I didn’t read too much in September. Given that I was unpacking and organizing my new apartment and learning my way around my new neighborhood and also D.C. and then starting a new job and also working on revisions for my book, this isn’t at all surprising. But I finally got my hands on the third book in The Expanse series, Abaddon’s Gate by James S. A. Corey, and now that I have a little more time on my hands, I’m going to give individual book reviews a try again.
As usual, there won’t be any spoilers for this book, but as it is the third book in a series, I can’t promise there won’t be spoilers for the earlier books. I have spoiler-free reviews for Leviathan Wakes and Caliban’s War here and here, so if you haven’t read those that’s probably a better place to start. Otherwise read on at your own risk.
We pick up a bit after the end of Caliban’s War. Holden and co are doing pretty well running their own ship and taking odd jobs to keep the lights on. The protomolecule has been doing pretty well too. It’s left Venus and flown out past Neptune, where it formed a giant ring that appears to be a wormhole to who knows where. Everybody is pretty freaked out by this. Ships from Earth, Mars, and the OPA are all flying out there to study it, but of course they’re war ships and no one can forget Ganymede. And on one of those ships is Clarissa Mao, sister to Julie Mao, the protomolecule’s first victim in the first book, and daughter of big bad Mao who Holden got arrested. Honestly I can’t remember his name. The point is, Clarissa is bent on revenge, and she’s put in place a plan to get Holden out to the ring and then to destroy him. And I don’t want to say more than that because there will be spoilers.
This book came down somewhere in the middle for me. I enjoyed the science, and the politics were kind of fun. But we were missing my favorite characters from Caliban’s War. And the reverend and the security guy whose points of view we had didn’t really interest me. Okay, I liked the security guy. Also, it just took a long time to get going. I was more than halfway through before I really got into it, and then I couldn’t put it down. I will also say that I really loved Clarissa’s arc and hope we see more of her in future books. As with the other books, I found it a little too violent for my tastes (pro tip, this is not a book to read while you’re eating lunch).
On the whole, this was a fine book. I enjoyed it, in the end, but it took a while to get there, and there were enough aspects that weren’t to my taste that meant I ended up kind of disappointed. I’m starting to think that this series just might not be for me. I’ll probably give the fourth book a shot, and I might try the television show, but we’ll see.
My opinion here is pretty much entirely based on personal taste. This is a really well-written book, the characters are fun and interesting, and I bet the series is going somewhere really cool. If you’ve absolutely loved the first two books, you might really like this one. So definitely don’t let my scattered and meh opinion dissuade you from reading this. And if you’ve already read Abaddon’s Gate, I’d love to know what you think.