Did you read the first two?

If you read the first two and enjoyed them, read this one.

If you have not read the first two, don't read this yet. Read them.

23 people found this helpful

3 stars until new characters stop being boring

I enjoyed the first and second book, and was ready for book three. But the first few chapters are mind numbingly boring. The root cause is the lesbian couple are wedged into this story, and I say that because they are boring, which indicates that they were just slapped in to check the box. Even side characters like Prax from book two were more interesting than this new cast of characters, and that was before I got to know him. I smell identity politics, and I am really hoping it is only a hiccup. I hate boring/bland characters.

20 people found this helpful

Best scifi series I've ever "read"!

This has got to be the best scifi series I've ever read. The depth and detail that the Authors put into this series really pulls you into the story. They have beautifully showed a very believable space age future for humans.

They have an elegant way of showing all sides of the human condition. The good, and the bad sides. Our compassion, and our prejudice. Our curiosity, and our blind self judgments.

I'm only three books in, but each one is getting better as they go along. Each character is so layered that I've developed a connection to them. I feel like Bastian in "Never Ending Story" huddled over the book. Screaming at the characters, hoping they succeed!

These authors belong among the greats of science fiction, like Arthur C Clarke. And this series is a must read for any true Science Fiction fan.

17 people found this helpful

Struggled to finish

The narrator of the series is still great. My problem with this 3rdbook in the series is that it meanders too much in one long event. The story doesn't move forward as quickly as I'd hoped. It's easy to see why the live action series used half of a season for this whole book. My other gripe with the series as a whole is it does not continue character stories throughout. You fall in love with characters like Roberta Draper, Chrisjen Avasarala or Pax and then you are left wondering what happened to them and what's going on in their lives, while meeting new characters far less interesting. All in all, it's a must read to continue the series, but it's by far the weakest of the first three. Here's hoping the next one is better.

9 people found this helpful

So much better than Season 3 of the Expanse

Books 1 & 2 followed the series pretty well. I could logically see why they needed to depart from the book (except where they had Bobbie and Cristjen randomly bump into the Roci in Space, that was dumb). But I really didn't like Season 3 (which I watched before reading). Using more this book directly would have made a much better season.

The characters were great. I hated Melba/Clarrisa so much at one point I started to hate the book because of her. Then her arc to redemption was amazing. The character Bull was one of the primary things missing from Season 3. He was the great flawed hero of the book, which took the light off of Holden being the main feature.

Also, Anna was so much better done in this than the show. The wrestling with her sheltered worldview in light of such horrors was outstanding.

The way the book wrestled through the challenges of such a new and strange thing directly were amazing. The first two were running from a faceless evil or a simple monster. Now they are presented with an unprecedented technology that is reacting in ways no one can understand. It felt very real and very human how they were responding to such a strange threat. The authors spent a lot of time thinking this through.

5 people found this helpful

Who else could convincingly give you a gay Methodist priestess wearing high-tech gear in another dimension chasing down a villain to save an outlaw?

It's hard to create science fiction worlds in which the things that happened feel like they are inevitably what should happen given how the alternate world works. Corey excels at creating a feeling of consistency. I found myself nodding and saying things like oh of course, of course that's what they would do next.

The other thing that Corey is amazing at is short descriptions of people's emotions. very easy to imagine how characters come across.

9 people found this helpful

Struggled to finish

The first part of the story was really good, but the last third seemed to drag on unnecessarily. Still glad I stuck with it until the end.

3 people found this helpful

Wow the show is better.

The pacing and self indulgent rambling sentences about characters who are not very Interesting hurts this novel. The first two and the fifth were much better, I have yet to listen to the 4th and beyond. I have heard the fourth is the best, in general, of the series.

2 people found this helpful

good climax

it started slow. not nearly as good start as the first two books. I was pretty bored at about the 30% mark. but it did pick up and brought me back in really well.

2 people found this helpful

Fleshes out and completes the seasons that have been shown to date!

I look forward now to hearing the story without remembering the remarkable similarities and occasional,mostly character changes and details compared and contrasted with the best hard sci-fi TV seasons I’ve seen (BSG still favorite fantasy sci-fi).

The author is a remarkable find. Just enough of the tech to sound like he’s been to the future and lived to return with perfect tone for each and every character and pacing - the former a precious and often rare gift to us all, the latter impressive to the extreme in that 3 books into it I am eager to continue, dreading only an inevitable end.

Or maybe not. I have intentionally not searched out this information!

I recommend this book - and the preceding two - first to anyone who’s seen the show and loved it because they not only do not diverge much from what they’ve seen, allowing an extraordinary revisit so far, but quite a bit more texture and deviation from some characters’ stories.

Secondly to anyone unfamiliar with the stories and who might shy away from fantastic storylines as a rule for any number of reasons but who still have an imagination capable of a *universal* scale, and those who have technical daydreams of what is very likely to come our way, and even those who prefer tense space warfare imagery, though this is not meant to scare off the more tentative among us at all.

There are theosophical debates to hand as one can imagine what can continue to develop over the next several centuries.

And finally for those who are primarily interested in the politics that will adjust to our eventual need and ability to spread out through our solar system all the way to the asteroids, we have plenty of meat for this feast.

2 people found this helpful