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all content © VM (Vicky) Brasseur and licensed under CC BY-SA

Originally posted on 20 Sep 2024

1 minute read

I never got into The Expanse books, though I enjoyed the show a lot. I mean, I tried to get into them but there are so many that I couldn’t easily figure out where to start and it wasn’t worth the effort to do that. There were other books to read instead. When I heard that Corey had written the first in a new series, I knew this was my chance not to get confused by a scattered backlog of stories.

I hopped into the library hold queue, and my turn came up a week before I was to leave on a trip. I pounded through the book so I could get it to the next person in line before I left (and so I didn’t have to pack a hardback book).

Even just reading the notes on the book jacket shows that Corey have already figured out a lot of the plot that will extend throughout the series, which is made more obvious by some of the jacket information not happening in this book. That was a bit confusing for a while, as I kept expecting a reveal that never occurred.

In general though, it was a solid piece of space opera. There are humans, aliens, and conflict. Pretty much what you’d expect, and well-executed.

Apparently Corey are once again doing the thing where they release novels and then a whole bunch of novellas in the same universe. I saw mention that the first of those novellas is due out this month. I am not impressed. Those novellas contributed to the confusion of how to approach the Expanse series. I don’t want to deal with that here, as well.