Tag: Abaddon’s Gate

September Reading Roundup

This will be a short post. Honestly I feel a bit silly writing it at all, because I only read two books in September, and I just reviewed both of them this week. But for consistency’s sake, here I am.

September was, as I’ve said, a pretty crazy month. I moved down to D.C. at the end of August. I spent the first half of September learning my way around my new neighborhood in Arlington as well as learning the metro system and the route to and from my new workplace. Then I started work at the FCC. That was a whole new kind of exhausting. During law school, I longingly looked forward to the time when I would work a nine-to-five job and have oodles of time in the evenings to do whatever I wanted. This is not how it works. There’s food to be cooked and dishes to be done and vacuuming and general cleanup, and after eight hours of work I’m tired.

I’m really enjoying my work at the FCC. I’m learning a lot—I still don’t feel like I can do anything on my own but I’m understanding what’s going on a little more every day—and I’m exactly where I want to be. But when I get home from work, I’m tired. And on top of that, I spent a lot of time in September finishing revisions for my middle grade fantasy novel. Those are done now, and since then I’ve read four books and I’m onto a fifth. But I only read two books in September.

One was an audiobook, and one was an audiobook for the first half and then Braille for the third quarter and then text-to-speech for the last quarter because I got lazy. Unfortunately, I had mixed feelings about both books. Collage of the covers of the two books I read in September, Abaddon's Gate and Akata Warrior

First, I read Abaddon’s Gate by James S. A. Corey. This was the third book in The Expanse series. After the first book, which was fine, and the second book, which I loved, I found this book to be kind of so-so. I’m not sure if it was because it suffered from being a middle book in the series or if my growing suspicion that this series isn’t for me is correct. I’m going to read the fourth book when I get it out of the library, but if it’s like the third book I might give it up. My full review is right over here.

Second, I read Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okoraforh, the sequel to Akata Witch. I actually started Akata Warrior in August but it took me a long time to get through. There was a lot I liked about this book, particularly Sunny’s relationship with her brother. But it also felt kind of scattered and telly. I admit this might be because of all the times I changed how I was reading it, and I’d definitely be willing to reread this book or read any subsequent books in this world. But on the whole I liked the first book in the series a lot better. And if you’re interested, my full review is here.

And that’s it. I’ve been reading more now that I’m settled into a routine, so expect more reviews soon.

Abaddon’s Gate Review

Cover of Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. CoreyI 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.