a sounding board and constantly reminding her that she's a good person. Naomi and Jim are extremely grateful to be back together after Holden's imprisonment. He stands back to watch her run the resistance even though he's been a figurehead for it for decades. Plenty of people view him as the one to watch, but he's the idealist while Naomi is the pragmatist, and the one actually calling the shots. Each loves, respects, and accepts the other for what they are, even if by being true to themselves, it leads to trouble.

Alex and Amos are still with us. Alex has to send stealth messages to his son because of who he is, and he really wants to see him and his grandson. Maybe someday, but he has a responsibility to the family he joined decades ago. Amos carries on in his perpetual even keel state, moreso since the events in Tiamat's Wrath. Teresa still treats him like an uncle and becomes his apprentice as ship's mechanic despite all that happened. She's tired of her old life and desperately hopes for her father to return to his senses. Amos is the one person whom she can count on to treat her as a regular person, not as a princess, heir to the Laconian Empire. And she loves him for it.

There isn't a lot of action here, so it seemed a little slow. The experiments that Elvi runs provide for more cerebral entertainment. There are two action encounters, both involving Tanaka, yet they're enough in their own right as each is bloody and vicious.

About 3/4 of the way in, everything comes together for the final showdown. While it isn't the epic battle of Tiamat's Wrath—the spaceship battles are in the background—the focus is where it needs to be. The challenge is the confrontation with Duarte and the PBK. The resolution makes sense to me. How can humanity deal with a megalomaniac, who's tapped into the power of the protomolecule, and with the PBK, an enemy capable of breaking molecular bonds and voiding everything out of existence?

4.5 stars

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Book Review: Tiamat's Wrath

Wow, that was something!

This is book two in the third and final trilogy of trilogies that compose this series. And it might be difficult to top this one.

The book opens with Avasarala's funeral on Laconia of all places. Holden is still there and gets to talk to a few people—those willing to be seen talking to Duarte's "dancing bear"—about her and how much she'd hate it, which was probably Emperor Duarte's intent.

Except for the Epilogue, the rest of the book is told from the viewpoints of Bobbi, Alex, Naomi, Dr. Elvi Okoye (from Cibola Burn), and Teresa Duarte—yes, the Emperor's daughter. I'll start with her. Teresa is on a slow burn of teenage rebellion. She's growing disillusioned with people, whether they're her classmates or her adult handlers treating her with kid gloves. She loves her father, who is grooming her to be his replacement should anything ever happen to him. She finds solace with her dog and some hermit named Timothy who lives in a cave, calls her "Tiny," and says that she's the angriest person he's ever known.

Elvi has been drafted into the Laconian Navy and goes on exploration missions to the weirdest systems encountered in the gate network. Along the way, she's tasked with gathering as much information about the aliens that killed the protomolecule builders. Duarte has a plan for how to deal with them and has apparently never heard the adage to never poke the bear. He pokes it, of course, and boy oh boy does it get pissed off, hence the book's title.

Meanwhile, Bobbi and Naomi are at odds as to the resistance's strategy. Bobbi wants guerrila warfare and Naomi, who has sneaking around in shipping containers, prefers infiltration (putting their people in key positions) while Alex is caught in the middle. They're still family, but the way each deals with feeling powerless and seemingly hopeless odds, couldn't be any more different. Eventually, one of Bobbi's raids pays off, giving them a weapon they can use to strike back. But the price is so high.

If you've made it this far in the series and love these characters, you shouldn't be disappointed (but 6% are). There are a couple epic battles wherein our heroes depend on cunning to outwit the Laconians. The inside look at the Laconian inner circle from both Teresa's and Elvi's perspectives hammers home just how messed up cults of personality can be, not just the figurehead but the officers whose job it is to carry out the vision.

5 stars

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Book Review: Persepolis Rising

This is book one in the third and final trilogy of trilogies that compose this series.

Nearly three decades have passed since Marcos Inaros was defeated. The Belters run the Transport Union, which oversees the traffic between the thirteen hundred worlds of the ring gates. Terraformers from Mars are applying their knowledge to Earth to speed its recovery from environmental damage inflicted by Marcos and his henchmen during the war. So while the worlds of the Sol System are pretty much status quo, technologically speaking, the Martian traitors who sold Marcos the ships and weapons he needed to go to war against the Inners have been busy. Led by Duarte, the Laconians (as that's what they refer to themselves now) have been playing around with the protomolecule, plugging into an abandoned shipyard and seeing what else it can do.

Apparently, a lot.

Duarte decides that now is the time to unite humanity under his rule. By force, if necessary. And of course it's necessary. Humans just don't abdicate to someone claiming to be superior; they need proof. And the Laconians do just that.

It's much like 18th century warships going up against an Iowa class battleship.

Holden and Naomi were going to retire, but that's been put on hold. They and the rest of the Rocinante crew join some OPA vets and form an underground resistance on Medina Station. Meanwhile the navies of Earth, Mars, and the Transport Union prepare to defend Sol System from the Laconian warship. And how these two fronts play out make up the rest of the novel.

We see how Drummer, who's running the Transport Union, deals with the Laconian incursion. While interstellar travel through the ring gates takes place in the blink of an eye, in-system travel is still painfully slow, like watching an army march across Europe. She's constantly looking for weak points in this vessel. Things can't be this bad, right? Right?

And on Medina Station, it's life during the occupation with echoes from WWII, complete with puppet rulers, propaganda, infiltrators and traitors, and military checkpoints. To top it off, there's a military governor who's in over his head but doesn't want anyone else to know, so he errs on the draconian side.

It's bleak. All of our protagonists feel powerless, trying to do their part to confound the enemy and find their weak points so that they can exploit them. Everyone deals with the situation in their own way. Amos even gets a chapter, so that we can see how he deals with this in his emotionally damaged way.

In terms of the protomolecule, the first trilogy dealt with its discovery and seeing the power that it could unleash. The second trilogy was a power struggle over who would possess it while the realization came that someone exterminated its creators. In this last trilogy, with the protomolecule's powers unleashed, it is certain that whoever killed its creators will awaken and punish those who use its power now. Definitely curious to see how that plays out.

4 stars

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Book Review: Babylon's Ashes

Book six in The Expanse series. If you haven't read book five, some of this review might be spoilerish.

A revolution brewing for generations has begun in fire. It will end in blood.

The Free Navy - a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships - has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. The colony ships heading for the thousand new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy prey, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them.

James Holden and his crew know the strengths and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone. Outnumbered and outgunned, the embattled remnants of the old political powers call on the Rocinante for a desperate mission to reach Medina Station at the heart of the gate network.

But the new alliances are as flawed as the old, and the struggle for power has only just begun. As the chaos grows, an alien mystery deepens. Pirate fleets, mutiny and betrayal may be the least of the Rocinante's problems. And in the uncanny spaces past the ring gates, the choices of a few damaged and desperate people may determine the fate of more than just humanity.

Basically, this is "life in war time," solar system edition. The book isn't focused on military engagements so much as how people are dealing with the war. Nineteen different people get at least one chapter. Besides the POVs of the Rocinante crew, we get chapters representing Marcos Inaros, the megalomaniac leader of The Free Navy; his son Filip; a few Belters working on Medina Station; biologist Prax Meng, whom you might recall from Caliban's War; Michio Pa, whom you might recall from Abaddon's Gate; the delightfully foul-mouthed Chrisjen Avasarala, and more.

I enjoyed the diverse assembly of viewpoints. It kept me engaged, which might've been difficult to do considering what little actually transpires during this 544-page behemoth. There's a lot of waiting around for things to happen, but from what I've read elsewhere, that's often what happens in war.

With the exception of Marcos, no one is really painted as evil. The authors try to show how there are good people on all sides, that the circumstances of one's life leads one to make choices, join a team that makes empty promises. There are obvious parallels to life in Axis-occupied Europe during WW2 or even the Soviet Union: propaganda everywhere, dissenters disappearing in the night, secret police interrogations, everyday people just trying to keep their heads down to avoid suspicion and sometimes failing. There's hope that everything will be alright until something happens that affirms that things are actually very wrong.

I particularly enjoyed Alex's two chapters which dealt with the importance of finding an emotional connection, someone to share your downtime with before you ship out again—and might very well die. Alex is out at a bar with his crewmates from the Roci and sharing stories with Fred Johnson's crew, deflating the tension from battle. He finds himself exchanging flirtations with one of them.

He didn't know if the way her eyes were locked on his was a sign of how drunk she'd gotten, the beginning of an erotic invitation, or a little bit of both. Either way, he found himself smiling back.

Her knee pressed against Alex's in a way that was absolutely innocent. Unless it wasn't, in which case it absolutely wasn't.

And later...

Maybe it was only that he knew how much the war might take from them all, and she was his chance to refill some cistern of his heart and body that there wasn't going to be time for later. A place of gentleness and affection and pleasure like a hurrican eye.

Now if only the ending hadn't been so Deus ex Machina, I probably would've really enjoyed it. Enough hints had been dropped, from the end of Nemesis Games right up through a certain investigation in this one, to know that the way it's going to end. Still, the resolution of this middle trilogy wasn't satisfying. But I guess it's ok because I still have three more books to go.

4 stars. Quite possibly lower for some people.

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DED

Book Review: Nemesis Games

A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land-rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle.

Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen. Terrorist attacks previously considered impossible bring the inner planets to their knees. The sins of the past are returning to exact a terrible price.

And as a new human order is struggling to be born in blood and fire, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante must struggle to survive and get back to the only home they have left.

The plot to this one takes a backseat to character development. That's not to say that there's no plot. It's just that events happen here and there, and the focus is on how the crew of the Rocinante, separated by millions of miles, deal with these events and find their way back to each other.

James Holden has been the consistent POV character through this series. In this installment, we get the POV of Naomi, Amos, and Alex as well. So it was nice to see how they think and get their take on each other. The Rocinante is not just a job, it's family. Bobbie Draper, Chrisjen Avasarala, Fred Johnson, and Clarissa Mao are also present, and each adds to the story.

I read this after watching the latest season of The Expanse. Once again, I think the TV show did a better job handling the material, amping up the drama and focusing on important character moments which were glossed over in the book. We got to see more of the relationships Naomi had with Filip, Marcos, and her old crew. The book came up short here. It was almost as if Filip and Marcos were too busy, so why make the effort at all?

The whole Martian corruption storyline, which the TV show started exploring in season four, was far more intriguing than Alex's sad attempt at reconciling with his ex-wife. Fortunately, this yielded to his assisting Bobbie rather than dragging on any further.

Amos's storyline was pretty close to a match (book vs. TV show). The TV show did a better job of humanizing him though. It touched more on his past and emotional development points that were lacking in the book (I understand that "The Churn" provided a good deal of that background). He also saw something in Clarissa way back in Abaddon's Gate, and his visit to her here can be seen as an attempt by the writers to rehabilitate a character that I thought was lackluster.

Holden's storyline wasn't much to write home about. Except for the attack on Tycho Station, he spends most of his time pining for his friends. Admirable, but not all that entertaining.

This must sound like I didn't like the book, but I did. It's just that the TV show was so much better. I'd give the show 5 stars and the book 3.5 stars. I'm hoping to read the next book before the next season comes out.

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Book Review: Cibola Burn

The gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush has begun. Settlers stream out from humanity's home planets in a vast, poorly controlled flood, landing on a new world. Among them, the Rocinante, haunted by the vast, posthuman network of the protomolecule as they investigate what destroyed the great intergalactic society that built the gates and the protomolecule.

But Holden and his crew must also contend with the growing tensions between the settlers and the company which owns the official claim to the planet. Both sides will stop at nothing to defend what's theirs, but soon a terrible disease strikes and only Holden - with help from the ghostly Detective Miller - can find the cure.

Some refugees from Ganymede have come to settle Ilus (New Terra to others). Life is hard, but it's better than spending the rest of your life stuck on a spaceship begging for food and scrounging spare parts for your CO2 scrubber. The soil chemistry isn't quite right, but the lithium mine is a cash cow. Just gotta fill up the cargo hold and head back to Medina Station to sell it. That'll generate enough cash to buy what they need to thrive.

The thing is, they didn't check with anyone first. Why would they? It seemed like everyone turned their back on them. Along comes Royal Charter Energy (RCE) with a UN claim for the world and things get complicated fast. And by complicated, I mean people die.

Chrisjen Avarsarala (UN) and Fred Johnson (OPA) decide to hire the crew of the Rocinante to mediate the dispute. Holden doesn't want to go, but the protomolecule Miller simulacrum insists. It's been formulated by the protomolecule remnant to investigate why its creators are all gone, and it nags Holden just enough to make him even want to know.

Besides Holden, we get POVs from Basia Merton (one of the squatters), Elvi Okoye (RCE scientist), and Dimitri Havelock (security officer on board the RCE ship Edward Israel, presumably named after the astronomer). The authors do a great job getting you into their heads so that you can understand their motivations. Basia will do anything to protect his family after losing a son on Ganymede. Elvi is the consummate biologist, thrilled to be exploring a new world. Havelock was Miller's partner back on Ceres before the Julie Mao case became Miller's obsession and dealt with his share of anti-Earther bias.

His boss is Adolphus Murtry, a ruthless by-the-book kind of guy, who—to borrow the description that Amos and Holden have for him—is an asshole. Havelock mentions him working corporate prisons and industrial security his whole career. We don't get his POV though, so it's tough to figure out why he's so hardcore on enforcing RCE's charter given what happens over the course of the novel.

The authors explore the mythologizing of public figures. Holden and crew have a solar system-wide reputation at this point. In light of their accomplishments, Holden's public persona has been manipulated in the news media so much that he is hero to some, villain to others. We see that here as some characters are heartened at the news of his arrival to the colony. They assume that he will inherently agree with them on the spot and set things right, not realizing that things aren't that simple. Others view him as a dunce, easy to manipulate and render feckless. But, as Naomi put it to Havelock...

"A lot of people have underestimated Jim over the last few years. A lot of them aren't with us anymore."

I had a tough time putting this down at night and constantly checked the clock to see if I could squeeze in another chapter. Besides obviously wanting to know what happened to Holden and company, I was engaged with all of the POV characters this time. Each one went through personal growth, discovering things about themselves that felt good to see realized. While the standoff between the RCE personnel and the squatters was tense enough, a certain natural disaster that occurred midway through the book just amplified things.

This was a much better story than Abaddon's Gate. While all the interesting stuff happened in the first half of that book—and the second half was tedious with power mad jerks and body count padding—Cibola Burn carried my interest all the way through. It's a sci-fi adventure that lives up to the promise made in the first book. Now I get to worry and wonder what the TV show is going to cut out for season four.

4.5 stars

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DED

Book Review: Abaddon's Gate

For generations, the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt - was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has emerged to build a massive structure outside the orbit of Uranus: a gate that leads into a starless dark.

Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to find whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them.

I have to say that I'm glad the TV series only spent half a season on this book and only really dealt with half of the material. I get to the midway point of this one and I'm like, "All the important stuff is done, so what's the next two hundred plus pages going to be about? Really? That's how we're going to spend our time. Ugh."

Pieces of the characters from the book were taken apart from the book and re-combined for the TV show. If you didn't like Ashford in the TV show, he's unbearable in the book. Far less depth to him, too. I didn't like the character of Melba/Clarissa in either the show or the book. Her character's story arc ended differently in the book, but I'm not 100% convinced by it, even after 547 pages. Anna was fine, seemed solid. Bull's character was chopped up into pieces and divvied among the TV show. His scenes would've been too expensive to film in the second half. I didn't mind him either, but didn't feel like he contributed much to the story other than providing another POV.

Overall, I'm calling this one a letdown. I didn't really care for any part of the storyline that didn't include the Ring. Too much filler with Melba/Clarissa's angst-filled storyline and details about the physical effects of sudden braking on the human body. Even the Rocinante crew storyline, which was focused on Melba/Clarissa's revenge plot and its aftermath, was more annoying than entertaining. Knock off a couple hundred pages from this book and it improves.

3 stars.

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DED

Book Review: Caliban's War

We are not alone.

On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a high-level politician struggles to prevent interplanetary war from reigniting. And on Venus, an alien protomolecule has overrun the planet, wreaking massive, mysterious changes and threatening to spread out into the solar system.

In the vast wilderness of space, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have been keeping the peace for the Outer Planets Alliance. When they agree to help a scientist search war-torn Ganymede for a missing child, the future of humanity rests on whether a single ship can prevent an alien invasion that may have already begun . . .

Caliban's War is a breakneck science fiction adventure following the critically acclaimed Leviathan Wakes.

I really enjoyed this book, even more so than Leviathan Wakes, and that was great. This time around, I think the book is better than the TV show (too much chopped out so far), though there's still the second half of this book that season three of the TV show needs to cover.

For POV, Holden's still here, but gone is Miller's noir. In its place is Martian Marine Sgt Bobbie Draper, the political machinations of UN Assistant Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala, and the forlorn quest of Prax, a Ganymede biologist. It's a diverse cast with wildly different perspectives and personalities.

Prax's daughter was kidnapped just before the war started on Ganymede, so he spends all of his waking hours searching for her. He's wasting away, praying that she's still alive, but expecting the worst. By the time Holden and the others encounter him, he's so far gone that he's barely capable of speech.

Chrisjen is a foulmouthed bureaucrat. She cusses like a sailor, possibly worse. When asked why her language is so "colorful", she replies that it's to prevent others from thinking she's soft. Why would anyone think that of her? It's not because she's happily married and a grandmother. It's because she "won't kill children." It's a brutal insight into the political landscape of The Expanse. It's all a game, but she can't give it up because she doesn't trust the other players. Her repartee with Holden was excellent. I hope it holds up on the TV show. If it doesn't, it won't be because Shohreh Aghdashloo didn't hold up her end. Her portrayal of Chrisjen is spot on.

Bobbie's coping with PTSD after her squad was obliterated by the aforementioned "monstrous supersoldier" (I don't want to spoil it, but the title is a clue.). She wants answers; she wants revenge. IIRC, she's two meters tall and intimidates anyone who has a clue. And that's before she puts on battle armor. After the Martian government lets her down, she goes to work for Chrisjen, because she's the one person whose objectives are in line with her own. It's not without bumps along the way though. Bobbie is a stranger in a strange land and must confront her perceptions about Terrans (Mars seems a bit like Sparta).

So you have Bobbie and Chrisjen hunting down the bastards that made the supersoldiers while Prax and Holden's gang are searching for Prax's daughter. The plot lines converge, and all hell breaks loose. It's all so epic that I couldn't help but love it. I had too much fun reading this, which isn't an easy things for me to say about a book that's spitting distance from 600 pages. I can't wait to see season three and read Abaddon's Gate.

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DED