Unpopular opinion incoming: this book might have been my least favorite in The Expanse series, and I’m a little afraid it’s going to set the tone going forward for the rest of the series.

The Expanse to me has always been about the adventures of the Rocinante and its crew, zipping around in a mostly state of the art MCRN corvette, and dealing with sci fi and space travel in a way that Star Trek, Star Wars, and other major Space franchises didn’t – without a lot of fancy tech.

No inertial dampeners to provide gravity, so ships are built more like skyscrapers to provide thrust gravity. No shields to make space travel less dangerous, so everyone’s ships are actually super fragile. No fancy space lasers, but more conventional weapons like PDCs, torpedoes, and railgun rounds (plus ingenious weapons like just throwing rocks at high speeds at planets).

So to have the Laconians come in and seemingly break all of those rules made this installment of the Expanse radically different for me. Then, combine that with the HUGE time jump of 30-ish years for our crew, and I felt like I was reading an entirely different series.

And maybe that was part of the point of this book. To put us in the mindset of our characters, having everything turn upside down all at once. What do you mean one ship can take out the entire Earth-Mars-Union fleet? What do you mean it can eat a nuke and keep on trucking? What do you mean it has fancy space weapons that can take out entire stations? What do you mean it TOOK OUT TYCHO STATION?

Maybe this book was supposed to be all about transitions. The transition of Rocinante leadership from Holden to Bobbie; the transition of power from the Sol system to Laconia; the transition of technology from mostly human technology to alien protomolecule technology.

If that was the case, then the authors definitely set the uneasy tone of transition very well. I can’t say that I had fun reading this book – everything felt shitty the whole time because everyone we were cheering for instantly got conquered. There was only small tokens of resistance victories, and even those came at a price.

Clarissa

I have killed, but I am not a killer. Because a killer is a monster, and monsters aren’t afraid.

…

“I’m a monster,” Clarissa said.

No you aren’t, baby. You’re not a monster. You’re not. Which meant Naomi had misunderstood. Clarissa had meant, I’m not afraid. She tried to think what to say that would clarify that, but it was a lot of effort. And what did it matter really if anyone else understood? She knew.

Fuck it, she thought. Some things you take to your grave.

Clarissa Melpomene Mao closed her eyes.

One thing that hit me harder than I thought it would was Clarissa’s death. 😥 We barely even got to know her character once she became one of the Roci’s crew. She had a few chapters in Babylon’s Ashes, but not nearly enough to develop her character on the level of Naomi’s, Holden’s, or Amos’s. I was really looking forward to learning about her more.

Her final chapter was my favorite of the whole book – great action, a win for the good guys, intriguing introspective thoughts, and laconians dying.

Singh

The story of Medina will be that Governor Singh mismanaged the station, lost his ship to a band of malcontents, lost his perspective. And when he let his wounded pride exceed the mandates of the high consul’s directives, he was removed for the protection of the everyday citizens in his care.

And, speaking of characters dying, one person who I was very happy to see go was Singh, main Laconian POV character. I’m not really sure what the point was of his chapters.

He was clearly unqualified to be governor, lashing out in petty ways even against the advice of his senior staff. His actions were that of a coward rather than a leader, constantly second guessing his own decisions and growing increasingly fascist and authoritarian as he feared more and more for his safety. We saw him go from an idealist family man to a person willing to kill everyone on Medina that he didn’t deem “loyal”.

And then we saw him die as a result of that transition, executed by his own security officer who apparently had orders to keep him in check and make sure that he didn’t turn fascist and authoritarian? Well then why did you send this guy anyway?

There are plenty of older, more seasoned and established MCRN staff that came through the gate that could have and *should have* been given this responsibility instead. Why give this green officer this important responsibility?

Final Thoughts

It’s weird reading all the other reviews that are praising this book. I feel like it’s a radical departure from The Expanse that we’ve been reading for the last several years. The time jump for me is jarring, as is the entire shift of balance of power.

This is the first time where I’ve been reading an Expanse novel and hoping that it would just be over soon. Because I was gonna finish it! haha. But I wasn’t really enjoying it.

Maybe this is just because I read book 3 from The Stormlight Archive right before it and it was a hard act to follow? I’m definitely staying invested in the series, so I’ll see y’all at the next book.

This is the first book I’ve ever waited on, the first book that I bought on launch day and put off other plans in order to read. Hell, I even spent the preceding week re-reading Nemesis Games, so that way I could get fully immersed back into the story in preparation for it. So I read 1000 pages in like 2 weeks. Does this mean I’ve become a full fledged book nerd? Haha

I thought for sure this book would center around the gates and about the mysterious aliens that seemed to live in there, eating ships sometimes. Hell, the epilogue of Nemesis Games is about one of the MCRN deserter ships disappearing while going through a gate! In fact, I thought the title Babylon’s Ashes would be about how said aliens would come through and wreck humanity’s shit, and we would see Holden et al deal with that.

But nooooope! The ashes in Babylon’s Ashes are the ashes of human civilization, created from the events of Nemesis Games. Color me surprised.

So let’s get to it, shall we?

 

Basically a continuation of Nemesis Games

Every other book seemed to have a good amount of time pass between it and the one before it, so that large events could have occurred. Not this one! This one picks up basically where Nemesis Games left off, with Marco Inaros running around, crowing victory with his stolen Martian fleet that he’s renamed the Free Navy.

Except…he’s a gourram idiot. Did he seriously think that he’d be able to keep Earth and Mars pinned back forever? His entire plan broke apart when the combined fleet killed *ONE SHIP*. I thought he was supposed to be some sort of genius.

Let’s recap the military situation once Earth is no longer pulled back. We know from before that the MCRN fleet is less numerous than the UN’s, despite being newer and better in general. We know that Mars can’t take Earth in a fight. Duarte’s deserters took about ⅕  of their fleet, and definitely left Marco and the Free Navy less than that. So let’s say that the Free Navy has like…1/20 of the original Mars fleet? That seems generous in my mind, but sure, whatever.

So you’re sitting here, with 1/20th of the MCRN fleet, trying to take on the remaining 70% of the MCRN fleet, the COMBINED Earth Fleet, and on top of that, whatever Fred Johnson OPA loyalists can scrape together. You’re a goddamn idiot if this was your endgame.

Oh, his endgame was to get to make the combined fleet “stretch their resources too thin” and rely on the vastness of space? Well geeh, that sure does make a gigantic assumption that this fleet wouldn’t have genocide on its minds. If I was Avasarala, I would have just said “Fuck Ceres” after Marco stripped it for parts and left; then I would have proceeded to burn for Ganymede, take control of the main food source left in the solar system, and let all the Belters starve to death, including the Free Navy.

Then I would have taken my fleet and either taken control of Medina station or blown it up. Yes, I’d probably take high casualties in doing so, but they only have so many rail gun rounds, right?

Yes, I realize that basically is the opposite of the point that Holden was trying to make, but whatever. So let’s say Avasarala did something like I had planned – what then? Everyone starves to death and you keep trying to throw rocks at Earth? Awesome plan, Marco. I can see why Michio Pa deserted you.

 

Michio Pa

Speaking of Pa, we got to see the perspective of an entirely new crew this time, on their own MCRN corvette. Too bad it gets blown up at the end; I rather liked the idea of the Rocinante having a sister ship out there that’s kind of on its side.

Alas, I had a little trouble relating to this crew on anywhere near the same kind of level as I do with the Rocinante crew. For one, I didn’t really get why she was so mad at Fred Johnson in the first place. We last saw her in Abaddon’s Gate as the 1st officer of the Behemoth. She helps with Bull’s mutiny against Ashford only when it’s 100% clear that shit has hit the fan – I got the distinct impression that she recognizes authority a lot.

So…why is she so mad then at Fred Johnson? It seemed like an abrupt character transition to me. Certainly when I’m supposed to buy that she was so mad, she quit the OPA after the events in Abaddon’s Gate, and then eventually joined Marco’s insane Free Navy.

But whatever. Let’s just assume it made sense. I do like that she was the first of the OPA heads to be like “Fuck this shit, I’m out.” when it was clear that Inaros kept redefining what “victory” was to suit his own needs, and when he was doing things to actively hurt Belters in order to do it. It provides good character continuity if you assume that she is the Belt’s Holden, someone who will do anything and everything in order for better the lives of her people.

 

Anderson Dawes

Anderson Dawes had been part of the OPA since before he was born. Trying to curry favor with their corporate overlords, his parents had named him after a mining company. Later, Fred Johnson’s butchery turned that same name into one of Earth’s greatest crimes against the Belt.

Speaking of cool Belters, let’s pour one out for our boy Dawes. Considering how suave and awesome he is portrayed in the show, I’m surprised that he really doesn’t get much play in the books. His POV chapter was probably *the best* in the entire book, and reading other discussion threads of the book, it seems like this was a popular sentiment.

Especially after having read The Butcher of Anderson Station and knowing about his backstory with Fred Johnson, his chapter is extremely emotionally moving. You can see him in his element, persuading these various OPA factions to do what they don’t want to do in order to help Holden. And why? Because Fred Johnson believed in Holden, so it must be the right thing to do for Belters.

That’s a big leap of faith right there. Sucks that at the end, it’s implied he was captured and imprisoned. He would have made a pretty good head of the new Guild that Holden proposed.

And we learn such cool things about him, like he was named Anderson after *Anderson Station*?! Mind. Blown. Now we can see why he’s been so committed for his entire life. He was basically born into this.

 

Fred Johnson

“I had a speech ready. Well practiced. You’d have liked it. All about the nature of politics and the finest of humanity being our ability to change to match our environment…What I really meant was I’m sorry. Not just sorry I backed the wrong horse. Am sorry about that. But I’m sorry I compromised you while I did it.”

– Anderson Dawes

Oh, did I gloss over one teensy, tiny little thing? HOLY FUCK FRED DIED!

That really added quite a bit of tension and danger to the story. His death was written so well too – we experienced it the same way that Holden and Bobbie and everyone else on the crew probably experienced it.

The preceding chapter describing the fight between the Rocinante and Inaros’s wolf pack was amazing, and definitely would have been my favorite chapter if the Dawes chapter didn’t exist. The urgent tone that was set was just *perfect* in describing the battle.

High G burns, quick whiparounds to shoot the rail gun, the enemy adjusting tactics so that they don’t lose a 2nd ship – the fact that the only people that really matter in the fight are Alex and Bobbie and everyone else is basically just fragile cargo. That chapter perfectly encapsulated the stress what I imagine it would feel like to be in that battle. And the way that Bobbie ended up winning the battle by basically re-using PDCs that had already been launched? Brilliant.

So then how do we find out that we lost Fred Johnson? Only when we’re done with the battle, thinking everything is peachy and we’re celebrating and happy and…oshit. Wut? He’s having a stroke? Oh fuuuuuck.

Fred lay on the table, stripped to the waist. The audotoc was strapped to his arm, needles inserted into the veins. He looked weirdly vulnerable, as if he’d physically shrunk between the time he’d gotten into the crash couch and now. Bobbie stood over him, arms crossed, glowering like an angel out of the Old Testament. One of the scary kind. The kind that kept you out of paradise and killed armies in a single night. She didn’t look up as they came in.

“How bad is it?” Holden asked.

Somehow Bobbie made her shrug an expression of rage. “He’s dead”

 

Goddammit Holden

Speaking of said battle, I remember highlighting the portion where Holden oh so casually disarms the torpedoes near the end and thinking “WHAT THE FUCK, HOLDEN?!” Didn’t realize it would become as big of a plot point later as it was.

“The damage had left a blind spot in their PDC coverage, but the torpedo that came through it had malfunctioned. If it had detonated, it could have cracked the ship in two, and the old bitch from the galley would have had to hope for the mercy of the inners to keep her leathery ass from drowning in her own waste air.”

– Filip

“If we’re not willing to win the fight, I’m not sure what we’re doing in the cage.”

– Amos

Goddammit Holden. You could have ended this entire thing. Your crew was good enough to to take on not one, but TWO stolen MCRN vessels, both of which were more powerful than your now out of date corvette.

Bobbie had the kill shot lined up. Marco would be dead, and this entire Free Navy bullshit would be over. His movement wasn’t one that would have survived without him and the people on his ship. Oi. Now I understand how Fred Johnson and Avasarala felt like when they dealt with you. -.-

 

Moar action!

“Inaros isn’t going to chase after the Giambattista and Rocinante, because he’ll be distracted by the largest and most aggressive fleet action in history kicking his balls up into his throat. By the time understands what we were really after, it’ll be too late for him to do anything but hold his dick and cry.”

– Avasarala

One really nice thing that I did like about this book was that you had 2 distinct action sequences. The first one was the skirmish between the Rocinante and Marco’s vessels earlier, the one where we *sob* lost Fred Johnson. But we also had a coordinated fleet offensive, the one where we simultaneously attacked the Free Navy almost everywhere in the system at once, but mostly as a distraction so that way we could take back Medina Station all sneaky like with the Rocinante.

Though I much preferred the first, the second action sequence had its own share of cool moments and surprises. I liked how Corey gave us the vantage point of people on the station as they were trying to figure out wtf was going on with this ice hauler that launched a million torpedo like thingies at them, and as the rail guns tried to take them out, only to find out that that was a feint designed to get troops not onto Medina Station, but onto the weird alien sphere where they’d basically rubber banded a bunch of railguns on.

It also gave us the first glimpse into Battle Bobbie in a long time, basically since she was introduced in Caliban’s War. Actually, more than that, we got to see her work with our other instrument of destruction, Amos, and that was entertaining to read.

It was interesting when Bobbie kind of accidentally won the battle by pissing off the alien sphere, which ended up messing up all the rail guns. They technically neutralized the threat, even though they didn’t accomplish their full objective to taking control of the rail guns, leading of course to the final weird climax for our story.

 

Filip and Marco

Filip hadn’t fucked it up. Marco was wrong, that was all. This time, he just got it wrong. Words came into his mind, as clear as if they’d been spoke. Though he’d never heard her speak them, they came in his mother’s voice. Wonder what else he got wrong.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel sympathy for Flip from his POV chapters, but I definitely didn’t. He came off entirely as a petulant child the entire story, and I wanted his ass dead. Even after he “sees the light” regarding his father, he never really seems that redeemable in my eyes.

I think that’s part of why I was so frustrated that Holden disarmed those torpedoes. His ass *would* have been dead if Holden wasn’t such a goddamn idiot. But I digress…

I guess we’re supposed to see his adulation for his dad falter and fail from the beginning of the book to the end and feel happy for him? Happy that he didn’t disappear along with his dad and the rest of the Free Navy? So that way he can have some sort of redemption arc with Naomi later?

I dunno. I just did not care for this little shit that was clearly a spoiled little kid. The only reason he’s not dead from Dawes’s people on Ceres is because his daddy is Marco Inaros. He shot a cop for no good reason. What a dumbass.

Marco Inaros = Trump?

As far as Marco goes, I read a very interesting post in the Babylon’s Ashes discussion thread on /r/TheExpanse that basically equated Marco’s appeal to the Belters with real life Trump’s appeal to disenfranchised inner America.

“You hear a lot about how a vote for Trump is ‘a brick chucked through the window of the elites’ … well how about some rocks chucked at the planet of the elites?”

– /u/baconfriedpork

‘Marco’s the one who decides when he wins. You don’t understand how slippery he can be. Whatever happens, he’ll shift so it was his plan all along. If he were the last person alive, he’d say we needed the apocalypse and declare victory. It’s what he is.’

-Naomi

It’s a very interesting point in that if you disenfranchise people enough and give them no choices except to stop existing, they’ll do very desperate things, like BLOW UP THE ONLY VIABLE PLANET THAT CAN INDEPENDENTLY SUPPORT HUMAN LIFE.

And the part about Marco basically changing the plan and being like “yeah, this was my plan all along.” echoes how Trump’s campaign would seek to reframe things all the time, even what most would consider solid defeats.

Corey may not have intended for this to be commentary about our recent election results, but the parallels are very intriguing…and a little scary.

 

Clarissa

Side note: One of the unexpected things about this book that I *did* like was how much I liked Clarissa joining the crew. She didn’t really have a ton of character development chapters, really only one if you think about it, and that’s when she’s helping Amos and Holden in a firefight outside the ship, but it was nice how she integrated with the crew so seamlessly on nothing but Amos’s word.

I thought for sure it would be a problem, that there would be more tension than Holden just feeling a little antsy. After all, she did try and kill Holden and Naomi and this crew more than once.

It was cute, and I liked it, especially after getting to see her and Amos escape her prison back on Earth.

The Final Confrontation

“Huh. That is super creepy.”

-Amos

I’m probably not the only one who felt like the final confrontation between Inaros and Holden felt a little…anti climactic. I thought for sure that Naomi’s little trick would get Inaros’s 14 other ships and somehow we’d have a firefight between the Pella and the Rocinante. But whatever.

I very much liked how Naomi was the one to finally find a solution to deal with Marco. And she did it thinking that she killed her kid too. Can’t imagine how hard that must have been. It also wrapped up the story in a very nice circle, since she blamed herself for letting Marco get as far as he had in the first place.

 

Things I didn’t understand

 

1. How many ships did the Free Navy have? I thought they had at most like 15, but they got several of theirs tied up and blown up and were still able to send 15 after Holden. How?

Plus, it took the actions of the entire combined fleet to distract Marco and the Free Navy? That makes it seem like they could maybe kind of stand toe to toe with the combined fleet and that makes no sense to me.

2. Why did the dissident factions of the OPA help Holden? I get why Michio Pa did it – she needed protection from the Free Navy, and she wanted to keep helping Belters by commandeering colony ships and distributing the supplies to the Belt. But why all the other people? Particularly the ones that helped Holden try and retake Medina?

If I was a Belter on the Giambattista, I’d be like “Fuck you coyo, I’m not strapping myself into these tiny little capsules and trying to take out those railguns. That seems like a dumb idea that will 100% get me killed.”

And why weren’t UN or MCRN flagships the ones taking on the Pella? Why was it a little outnumbered and outmanned OPA force lead by the guy whose brother got killed, Micah al-Dujaili? That seems like poor strategic planning honestly. Poor guy, lost his brother, then his family and all his ships. I wouldn’t have agreed to that, no matter how charismatic Anderson Dawes was.

3. Why aren’t there more combined fleet ships out there helping Holden? Seems like you should have a ton of ships to spare. Why is the Rocinante the only one out there trying to A) take Medina Station and B) hold Medina station after? I know the plan was to take over the railguns rather than disable them, but it seems like a competent strategist should have planned for the possibility of them not working after you took Medina station.

 

Final Thoughts

There were just a few too many POVs for me (I think we had like 10?), but sometimes you have to overshoot to get the right number haha. I really liked Nemesis Game’s 4, and prefer 10 to the 2 that we saw in Leviathan Wakes, but 10 is just too many. And some characters I flat out disliked (Marco and Filip) or found annoying (Prax and sometimes Michio Pa), so…

That being said, all in all, a nice sequel to Nemesis Games, with two really great action sequences that I very much enjoyed reading, plus we got to see Bobbie as part of the full fledged crew!

I, like many other people, were pretty surprised that the protomolecule plot didn’t really make an appearance, but so be it. I obviously liked what we got enough to finish it within a week!

Too bad I can’t just start the next book like I’d been able to do with the previous books, but oh well. At least I’m not a Game of Thrones book fan, right? It could always be worse.

“They used me. They made it about sending messages to everyone that you don’t fuck with Earth, because look at the shit we’ll do just because you spaced an administrator on a nowhere station. They made me the poster boy for disproportional response. They made me a butcher.”

This novella was…a work of art. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it that much, since I didn’t feel particularly close to Fred Johnson in The Expanse, but boy was I wrong.

The juxtaposition of Fred Johnson being interrogated by Anderson Dawes / the OPA and the flashbacks to the taking of Anderson Station were done brilliantly, helping to demonstrate the change in his psyche between the two periods in time.

Moreover, the writing style of the flashbacks is done *really well*. I mean, it helps that I kind of already saw it happen on the show itself, but I didn’t really grasp what I was seeing the first time I saw it on screen. I couldn’t put the story down once the assault started on Anderson Station. You really feel the anxiety of Johnson leading his men, the remorse he feels as each green dot representing his men turns yellow. But more than that, you feel his regret in the aftermath of the assault when things just don’t add up – too many fortifications look stupidly built, too many people died trying to buy one of them more time. Why? He doesn’t get it, and neither do we, until…the big reveal at the end shows us that the the station thought they had surrendered. Only problem was *nobody told the assault commander*.

A nice bonus too was the characterization of Anderson Dawes. In the story, he doesn’t get nearly as much storytime as he gets screentime in the show. You get to see his calculated, intelligent moves, his thought processes as he tries to figure out “Why is this idiot trying to get himself killed? And can I get him to help me instead based on that motivation?” You get more insight into the Belter culture as he talks about how in space, you can’t afford to be wasteful, and how different that is from Earth.

Having just finished Nemesis Games, it also puts into perspective why Fred is so shocked that factions of the OPA are going after him *now*, of all times. They had their chance before; it’s so dumb that they would be doing so now that he’s in charge of shit and has real power and authority to get things done.

I honestly didn’t expect much from this The Expanse novella, but boy was I glad to be wrong. This was a great read. I’ve already started my next one.

 

Nemesis Games is amazing, like legit amazing. I saw other very favorable reviews before I read it, along the lines of “It’s great, much better than books 3 and 4, though those books do set up book 5 very well.”, and was worried that I had hyped it up too much in my head, but fortunately that wasn’t the case this time. ZOMG, Nemesis Games is far and away not only my favorite book in The Expanse, not only my favorite book read so far in 2016, but might be one of my favorite fiction books of all time.

You know when you get one of those books that you just can’t put down, that you blow off other things in real life to read? That’s Nemesis Games. The action is very well paced through the entire book and keeps you enthralled the entire time. Even the setup to all the events going to shit is really interesting since, unlike the other The Expanse books, the other non-Holden POV characters this time are THE CREW OF THE ROCINATE!

Oh, it was such a joy to read things from the perspective of Amos, Naomi, and Alex. I felt like they had been relegated to side characters somewhat in the previous books; Amos being the muscle, Naomi being Holden’s smart gf, and Alex being the hotshot pilot that was a little past his prime. I know some of them got novellas to flesh out their characters, but really, we hadn’t gotten to know them a ton before this book.

But not now! Now I get to hear Amos’s murder-y thoughts, along with his thoughts on what is moral or isn’t. And you get to experience Naomi and Alex’s trauma as they reconnect with their past lives. It’s *wonderful*.

Okay, let’s get this review party started, shall we? It’s time to go from spoiler-free to spoiler-y.

Naomi

Oh, Knuckles. Now we know your pain and how you ended up on the Canterbury. You had a homicidal terrorist ex boyfriend who you had a kid with? And you were unwittingly part of the OPA? Now we know why you Mars was interrogating you so harshly waaaaay back when in Leviathan Wakes. They suspected!

And we visit that dark, dark place that you were in. You were suicidal at one point? Actually went through with trying to kill yourself, only thwarted by a security measure? Wow.

And let’s not forget YOU HAVE A KID! A…kid partially responsible for the worst catastrophe to happen to Earth since humans have been on it…but a kid nevertheless. He’s smart, like you, and has been raised thinking you abandoned him and that the inners are cause of all of his problems. *sigh*.

But more than that, we get to see you in action this time, out from under the shadow of Holden and the Rocinate. We see you have to deal with being a prisoner guarded by people you once called friends, including Cyn. Oh, poor Cyn. You had to murder your friend, someone who stepped into that airlock with the best of intentions of *saving your life* because he thought you were going to off yourself again.

But you had to. It was the only way to even have a chance at saving everyone, at saving Holden and the Rocinate. And you did it! You had to survive in vacuum with no eva suit and had to launch yourself out of an airlock multiple times to do it, but you did it!

Mars

Bobbie’s back! Okay, technically, she only exists in Alex’s section, but Bobbie is one of my favorite characters, second only to Amos. And she’s back, this time with more than one stupid chapter to hook me (curse you Cibola Burn!).

I was pretty excited when I saw that Alex was going to meet with Bobbie while he was on Mars and beyond ecstatic when I saw the story leaning towards her becoming a crew member on the Rocinate. The scenes with her and Alex were endearing, both in the beginning where she meets him up and asks for help in solving this mystery she’d been looking into, and when they are trying to escort the Mars Prime Minister to safety on the Razorback.

“‘No,’ Alex said, ‘You’re not staying. I don’t give a shit. I’m not leaving you behind.'”

That was such a moving scene to me. I legit thought *exactly* what Alex thought, that she was going to stay behind to buy them some time. It wouldn’t be the first time an MCRN marine died to save a Rocinate crew member…

That scene cemented the growing relationship that she and Alex had been having, and was the first time that I felt like she truly became part of the crew.

The Adventures of Amos and Clarissa

Color me surprised that Clarissa also made an appearance in this book. I guess there was some payoff to having to read all of her chapters back in Cibola Burn.

Surprisingly, I empathized with her really well, considering how much I hated her character back in Cibola Burn. I guess that’s because Amos was such a big fan and well, I love Amos. I trust his character judgments haha. Plus, she didn’t try to murder my favorite protagonists this time around, and seemed genuinely contrite about what she had done. In fact, she was pretty critical in keeping Amos alive. And, it’s easy to feel sorry for someone if she’s a cute girl who is going through some shit, right?

Amos, unsurprisingly, went around being a badass through most of the book. We get to see his interactions with Erich and the crew that he grew up with, hear about his acts of mercy which end up paying dividends now that Erich is in charge, see him getting into violent scuffles in part just because and in part for his own sense of social justice.

This book does a great job of making his character darker, more of a violent killer with a questionable moral compass instead of an aloof mercenary/mechanic who just happens to be good at his craft. Up until now, I wouldn’t blame you if you’d imagined him as Jayne from Firefly: definitely dangerous, but mostly comedic. Nemesis Games highlights his violent side as he makes threats, even against old friends, in order to get what he wants.

But it also accents his loyal side. Erich may have threatened to have him killed once or twice, but when one of the Pinkwater guards tries to manhandle him, Amos beats the shit out of him, making a point to the other guard that he was safe since he hadn’t threatened to skullfuck his friend Erich. Plus, he stays by Clarissa’s side and sticks his neck out at the end with Holden to open the door to Clarissa becoming a Rocinate crew member. Surprisingly, I’m on board with this idea, and hope it comes to fruition in the next book, despite Holden’s obvious misgivings.

And, we get to see some character development too. He saves the staff on the island and brings them with, even though he doesn’t have to; in fact, even though they would slow him down. I like the nuanced way that his motivations exist too as Amos points out it’s not because he wants to do it, but because “it’s something Holden would do.” That counts as growth? haha

Holy shit that story

But beyond getting to know our crew better, and possibly introducing new members to it, Nemesis Games also brings us an *amazing* story, complete with huge changes in the established universe and new antagonists who, this time, don’t end up dead/out of the story at the end of the book.

First off, catastrophic asteroid impacts on Earth. Billions dead. Billions more will follow. Almost kills Amos, but that is actually not the main point of this. This pulls back the entire UN fleet to protect Earth from this happening again. It kills the UN Secretary General and puts our favorite grandmother in charge of the entire government, including the UN Navy. It also turns Earth into a land with a unified purpose, whereas before they were fractured groups of people. I expect to see something like a post 9/11 vibe from Earth in the next book.

Second off, just like Avasarala predicted, Mars is falling apart. Its population is leaving, and it can’t keep track of its military assets. Ships and weapons are going missing. The Prime Minister is almost killed, and a huge section of the MCRN Navy is just up and burning towards the ring for reasons nobody in the story seems to know. Also, it seems like the main bad guy behind Marco either is in cahoots with someone high up in the MCRN command or is that person himself. And that person has enough influence to have murdered at least one MCRN soldier and has tried to murder Bobbie and Alex to cover up his dealings.

Third off, Fred Johnson is now his own political entity. The OPA, the bunch of racist jerks that they are, tries to have him killed because he’s from Earth. Nevermind that he joined them because the UN was murdering innocents on their side; nevermind that he has probably helped the Belt more than almost anyone in the solar system; because fuck him he’s from Earth. Bunch of racist assholes. And they take Medina Station! They now hold Fred Johnson’s trump card, the entire reason he has “a seat at the table” with the other governments of Sol.

The hits just don’t stop coming in Nemesis Games. The entire power structure of the solar system is destabilized by the end of the book. Heck, there’s an entire MCRN fleet headed towards the ring at the end that the Prime Minster can’t control. AND THEY DIE. So not only is there a power struggle here at “home” in our solar system, but something crazy is happening beyond the rings as well. Now I’m sad that I can’t immediately start up the next book and see what happens. Game of Thrones fans, who have to wait for some undetermined about of time for your next book? I don’t know how you do it.

Final Thoughts

I love this book. I love it *so much*. If it were a girl, I would do naughty things to it, get married, buy a house, and raise little book/human hybrid babies with it.

It is a great culmination of all the books before it, and definitely changes the entire landscape of the story. Major characters from the other books are brought back, whether just in memory (Sam! *sob*) or as actual characters in the story (Bobbie and Clarissa!).

The entire universe of the story is changed, with Earth being un-inhabitable-ish, Mars’s society collapsing, and the OPA fracturing into racist vs non-racist factions. And it looks like we’ve gotten our first encounter with an alien species. But which one?! The protomolecule creators? Or the species that destroyed them?!

But at least the crew of the Rocinate is back together, complete with what looks like two new crew members. Avasarala is in charge of Earth, and once she gets shit calmed down, will probably be taking care of business here in Sol against Marco’s “Free Navy”. Can’t wait to see what happens in Book 6.

Sigh, waiting is a game I am bad at.

“‘What?’ Holden asked. His brain refused to believe this could be true. He’d heard the words clearly, but those words could not be, so he must have heard them wrong. ‘What?'”

I think I hate this book, not because the writing was bad, but because almost everyone I root for dies. This was a book of pure frustration.

The quote above, referencing when Holden learns about Sam’s fate? That is *exactly* how I felt. The thought “I definitely just read that wrong” crossed my head.

That might be as emotional as I’ve felt in The Expanse in a long time. I could not believe that had just happened. And the chapters immediately following it, where Corey describes the reactions of Amos, Holden, Naomi, and Bull? They perfectly mirrored mine. Amos first, with his immediate thirst for vengeance;  Holden, with his similar, but more tempered reaction; Naomi, immediately turning into a sobbing wreck, focusing on sadness instead of anger; Bull, forcing everyone to keep moving along in the story instead of wallowing.

A lot of people die in Abaddon’s gate. A lot of good ones. For the record, if Miller were still alive and around, none of this bullshit would have happened. His pragmatism would have saved everyone. Ashford would have been either airlocked or at the very least, put under guard with guards with known loyalties, and the counter-mutiny would never have happened. But noooope; we have to go all soft hearted and keep Ashford alive even after he’s proven to be utterly incompetent, so that way he can 100% go off the deep end, try to get everyone killed, and kill my favorite engineer!

Okay, I guess I should stop being mad about Sam’s death. Let’s move on. I guess. *sob*

Abaddon’s Gate marks the first shift in The Expanse away from dealing with scary protomolecule monsters, changing the protomolecule’s role from the origin of vomit zombies that can kill everyone to basically a technology that opens up this gateway to weird space. It’s a marked shift in tone that changes the focus of the series from the scariness of the protomolecule to people’s reactions to new and unknown situations.

Miller’s Back, Bitches!

Okay, I admit it. I basically started this book within minutes of finishing Caliban’s War because of the final chapter. Miller was back! And I wanted to see how his reincarnated character would interact with our favorite spaceship crew.

The beginning starts off a little anti-climactic, basically telling us he’s been speaking gibberish the entire time between the two books. But I really liked the reveal of *why* exactly he’s back, and in many ways, not back. Rather than using a contrived sci-fi explanation to reincarnate him, proto-Miller basically explains that no, Miller is in fact dead. There’s a protomolecule-like machine / entity that is using his personality as a base, but Miller is most certainly dead. Because of that, you get to see flashes of his personality, but he has his own motivations for existing, motivations that exist outside of what may or may not be important to the Rocinate’s crew.

That being said, at several points, their motivations do in fact intersect, and Miller ends up playing a key role in Holden figuring out what is up with the ring and why it exists, creating the catalyst for the next book. Moreover, it’s Miller that spells out the implications of what might happen if Ashford tries to blow up the ring with a laser and why *everyone* is in trouble from his insanity.

But more than anything, proto-Miller is entertaining in his banter with Holden. His character might technically be dead, but he still throws quips as well as real Miller did. And Holden’s exasperation in dealing with him is rather amusing from my point of view as the reader.

Mars and Their Badass Marines

What was I talking about before? Oh right. This story kills everyone I care about. If you’ve been reading my other Expanse reviews, you already know that I love the MCRN and basically think they’re the good guys in this whole mess. Well, we get to know some of their marines again in this book; not quite as well as Bobbie Draper, but well enough to be upset when bad things happen to them.

Sergeant Verbinski, commanding officer of the marines that are ordered to surrender to the Behemoth (against his own advice); sarcastic, skilled, fun. I loved his quips with Bull, both in the exchange where he reveals that he smuggled some grenades on board and in the exchange where he tells Bull that none of this would be a problem had he and his squad been allowed to keep their power armor. Moreover, he’s shown to be smart in making the correct strategic decisions to take and defend engineering, and to take out one of the baddies in the stolen martian power armor. His death, much like Sam’s was sudden and quick. One moment he’s there, the other he’s not. Honestly, I’m still not sure how he died exactly. Was it from injuries sustained defending engineering? Or did his EVA suit break or something?

Verbinski is backed up by his squadsmates, Juarez, sniper extraordinaire, who actually takes the shot that takes out the aforementioned baddie in the stolen martian power armor. Even when he’s out of bullets, he’s still sighting for his fellow marine, Cass, still taking shots. With soldiers like these, how does the MCRN ever lose any battles? But of course, since Abaddon’s Gate likes to kill or at least severely maim all the good guys, Juarez gets his guts shot out when they try and take the bridge. Of course…

But okay, I’ve spent a lot of time on what seem like tertiary characters up until now. They’ve been my favorites. And they’re all dead. Let’s move on to some of the main POV characters.

Bull

To me, Bull is Fred Johnson Lite; Strong, self-sacrificing, and selfless, he spends the entire book getting the shaft. He should be Captain of the Behemoth, but since he’s officially from Earth and Belters are a bunch of racist assholes, he is relegated to 2nd officer. However, Fred puts Bull in the unenviable position where he has to be in charge without the power and authority to actually do so, which inevitably leads to the power struggle that defines the conflict on the Behemoth. Honestly, Fred Johnson should have been smart enough to see that coming.

Poor Bull. He gets crippled; all he wants to do is get everyone safely out of the slow zone. But he has to deal with all sorts of bullshit just to do so. In fact, he has to engineer a freaking mutiny to get his Captain to stop making idiotic decisions. And then, when he’s finally right and victorious, the new Captain / old XO decides to basically put him under minimum security guard instead of spacing him or putting him  in a more secure prison. So he has to take his crippled ass, take back engineering, and then basically fight back against almost invincible antagonists in martian power armor.

Oh, and of course, since this is Abaddon’s Gate and he’s a likeable character, he dies. At least he takes out a few of the bad guys with him.

Can you sense my frustration with this story?!??!

Clarissa Mao/ Melba

Okay, so one very different thing that Abaddon’s Gate brought us that the other Expanse books didn’t was having one of the POV characters be one of the antagonists. We’re brought into the thoughts of Clarissa Mao, who has concocted honestly a pretty damn good scheme to character assassinate + actually assassinate James Holden.

Unfortunately, since we’re already firmly on the side of the Rocinate‘s crew, it’s hard to empathize with the poor rich girl trying to get vengeance on her (evil) father’s behalf and murder our favorite protagonists. It’s even harder to do so when you see her murder innocents like Ren along the way because they were too nice / too smart.

I assume Corey’s purpose in showing us Clarissa’s POV is to tell a story of redemption, of a person misguided by their upbringing, who then realizes the wrongs that she’s doing and who ultimately redeems herself.

Except…this entire situation is her fault in the first place! I, the reader, don’t forgive her. I wanted her spaced in the first place, and just because she ends up playing a pivotal role in keeping Holden and Co. alive later doesn’t absolve her of her original guilt!

I’m pretty sure I missed the entire overarching theme that I was supposed to see about forgiveness and redemption, but oh well.

Ashford

I find it rather amusing that when Clarissa is in her cell next to Ashford, she doesn’t listen to his rantings, and then later thinks to herself “Wait, what was that guy saying? Why is he acting all crazy?” Because I feel like that is pretty similar to what I felt whenever Ashford went from incompetent, insecure idiot to homicidal maniac bent on trapping/killing everyone in the slow zone.

It was such a large character shift I had to go back and re-read to see if I missed anything. Nearest I can figure, he just went crazy after his crew mutinied on him, and his insecurity drove him to want to save his ego by trapping everyone in the slow zone to “save” everyone at home. When I think about it though, that doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand how anyone that stupid could ever have ascended the ranks, even in the OPA, where command structure is a little more loose.

He becomes fully unhinged once he’s loose. Remember before, when he was upset that Bull spaced the drug dealer? That painted a picture of a man who cared about his crew, who was upset that one of his own was killed without due process. Next thing I know, he’s ordering roaming death squads, deciding that everyone in the slow zone needs to die, and shooting Sam in the face! (*sob*). Makes no sense at all that he’d get that unhinged because of some people questioning his command.

But oh well, stories need unlikeable antagonists, right? So we got one.

Final Thoughts

Okay, so you’ve heard me rant…a lot in this review. Now it’s time for me to say that I still thought my time reading it was time well spent. The entire last 20% of the book is a very well written action sequence where our crew of good guys tries to take engineering, fails to hold it, and hunkers down in the broadcast booth to try and send out the message of what Ashford is trying to do and how it’s going to get everyone killed. This will be an enjoyable sequence to watch on The Expanse if the show lasts that long. I found the book very hard to put down once the action started flowing, and I imagine watching it will be just as great.

With hindsight, Sam’s death evoked the emotional reaction I think that Casey was going for. It was sudden, unexpected, and affected me and all our cast of good guys deeply. I think the point was to illustrate just how serious the situation was, and that Ashford had gone off the deep end. It still sucks, I can see why it was important for the story.

Bull got a hero’s death, which at the end of the day, is in the vein of what his character was all about: self sacrifice for the good of others. He got the shit end of the stick, took it, and made the most of it, helping our cadre of good guys as best he could in the process.

Our martian marines? They took out several people with them, and helped to display the awesome military might of the MCRN Marine Corps, showing that Bobbie Draper is not the only person from Mars worth a damn in a fight.

The overarching themes of forgiveness and redemption were kind of lost on me (Sorry Anna!), but I always tend to struggle with those concepts anyway.

The big takeaway from this book though is that it changes the entire tone of the series. We’re no longer confined to our solar system. There are Stargates rings that we can go through now, leading to brand new planets in other solar systems! The promolecule creators are revealed to be mortal, and have mysteriously disappeared! Moreover, the protomolecule itself changes from this big scary thing that might end humanity to well…the heart of some new mysterious technology? THAT was a large, series altering shift.

Abaddon’s Gate sets the scene nicely to lead into Cibola Burn, where the focus again continues to shift away from the protomolecule. I’ll see you there (and hopefully more of our friends don’t die along the way *sob*)!

“Good, because I don’t use sex as a weapon. I use weapons as weapons.”

-Bobbie Draper

“My last act in this universe isn’t going to be fucking up everything I did right up to now.”

“No, actually, it should be fine. This is all posturing. As long as they keep comparing dicks, no one will shoot.”

-Chrisjen Avasarala

It’s the Avasarala and Bobbie show! Caliban’s War brought us two new, very likeable protagonists, strong and entertaining in very different ways. Moreover, we got to take more of a look at my favorite faction, Mars and the MCRN!

In most ways, Caliban’s War is actually very different from Leviathan Wakes. The overall tone of the book is much less gloomy, the protomolecule plays less of a front and center role, and…fewer vomit zombies, so that way nobody can criticize The Expanse as just being zombies in space. Hooray!

Bobbie Draper

First off, Bobbie is my favorite character in this book. She an MCRN marine (and we’ve already established that I *love* the MCRN), and you get to see her mental struggles in this book, first with the PTSD that she experiences after her squadmates die on Ganymede; and  then later with the situation she’s thrown into on Earth, working for Avasarala and having to deal with her inner struggles of what to do as an MCRN marine working for a UN politician. Is she loyal? Is she a traitor to Mars?

I really liked having another genuinely good character that wasn’t Holden too. For example, the entire firefight to take Mao’s yacht, she exercises incredible restraint in trying to kill or injure the fewest amount of people, recognizing that the crew of the yacht aren’t evil; they’re just trying to do their jobs. I mean, part of that was her PTSD from seeing her friends killed on Ganymede, but nevertheless. Speaking of…

Her PTSD is a recurring theme throughout the whole book. You see it immediately addressed in the beginning, as the MCRN teams her up with a counselor who forces her to deal with it, and then especially at the end, where she faces off against one of the Protomolecule hybrids. Corey does a great job of illustrating her state of mind as the Rocinate goes towards Ganymede, especially through describing the dreams she was having of facing off vs it (and dying!). Their final battle was very climactic and rewarding.

Chrisjen Avasarala

Now, on to everyone else’s favorite character, Avasarala, our walking, talking, cursing favorite grandmother and political player haha. Whereas Bobbie is a walking example of virtue, Avasarala is written a lot more deeply, with nuances to everything she says and does.

Corey does a great job of writing us into her head, either when she’s contemplating making a move and weighing the alternatives, or when she’s flat out explaining to Holden or to Draper why something that they’re thinking is a bad idea. You really get a great insight into her political mind and her calculated actions.

The whole debacle with getting on Mao’s yacht is a great example of it. You’ve got Bobbie basically stating what we, the readers, are thinking: Don’t get on the yacht! It’s a trap! You’ll die! And Avasarala knows it’s a bunk move, but she goes ahead and does it anyway since her political clout is enough to keep her safe at the very least. Plus, she knows that the political consequences of NOT getting on the yacht are awful, basically losing all of her political clout that she spent years, no decades, procuring.

In addition, there’s the whole episode where she sees that the Rocinate is in trouble and boards it in order to keep Holden and his crew safe. She basically forces her way on to the vessel, over Holden’s misgivings, so that way nobody can fire on it and kill them. Plus, she has that wonderful exchange with Holden where she basically calls him an idiot and the cause of all the solar system’s problems because he can’t stop broadcasting everything he learns. In a way, she’s Miller 2.0, just as entertaining, but with a different perspective on why Holden is dumb haha.

Prax

Okay, so I may have lied when I said this was the Bobbie Draper and Chrisjen Avasarala show. There was an entire subplot with Prax and his kid. Well, subplot, main plot, whatever.

Prax is supposed to be Protagonist A in this story, since so many of the chapters are his. he’s supposed to be this virtuous father, trying against all odds to get his daughter back despite having no training to do so. Alas, I found him whiny and idiotic, moreso than Holden, and as Avasarala said in the book “the bar’s not low.”

He gets *SO MANY* people killed, starting with that firefight on Ganymede that he starts (but doesn’t finish!). I felt really bad for the security troop that Holden encountered on Ganymede. Here they are, minding their own business, just trying to find their way off this godforsaken rock that’s running out of food, and they basically turn into Holden’s redshirts. The first of them dies in this idiotic firefight that Prax starts because he cocks his gun for no reason.

Well, I guess I can’t say no reason. For a stupid reason. Because he’s brash and emotional and doesn’t know the consequences of his actions…like cocking a gun in a tense situation where everyone has guns pointed at each other. Sheesh, now I feel like Avasarala lecturing Holden…

More than that, he’s never rational at any point in the story. And I mean, I get some of that. Corey’s trying to show that a father trying to get his little girl back won’t do rational things. But I’m also reading this from the perspective of Holden or Avasarala. When they approach Io and the base is basically saying “get anywhere near us and we’ll shoot all these protomolecule monsters to Mars”, the clear thing to do is to just glass the installation. Why Avasarala doesn’t just immediately order that is beyond me.

Well, I guess not beyond me. It’s for Prax. We’re going to risk thousands of lives in the ships surrounding Io and THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF MARS in order to save Prax’s little girl. Look, I get it. He’s important to her. But every person on Mars, every crewman in the ships above Io, is important to someone. That is a terrible risk/reward proposition.

He doesn’t even learn his lesson, insisting on accompanying the away team down to Io, and at first not understanding why he doesn’t get a gun this time. More than that, he almost falls for the idiotic statements of Dr. Strickland, the very person who kidnapped his little girl in the first place!

“I don’t need to kill you. I have my daughter back. Revenge isn’t important to me.” he says to Strickland. WHAAAAT?!?! You just spent forever moving heaven and earth to get your daughter back, risking everyone’s lives in the process, and you can’t even finish the man who did this to you? Good thing my boy Amos was there.

So, in case you can’t tell already, Prax was a very frustrating character for me…

Epic Space Battles!

But maybe my favorite part of the entire The Expanse series up until now happened here in the pages of Caliban’s War: the space battle between the 5 UN warships and the 5 MCRN warships + the Rocinate. In typical Corey fashion, the action itself happens over a few pages, and happens quickly. Space out for a minute and you’ll miss it. But why would you space out during the epic space battle?!

It’s no secret that I love Mars and the MCRN, so getting to see the MCRN ships in action (and not getting blown to pieces like the poor Donnager) was wonderful. Having the Rocinate score the critical hit that turned the tide of the entire battle was a nice touch as well. Corey does a great job of illustrating just how tense and close the battle is, even though the MCRN in this case has tactical and numerical superiority. It only takes one missile to breach to turn the entire tide of the battle, and everything that’s happening is either focused on landing that hit, or making sure that the PDDs do their job of deflecting the torpedoes.

Unresolved Questions

One thing I didn’t get at the end though was how Prax, or anyone else for that matter, would be able to go back to Ganymede. I thought Holden had seen the protomolecule start eating the place up, turning into a larger version of Eros? There is no way to scrub the planet of that, so how exactly did *anyone* go back to Ganymede to rebuild after?

“You didn’t watch Firefly, did you? Admit it! Not when it was on air, anyway. You didn’t watch, and the show was canceled. It’s basically your fault.”

Like so many others, I started watching The Expanse because of the well written article above which basically guilt tripped me into watching because well…I loved Firefly, and the article said this was the best bit of sci-fi since! They were right. I binge watched the entire series over the course of 2 weeks, and then…I was hungry for more!

I’ve never been so intrigued by a show that I couldn’t wait until the next season to figure out what happened. Not even with *gasp* Game of Thrones. But The Expanse? I *had* to know what happened next. And so I picked up Leviathan Wakes!

You’d think reading about events that you’ve already seen happen would be boring, but you would be wrong! I read up to where the show left off in a mere 3 days, and the continuation of the story past the season finale was amazing. I’m so glad I picked up the book and continued the story. So if you’re asking yourself “Is it worth it to read The Expanse books if I’m already watching?” the answer is a resounding yes.

When I picked up this book, I was afraid that the book wouldn’t be able to live up to the expectations that the show had given me.

Not really a problem at all, it turns out! The scenes were written so well that it didn’t matter. The action unfolded differently than the way the show portrayed it, so it was still full of surprises. PLUS, the show stopped about ⅔’s of the way through the first book, so all the shit that went down with Eros after the Protomolecule murdered everyone on it was new to me.

Impressions

I especially liked how the book portrayed the three different factions, Earth, Mars, and the OPA. It gave the members of each of them distinct personalities. Mars, militaristic and driven, probably the smartest of the three. Earth, so populous that it could never have consensus on anything, creating a plausible reason for why it is always so slow to respond. The OPA, made hard and ruthless by circumstance; definitely the poorest, and the most desperate to do something, anything, when shit goes down.

Personally, I’m a fan of the MCRN, but my friend tells me that’s just because I like their shiny ships, like the Donnager haha. I like to believe it’s because I like their efficiency and drive, and because in the book, they are basically as close to good guys as you can get. They get accused of starting a war, which from their perspective, they KNOW they didn’t do, then lose their freaking flagship to mystery vessels, and *still* have the presence of mind and integrity to risk everything getting Holden off of their ship. Every Martian on the Donnager basically dies a hero. They’re good guys in my book.

But enough about me gushing over Mars; let’s head back to the story. Another thing I really liked about the book was the unpredictability of how things unfolded. There wasn’t really a point where I went “Oh yeah, this is obviously where the story is headed.” Julie being dead and pro-moleculed was a surprise to me. Miller not basically joining the Rocinate crew and going on space adventures with them was the exact *opposite* of what I had expected to happen. Miller deciding to off himself was definitely not what I had expected; hell, even the solution to save Earth by driving Eros into Venus was a surprise.

Also, and you’ll hear this a lot from other places as well, I loved how the show tried to keep true to the science and difficulties of living in outer space. The scene where the crew is trying to board the Donnager in the hangar bay? I loved how the gravity cut out, forcing Holden and Naomi into the air; I especially loved Holden’s response to kick Naomi away from him in order to generate the force necessary to get back to the ground and mag lock his boots. I loved watching it when I saw episode 4 of the Expanse and I loved reading about it in print. It just showed how dedicated the authors were to writing with scientific integrity.

Book Amos vs Show Amos

Two characters that imo are pretty different in the show vs in the book are Amos and Holden. Let’s start with Amos, since show Amos is probably my favorite character.

In the show, he is the perfect combination of ruthless, pragmatic, intelligent, strong, but compassionate. Yeah, his moral compass might be a little bit to the darker side, but hell, that’s what he’s friends with Naomi for. Someone called it “outsourcing his moral compass”, and I think that’s the perfect phrase.

The show built his character with two strong scenes that didn’t really happen in the book. First, he suits up to murder the MCRN patrol guys when he realizes that they probably won’t have enough time to crack the safe that’s holding the secret phrase that will keep them all alive. Show Holden goes down there and threatens to kill him if he opens fire on the MCRN cops in a show of naivete, pointing a gun at him at point blank range. Most people? They’d freak out. Show Amos? He basically says “Yeah, if you’re going to do it, go ahead. You’ve got the shot.”, showing that he understands the situation, and that he knows what has to happen to keep everyone alive if they’re boarded. Intelligent, ruthless.

Second, in the Brothel scene in the show, he’s shown to be intelligent again, this time in a different way when he advises a prostitute that a certain other patron looks to have bad intentions because of a concealed weapon. This is actually radically different from book Amos, since book Amos is shown to enjoy whoring, letting his guard down then and show Amos actually abstains from whoring, but knows how to spot trouble in the same situations.

I rather like what they did with show Amos, showing him as much more cunning than book Amos. I can see why many people basically thought of book Amos as Jayne from Firefly; he’s written in a similar vein: strong, aloof, not terribly smart, but doesn’t need to be. Show Amos on the other hand is extremely smart, is perpetually vigilant instead of aloof, and is shown to not blindly trust like book Amos. He is a much more deep character in the show than in the book; I almost find that the author uses book Amos more as a tool than anything else, but maybe that’s just because that’s kind of what book Holden does generally. Speaking of Holden…

Book Holden vs Show Holden

As much as I liked show Amos vs book Amos, I’d have to say the opposite is true for show Holden vs book Holden. I feel like they made show Holden so much…dumber than his book counterpart. I mean, both of them are characterized as naive. I like how both Holdens had to have it spelled out for them that immediately broadcasting everything they knew was killing people because people then acted on imperfect information.

But show Holden is portrayed as so much dumber in my opinion, and that’s too bad. What I think the writers were trying to do was showcase his naivete in the extreme to have him grow later as a character. We’ll see if that works. It’s hard to carry a show when your audience thinks the protagonist is an idiot haha.

Miller

One thing that both the books and the show got right though was Miller. Hooo-boy, did they get that right. I’ve already said that my favorite character is show Amos, but Miller comes really close. I think this is a popular opinion amongst the rest of the interwebz as well.

One thing that surprised me a ton was when Miller got sacked. Certainly, the circumstances in the show and in the book were a little different (in the show, because he got too close to the truth; in the book because he started drinking and slacking off on the job), but with the plot armor most characters have, I definitely didn’t see that coming.

One thing book Miller has on show Miller though is that since you’re party to his thoughts, you can see why he was so obsessed with Julie more clearly. In the show, I was pretty confused as to how Miller got so fascinated with Julie and just kind of rolled with it so that way I could understand the story. In the book, you see him slowly get more interested and build up this image of Julie that he wants to chase. It’s built up well, and I like how ghost Julie echoes his inner thoughts after he finds her protomoleculed on Eros.

I really did think that once he and the Rocinate crew met up, they would join up and become one happy family. I was pretty pissed at Holden when he freaked out and kicked Miller off of the ship for shooting Protogen’s mad scientist; and I definitely did not see him volunteering to off himself on Eros because he’s depressed and feels he has nothing left to live for. He’s a complex character yo haha.

I very much liked how Corey put him as Holden’s foil, contrasting his experience and efficiency with Holden’s naivete and idealism. The whole incident with Protogen’s mad scientist was the perfect example of that. Miller’s not the law; he’s justice, and when he shoots the Protogen guy’s smug, stupid face, it is perfectly in character and you, as the reader, definitely empathize more than a little with him.

Showing him slowly crumbling after that, after he loses his remaining purpose in life, is sad, but poetic in a way. I’m glad that he ended up getting to be a hero at the end of the story, basically being *the* reason that Eros doesn’t crash into the Earth and kill everyone there. It was a fitting end. Miller did what needed to be done, and had no qualms about it.

Final Thoughts

I am so glad I took the time to read Leviathan Wakes. The nuanced differences between the show and the book were great to appreciate, and I loved getting into the heads of Holden and Miller to better understand their motivations.

Plus, I wouldn’t have learned about all the cool things that happened after Eros is infected for *another year* if I had been lame and waited for the next season like I did with Game of Thrones. Continuation of that storyline in and of itself is worth reading Book 1.

I’m sad book Amos is less cool than show Amos, but oh well. Getting to hang out in Miller’s head and see his interactions with ghost Julie kind of make up for it. Plus, book Holden is less of a dufus than show Holden, and isn’t it nice when the main character isn’t dumb?

So, are you thinking about reading Leviathan Wakes after watching The Expanse Season 1? Do it. It’s so worth it. If you like it (and I’m sure you will), keep on going to Caliban’s War. I’ll meet you there.

“I don’t know a damned thing, Elvi. Neither do you. I’m rich in interpretation and poor in datasets, just the same as you.” – Fayez

I think that line might have been my favorite in the entire book haha. I can’t wait to use it in real life and have nobody at all understand what I’m talking about, either because the phrase is so peculiar or (more probably) because nobody has any idea what I’m referencing. Nevertheless, I love it, and think it epitomizes both just a straight up funny line and what the author made me feel while I was reading this book. Hell, when I was reading this series.

Unlike Abaddon’s Gate, I didn’t see most of what happened in Cibola Burn happening until it occurred. Hell, true to Corey’s writing style, I could (and did) glaze over a page or two sometimes and have huge, story-altering events happen without me noticing, prompting a “huh?” moment and forcing me to go back and re-read what just occurred. The twists in this book kept coming, and I was surprised at how everything ended up.

Miller

I still can’t believe Miller’s dead. He was such an awesome character, and I really liked his interactions with Holden once he became a ghost / protomolecule puppet. I’m a little sad that I won’t get to read the banter between the two again.

Plus, his death was so sudden and quick; I had to go back and re-read it to understand what just occurred. So he basically networked into everything on the planet, got smashed in the face for his troubles by multiple robots that didn’t want to die along with him, and then eventually got pushed into the dark spot that killed everything. And this all took space in the span of…5 pages? Oookay. I kind of thought he deserved more than that, but I know that Corey tends to make huge, story-altering changes happen on a dime, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

The Epilogue

That being said, I really liked how Corey wrapped up the story at the end, finally showing the long term ramifications of all the events on Ilus. Up until now, this had seemed like a self-contained episode of Star Trek or something, where at the end, everything kind of resets, minus a few dead extras.

So with the colonists and the RCE personnel now getting along on Ilus, this sets the precedent that everyone is free to go through the gates now and colonize their own worlds, eh? That really sucks for my favorite faction, Mars. Avasarala really put it in context when she mentioned that if even 20% of Mars went “Well fuck terraforming this barren rock” and instead went to go and colonize other planets, the basic foundation of the MCRN would crumble.

It’s funny how much the tone has changed in these novels from Leviathan Wakes. I kind of wonder if this was truly the plan all along, or if this is just kind of how things evolved. The tone of Leviathan Wakes was so much darker and, let’s face it, vomit zombie focused and now it’s like the Protomolecule is just a thing that people live around that they don’t worry about. So different.

I’m not sure which one I prefer, actually. The current one now is certainly much more grandiose, with Holden’s actions affecting everyone on a political and cultural scale. Don’t really have a choice now though, do I? So I guess I’ll roll with the newer one as we roll into Nemesis Games.

Murtry

Speaking of newer things, we got a few new characters to get to know this time around. It’s funny how my feelings on Murtry changed from the beginning of the book to the end; I’d almost say the way that Corey wrote it borders on character assassination.

In the beginning, I was actually super pro-Murtry. I mean, he sees a shuttle he’s supposed to protect BLOW UP, taking out all sorts of equipment and killing several people, including the leader of the expedition. THEN, he sees 5 of his security people murdered in cold blood.

I would have shot Coop in the head too.

I mean, he shows remarkable constraint in the beginning in my opinion. Sure, he could have picked a better time to murder Coop than immediately after Holden shows up on Ilus, but…meh. From his perspective, he tried to play nice and play by the rules, and so far the result is that tons of his people are dead.

So I can understand where he comes from originally. What I don’t 100% get is his descent into…craziness? At the end of the book, he is just super gung ho about protecting RCE’s claim to the planet, to the point where he’s willing to have everyone die for it. And why? I don’t really get that. His motive before was to protect people. Sure, by ruthless means, but he wasn’t ever a dick just for the sake of being one.

But near the end? He’s telling the Edward Israel to go and fuck up the Rocinate’s rescue mission just…because? To be a dick in sort of retaliation? If nothing else, Murtry is a very realistic man, and I don’t think he would ever have ordered that. For one thing, he has to know he would take pretty heavy casualties doing that, casualties that he can’t afford. His engineers should be working on solving the no-fusion problem, not running around being militia. For a second thing, he is shown to be pretty pragmatic; messing up the Rocinate’s rescue efforts of the Barbapiccola wouldn’t help him even a little bit. His people are still going to die!

I don’t get that, and I’m a little sad that the story seemed to go to such great lengths to color a gray villain into a black one. Oh well. On to less gray chacters!

Elvi

Let’s talk about Elvi. I’m sure this is the way that Corey meant to picture her, but she is basically like the perfect girl in this story. I would kill to be Fayez. She’s hot, she’s smart, she’s quirky, she’s…a little naive? She stays right in character the entire book, growing from her experiences bust basically staying true to her character.

I should have probably seen it coming that she would end up being the heroine of the story, but honestly, I kind of thought she was going to die multiple times in the story haha. The Expanse isn’t Game of Thrones, but people who make poor decisions definitely still die from them.

Havelock

My only regret with Havelock’s story is that he never got to interact with Miller’s ghost haha. I really wanted some interactions along the lines of “Hey Partner. You kind of look weird in your bug-carapace suit” from Havelock to Miller, but oh well.

Havelock is probably the character that grows the most through the book, even more than Basia in my opinion. You can tell his perspective really shift as the story goes on, from idolizing Murtry to eventually coming to the realization that “This is fucked up.” and helping Naomi to escape.

My favorite section of the book actually might have been the battles that he had with the militia he trained. The conversations he was having with his old team as he was shooting them and telling them what they were doing wrong were downright hilarious. “Hey, that was a good idea with the mag boots taking cover. You left your knee too far out though” (paraphrased obviously).

Basia

I know that Basia was Protagonist B in this story, and I say this knowing full well I may be in the minority, but I really disliked Basia’s character. He is just whiny all the time, and generally makes shit go pear-shaped the entire book.

Maybe the point was that he was acting like an idiot because he lost his son earlier and that was coloring all of his decisions. If so, kudos. If not…I just really hated his character.

It’s sweet that he gets to end up on the colony with his family at the end, but I couldn’t help but think of the colonists that he helped to kill at the beginning of the book. I mean, i know that he grows as a character as well through the book, coming to feel remorse for his actions and all that but…it just seems like in a universe where poor decisions net you poor consequences, Basia got a generally happy ending at the end. And that irks me some.

Unresolved Questions

Uh…didn’t the aftermath of the fusion reactor blowing up flatten like basically everything on the planet? How are the remaining colonists/RCE staff going to live there? They already established that almost nothing there is edible. There are still death slugs everywhere on the planet that will mess people up when it rains. And even though the oncocidals helped people manage the micro-organisms that made people blind, they will run out of those eventually, right? What happens the next time it rains?

I guess it’s not quite important, but I don’t get how anyone’s going to stay on that planet. It’s okay though; minor detail. We’ll just accept it to keep the story rolling haha.

Final Thoughts

With recency bias, I think this might be my favorite The Expanse book to date. Correcting for recency bias, I guess I can stick it right behind Leviathan Wakes and definitely in front of Caliban’s War and Abaddon’s gate. The characters were more interesting and relate-able in this story, especially compared to the ones in Abaddon’s Gate (Sorry Bull; Not sorry Clarissa).

I liked how I wasn’t able to predict what was going to happen with any sort of accuracy. The fusion reactor blowing up? Out of left field. Miller DYING? Waaaay out of left field. The possibility of Amos being dead? I thought he had the thickest plot armor ever. I was freaking out.

And I really liked how the epilogue set up the premise for Nemesis Games. Seems like it will be a very different kind of story, and I’m looking forward to the adventure. I love The Expanse.