These past three or so weeks, I’ve been continuing with my journey throughout the Expanse book series! This is the sixth one of the bunch, and it was pretty good! Spoilers ahead for the previous books on the series, I guess.
Most of the time for my reviews I try to do my own summary of things, but this time I am a little lazy, so excuse me if I copy-paste the one on the back cover:
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 pray, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them.
James Holden and his crew know the strenghts 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 han only just begun.
Okay so, this book really is—as the whole series has been—kind of awesome. And it continues the story of the previous one almost immediately.
This entry features a lot of different points of view, and I have to admit, it’s probably the strangest decision of the book, it provides a lot of cool information, but it can be confusing. We will see the different angles, not just from the crew of the Rocinante’s, but also some returning characters like Avasarala, and from people on the Free Navy or the Belt other than the main antagonists.
I have to admit I was a bit lost a couple of times, as some new character was mentioned and they had crewmates that I didn’t know and then we saw a chapter with the view of that other crewmate, and I can’t help but wonder why not just stay with one of the perspectives? It works out in the end but it’s a bit confusing.
The conflict itself was really, really interesting and multi-faceted. I quite enjoyed how the main antagonist devolves into madness as the story goes on, the guy is totally crazy for power, and how that affects the Free Navy and the solar system at large was fascinating.
I was also happy to see the crew back together again since the previous book had everyone all over the place, and there are also some new friends made along the way!
While the conflict of the book is quite big and deals with a lot of different sides and variables, it must be said that it also feels like something else is being setup for the next one. There’s a couple questions lingering since a book or two ago that are still unanswered.
Unlike pretty much every book since this one, there’s no mention of alien activity of any kind. There’s not scientific mystery or cosmical phenomenon, or a carastrophic planet-sized event to be found here.
What you will find though, is some epic space battles and chase sequences. Humans against humans, as usual. The moment to moment action was just epic to read, and I was helplessly flying through the pages as I realized that somehow I had read four chapters in one sitting, and counting.
There are some incredible plot twists ahead that will change the future of the political landscape going forward, and that’s something I’m really interested on, to see how the next book continues.
So yeah, good book, go read the whole series now!
