Tag: The Expanse

March and April Reading Roundup

March was a really busy month for me. So was April. And since we’re already in late May, I decided I better combine these two months into one post if I ever wanted to get it out there.

In March, I finished my revisions on my middle grade sci fi project; put in a lot of time at work to finish the first complete draft of a major project that I’ve been working on for almost a year; got my first covid vaccine; and basically slept for a week. Somewhere in there I also met my pedometer app’s monthly challenge of walking 105 miles in March, because the weather was generally pretty nice, and I read fifteen books. Eighteen if you count that yes I caved and reread the three Nevermoor books again. I’m not going to talk about the Nevermoor books again in this post, except to say, again, that if you haven’t read them, you really, really should.

Collage of the 29 books I read in March and AprilIn April, I got more edits on my middle grade sci fi project and did a lot of work on those revisions; put in a lot more time at work to finish that major project and release it into the world; had my parents visit for Easter; met my pedometer app’s April challenge to reach my step goal 17 times; got my second covid vaccine (yay!) and accompanying side effects; and ventured into a supermarket for the first time in a year. Oh, and I read fourteen books in April.

So let’s dive right in.

I started off March with Crownchasers by Rebecca Coffindaffer, a fun, fast space adventure with a lot of political intrigue. When the emperor dies, he kicks off a crown chase, a giant galaxy-wide scavenger hunt for the imperial seal, and he nominates his daughter to represent his family. But Alyssa doesn’t want anything to do with ruling a giant space empire. She just wants to fly her ship and discover cool stuff for the explorer’s guild. So she teams up with a friend who is also competing to help the friend win. Then someone starts killing the other competitors. This is not supposed to happen. And things get dicier from there. Like I said, this book was really fast and fun. It was perfect for the rainy Sunday I spent reading it at the very beginning of March. It did get a heck of a lot darker than I expected at the end, and it’s a good thing the sequel is coming out in October because it ends on a cliffhanger. This is one where I think how the sequel goes will determine how I feel about the first book and whether I recommend the whole series. So stay tuned.

Next, I read Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. I actually started it a while ago but my library copy expired. I need to stop getting all the books out of the library at once. Anyway, Legendborn is about a girl who goes to a precollege program the fall after her mother dies in a car crash and discovers a secret society of magic. Not only that, one of the members of the secret society was at the hospital the night her mother died and tampered with her memory. So she infiltrates the secret society to try and bigure out what’s going on, facing trials and a whole lot of racism, because the book is set in the south and she’s a young woman of color trying to get into a mostly white male organization. Also the secret society is basically the descendants of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. This is just such an amazing book. It has magic and mysteries and competitions and secrets, which is all great, but it also feels really important for representation and equality. I definitely recommend this book, however the sequel turns out, but also I can’t wait for the sequel.

After that, I read Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis. I want to make it clear that in general I like a lot of Lindsay Ellis’s YouTube videos, but I don’t follow her religiously. I also read Axiom’s End  before all the Twitter drama about her happened, and I don’t want to get into that here.  So, Axiom’s End. It’s about a young woman who gets entangled in a first contact scenario when she becomes the interpreter for an alien. There were certainly some things I enjoyed about this book, but on the whole, it was just okay. I found the writing overwrought and the characters kind of flat. At this point, almost two months after I read the book, I can’t remember the specifics of my feelings or the specifics of the book, which says a lot. It wasn’t a bad book, but it wasn’t a great book, and I probably wouldn’t recommend it.

I read a whole bunch of the Princess Diaries books in March: Princess in Waiting, Project Princess, Princess in Pink, and Princess in Training by Meg Cabot. In April, I read The Princess Present and Party Princess. These books continue to be a ton of fun, but I admit they’ve become a bit silly, and Mia’s worries and reactions seem a bit ridiculous. But we returned to the good old fashioned crazy drama with Princess in Training and that was really great. I think that was my favorite of the ones I read in the past couple months. I’m still definitely enjoying the series and can’t wait to read more.

Somewhere around the time I got my first vaccine shot and slept for a week (I suspect the sleeping was more caused by being super busy and pushing myself too hard than the vaccine), I gave in and reread all the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. I tried to keep myself out of the Twilight loop I got stuck in last summer by reading Midnight Sun right after Twilight, then going on to New Moon, then Eclipse, then Breaking Dawn. It only kinda sorta worked. Twilight has this way of drawing me in and trapping me like  a venus fly trap or something. Go ahead and judge me. I judge myself a little. Anyway I talked about these books at length last summer in this post about the original series and this post about Midnight Sun, so I’m not going to rehash it all here, but suffice it to say as problematic as these books are, and oh boy are they problematic, they are my guilty pleasure reads and I’m just going to accept that.

Next, I read the third Enchanted Forest Chronicles book, Calling on Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede. The wizards are at it again, and Morwin the witch and all of her glorious cats are trying to help Mendenbar and Cimorene, king and queen of the Enchanted Forest, stop them. This was a fun book, as usual, and oh what a cliffhanger, but it wasn’t as engaging as the other books, and some of the characters, like the giant talking rabit, were frankly annoying.

Then I read Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale. This is a retelling of a fairytale about a noble maiden and her servant locked in a tower by the maiden’s father after she refuses to marry the man he has chosen for her. Shannon Hale tells this story from the point of view of the servant, a girl named Dashti, as Dashti tries to take care of her mistress, Saren, and help them escape the tower. I normally really like Shannon Hale books, and I was excited to get my hands on this one, but honestly I was disappointed. This book had a great premise, but I found myself kind of bored as I read this book. It’s possible that’s because it was written as a diary, so it felt very distant, and I just didn’t get the feelings I wanted to feel from this book.

Last year, I was slowly working my way through The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey. I got through the first six books, but the library didn’t have the seventh one on audio, I wasn’t in love with the series enough to buy the next one, and I didn’t want to put in the effort to read it in Braille. But the library finally got the seventh book, Persepolis Rising, on audio, so I gave it a read this month. Thirty years after the end of the sixth book, James Holden and his crew are embroiled in the attempt  of the Martian deserters who escaped to another system at the end of the last book to take over the solar system, and all the other systems, and create a galaxy-wide empire. This book was… I don’t know. It was a fine book. I enjoyed it at least as much as all the others. But I was really thrown by the thirty year time jump. I felt like I couldn’t quite grasp who the characters were anymore and what their relationships were like, and this left me constantly scrambling and floundering to keep up with what was going on and why I should care. If I can get my hands on the next book, I’ll probably keep going with the series, but I suspect the sixth book is probably the best place to stop if you’re reading this series.

Since I was diving back into revisions on my middle grade sci fi project in April, I decided to help myself out by revisiting some of the series that really inspired this project and also some other sci fi books I’ve really loved. So April became a bit of a fun sci fi rereads month. First, I reread the first three Wayfarers books by Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, and Record of a Spaceborn Few. Then I read the fourth book in the series, which came out at the end of April, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. I loved revisiting the first three books in the series, which I read last year. I adored these books even more the second time around. The fourth book was really great too. I had fun meeting characters from other species we haven’t had a ton of experience with in this series, and I continue to love how generally all these characters are just so nice. I will say parts of this book felt a bit slow and repetitive, and I was a little disappointed to learn that this was the last book in the series, because I wished for something that pulled it all together. At the same time, these really are four separate but related stories, rather than a series, so I think I’m okay with how it ended, and I might enjoy the fourth book more on a reread. This continues to be a series I just love and will recommend to everyone.

You can’t have a fun sci fi rereads month without revisiting The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, so of course I also reread Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter. I’ve talked about each of these books at length in the past, so I’m not going to get deep into it here. You can read my full review of Cinder here, Scarlet here, Cress here, and Winter here. I did not reread Fairest this month because as I discussed here, while it certainly informs Levana’s character a lot, it isn’t a fun place to spend my time.

Last year, I read A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. I enjoyed it, but at the time felt like there was too much buildup and not enough payoff, but I was willing to see where the sequel went. The sequel recently came out, so I reread A Memory Called Empire in April, then read the sequel A Desolation Called Peace. I enjoyed Memory a lot  more on reread, and Desolation was also very good, but it left me with the same feeling that Memory did, and I was able to put my finger on it a bit more. I have a friend who is a big history buff, and he really appreciated how the book felt like true history in how messy the resolution felt. This was a really interesting point, and I know the author is deep in the history as well, but at the same time, from a narrative, storytelling perspective, it wasn’t satisfying. The internet tells me there will be one more book, and I’m still holding out hope that the ultimate ending will be satisfying, because there’s so much in these books that I love. We’ll see.

Next I read MiNRS 2 by Kevin Sylvester. I really enjoyed the first book, which I read back in January. Christopher and his friends have defeated the Landers who attacked their colony, but more are coming. In this book, the kids are in a race against some pretty evil bad guys and unraveling some pretty big secrets about what’s happening on Earth. Despite all this, I felt like this second book was kind of slow, and the villain was a little too evil for me to take seriously. The kids also had this moral quandery of whether they should fight back or try to just hide and survive, and while I’m not objecting to kids grappling with big issues, it ‘just seemed to drag on a bit long when it seemed pretty clear which way they were going to go. I’m still interested in the third book, and I’ll let you know what I think.

Finally, the sixth Murderbot book, Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, came out the day before my birthday. So as an early birthday present to myself, I lay on my couch all evening and read it. This short novella is a stand-alone murder mystery. It takes place before the full-length novel and doesn’t do much to move the series along. I didn’t know this when I started reading, and I spent a long time being confused about how this followed the end of the full-length novel (answer, it didn’t, it happened before the novel). Basically there’s a dead body on Preservation Station, and Murderbot is assigned to work with station security, who are afraid of it, to help solve the murder. All I really have to say about this book is oh I just love Murderbot so much! Go read Murderbot!

Generally, I really enjoyed the books I read in March and April, and I’d love to keep talking about them in the comments. Let me know if you’ve read any of these and what you thought of them. I’ll be back soon to talk about the books I’ve read in May (so far it isn’t that many, so it should be a shorter post).

March Reading Roundup

Over the past several weeks, I thought about blogging more and getting this post up sooner. I meant to do it. I really did. But a solid sense of time and my motivation to do pretty much anything have gone out the window in social distancing life. But here I am now.

I hope everyone is holding up out there. I so far haven’t gotten sick or gone insane, but there’s still time. I did finish my five trillionth round of revisions on my middle grade fantasy project, and then my five trillion and first round of revisions. Now I’m back to the memory-wiping academy project. I also bought myself a television because my iPad or laptop just wasn’t enough of a screen, and I hope to have friends over for a movie night someday ever. I’ve been cooking all the time too. I’ve learned to make some really good bread thanks to a recipe my brother shared with me. I tried lentil pasta, with mixed results, and harissa marinated tofu which probably would have turned out better if I had enough harissa to actually marinate the tofu. But after that it’s been a lot of staples like couscous and frozen veggies or rice and beans or pasta. I’ve also been making homemade ice cream, and there’s no going back to the store-bought stuff now.

Basically I’m doing fine but life is upside down and I hate it so much, even though it’s definitely necessary.

I also read eight books in March. I read most of these books in the first half of March, before the lockdown set in. Oddly I haven’t been reading as much even though I’m stuck at home now. I saw a tweet about this somewhere. I can’t find it now, but the gist is we expect to be a lot more productive with life on lockdown, but we’re also spending a lot of time holding the existential dread at bay.

Collage of the eight books I read in March: A Little Taste of Poison, Archenemies, Ash Princess, Lady Smoke, Sandry's Book, Tris's Book, Babylon's Ashes, and The Drawing of the ThreeWhile I enjoyed all these books a lot, I admit that none of them really stuck out to me, and I’m having a hard time remembering them, but I think that’s more because of the world getting thoroughly messed up in the last month than the books’ fault.

I continued a lot of the series that I started last month, and I started a couple new series. I also read a variety of genres again, some middle grade and YA, some fantasy and sci fi, and a superhero story.

All the books I read were audiobooks. I’m not doing so great on my goal to read one Braille book a month. But even though I won’t be completely successful on this goal this year (unless one of you knows how to time travel), I’m going to keep trying.

Now let’s dive in and talk about these books.

First, I read the second Uncommon Magic book, A Little Taste of Poison by R. J. Anderson. I read the first book, A Pocket Full of Murder, back at the end of January, and I loved it lots. This was a great sequel. It did a great job following up on the problems left unsolved at the end of the first book, delving deeper into the world, and complicating everything further. My only complaint is there’s this epilogue at the end that, without spoiling anything, puts a new twist on everything, and it’s really sudden and fast and in my opinion makes the book and series feel incomplete. If there’s going to be a third book, I’d be okay with it, but I’m not sure there will be a third book based on my very cursory research on Goodreads. On the whole though I really loved this world and these characters, and this is a very fun middle grade fantasy series.

Next, I read the second Renegades book, Archenemies by Marissa Meyer. I don’t want to say too much in terms of plot synopsis because I don’t want to spoil the first book if you haven’t read it, and almost anything I say would be a spoiler. But we continue with the spying and the secret identities and the superhero teamwork and friends and romance and everything I loved about the first book. Archenemies took the story forward in a logical way but a different way than I expected. It also raised the stakes a lot, and it did a lot better with the issue I had with the first book that I felt like we were in the wrong character’s head during key moments for the other character. And oh my gosh I loved the twists this took for its characters and the complexities it added. I just love all the characters and I don’t know how I want this to end because I’m cheering for all of them (with a few exceptions). I’m really looking forward to diving into the third and final book soon.

Last year while I was studying for the bar, I read Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian. I really loved the book, but also had no recollection of it because I was studying for the bar. And since the third book just came out, I reread Ash Princess this month and then read the sequel, Lady Smoke. And just oh my gosh these books are amazing! Ash Princess follows Theo, the princess of a conquered country who has been kept by the conquering force as a prisoner and tortured to keep her people downtrodden. But when she is forced to do the unthinkable, Theo decides to fight back. These books go some really unexpected places, and I just love how brilliant and driven Theo is. She is willing to sacrifice everything for her goal, and she does. And while she has emotions like any other sixteen-year-old girl, she has iron control over them and she acts for her head every time. The world is also really interesting, and like I said the plot takes some really interesting twists and turns. At this point I’ve finished the third book, and while I’m not talking about this until next month, this series is one I’d love to go back and reread from the beginning knowing what’s coming. If you haven’t read these books, I highly recommend them.

After that, I read the sixth Expanse book, Babylon’s Ashes by James S. A. Corey. A lot of this book felt like fall-out from the events of the last book. There was a lot of political maneuvering and planning and then finally a big battle. We get to see Holden play the mediator again which is fun because he’s bad at it. Some pretty big important things happened in this book that I won’t spoil. But on the whole, it was just an okay book. There were honestly too many point of view characters, characters who were very minor players in previous books and rose to the level of point-of-view characters in this book. Some of them it was cool to see their viewpoint, but on the whole it felt like just too much and it became hard to follow. I’m not entirely sure I’m going to continue with this series, because I can’t get any of the rest of the books on audio from the library, and I’m not sure I care enough to either buy the audiobooks or invest in reading them in Braille. I might just switch to the TV show at this point. I don’t know. We’ll see.

When the lockdown hit and I needed some literary comfort food, I started rereading Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic books. In March I read the first two, Sandry’s Book and Tris’s Book. Did I momentarily forget that the fourth book in this book is a plague book, and now I’m on track to read a plague book in the middle of a pandemic? Yes. Yes I did. Will I read it anyway? Probably. These books have been all-time favorites for a while, and they held up on reread, which is fabulous. They’re just so much fun and full of such great meaningful relationships, and I love them. I also love Tamora Pierce’s Circle world way more than her Tortall world. It’s so detailed and rich. I loved rereading these books, and I’m looking forward to getting back to the series soon.

Finally, I read the second book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, The Drawing of the Three. I enjoyed this more than the first book. It was way more coherent, story-wise. There was also a female main character. Yay! Unfortunately, I’m not really comfortable with King’s representation of mental illness in this book, and his treatment of women still isn’t great. I’ll probably keep reading this series, but not with a ton of enthusiasm. (Spoiler alert: I’m really just in it to get to the talking pink train I remember in the third book.)

And that’s it for March. Have you read any of these books? Do you have any other reads I might want to check out during quarantine?

November Reading Roundup

I was intending to post my rambles about The Heart of Betrayal and the Beauty of Darkness before I posted this, but then I saw the date and wanted to get this post out there before it became even more ridiculous. Don’t worry, I going to talk about the rest of the Remnant Chronicles soon—but probably not until next week. But first I’m going to tell you all about the books I read in November.

November was a pretty good month. My parents came to visit and spent a week with me in D.C., I got my new writing group off the ground and after a few meetings we’re still going strong, I got sworn in as a real lawyer, and of course Thanksgiving. I managed to write every day in November too, so I’m feeling pretty proud of myself. I’ve been flipping back and forth between my middle grade space adventure project, which is what I’m showing to my new writing group, and my middle grade fantasy book, which I got more edits on from my agent. So a lot’s going on, but it’s all really good.

I can’t believe it’s already the end of December, and I’ve been living in D.C. and working at the FCC for almost four months now. I love December so much more than November, because the holiday season kicks off and everything is so much brighter and happier than November, which after daylight savings time is pretty much just dark and cold. December has Christmas lights and holiday parties and cookie swaps and carollers singing to you as you come out of the metro. See what I mean?

Collage of the covers of the 10 books I read in November 2019: The Heart of Betrayal, The Beauty of Darkness, Tunnel of Bones, Half a World Away, Willow Run, Alanna: The First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess, Cibola Burn, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, and Lioness Rampant.December also means it’s time to look back at the books I read in November. I read ten books in November. Four of them were rereads. A lot of them were pretty short books that I just blew through in a single day. It was sort of a weird month in terms of how fast I read, because when my parents were visiting and when I was home for  Thanksgiving, I didn’t get much reading done because I wanted to actually interact with people instead of just hang out in my room reading. But in the couple weeks in between my parents’ visit and Thanksgiving, I just churned through a ton of books. On the whole, I was really happy with what I read this month.

First, I finished The Remnant Chronicles series by Mary E. Pearson. In October, I read the first book, The Kiss of Deception, which I talked more about here. This month I read The Heart of Betrayal and the Beauty of Darkness. Since I just talked about the first book and I’m aiming to talk about the other two soon, I’m not going to go too deep into the plot summaries in this post. The second book follows Lia, Rafe, and Kaden as they navigate life in Venda. Lia is trying to escape with Rafe, but she’s also becoming more entangled with the people of Venda. Rafe is trying to help her escape, and Kaden, of course, is trying to both keep her alive and keep her in Venda. I won’t give you a plot summary of the third book at all because basically anything I say about the third book will spoil the second book. I absolutely loved this series. The first half of the first book was a bit cringy, but it grew on me so fast, and now it’s definitely a favorite. I just love Lia and how she goes from a runaway spoiled princess to a young woman who makes these really difficult choices. She becomes such a strong character, and I love it.

Last spring, I read City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab. The sequel, Tunnel of Bones, came out recently, and I read that next. After their adventure in Scotland, Cassidy and her family are off to Paris, where Cassidy manages to attract the attentions of a poltergheist and get a glimpse of what her ghost friend Jacob could become if he gets too strong. This book was delightfully scary, but also full of such great moments. I love Cass and Jacob’s friendship so much and I love how it develops over the course of this book. I can’t wait for the third book!

After that I read Willow Run by Patricia Reilly Giff. This is a companion novel to Lily’s Crossing, which I read last year. Twelve-year-old Meggie moves with her family to Michigan to work at the Wi’low Run airplane factory during World War II. We deal with prejudices against German Americans, a son and brother who is missing in action, and the fears of war. For being from the point of view of a twelve-year-old, it gets into some deep issues and it feels very real. Which just proves the point I make every chance I get that middle grade and young adult books can deal with really serious issues often in ways that are more poignant and powerful than adult books. This book made me cry quite a few times. Actually since it’s such a short book, I just cried the whole way. Not that it’s a downer of a book. I just have a lot of feelings sometimes.

Next, I read Half a World Away by Cynthia Kadohata. This is another book that I read in an evening. Twelve-year-old Jaden is adopted, and he considers himself an epic fail. Which is obviously why his parents are going to adopt another son. but when they arrive at the orphanage in Kazakhstan they learn that the baby they were going to adopt has been given to another family. They have to choose another baby on the spot. Jaden’s parents pick a baby, but at the same time  Jaden latches onto a different toddler. This book was another one with a lot of feelings attached to it, and I really really liked it. The ending felt a little rushed and convenient, and I felt like Jaden’s feelings that his parents were replacing him weren’t really resolved to my satisfaction, but I really did enjoy this book.

I was talking about Tamora Pierce’s books with a friend in the beginning of November, and we were being generally gleeful about the fact that her Tortall books are going to be made into a TV show. My friend asked if I’d discovered the Tortall Recall podcast, which is basically a forroup of friends who read the Tamora Pierce books as children rereading them now as adults and yelling about them. I decided to give it a try, and then decided to reread the books along with listening to the podcast. So I reread the entire Song of the Lioness series this month. As always, I really enjoyed revisiting these books about a girl who decides she wants to become a knight and disguises herself as a boy to do just that. Tamora Pierce’s books had a huge influence on me as a young writer, and even now I am banned from rereading her Circle of Magic series until I get my revisions done. But I admit that a lot of what keeps me loving the Song of the Lioness books is nostalgia. Now that I’m older, more widely read, and honestly more woke than I was even a few years ago, these books don’t stand up as well, and that makes me kind of sad. They’re still good books, I still enjoy them, and I’d still recommend them to anyone who hasn’t read them, definitely, but I now have other feelings that I need to unpack. I’m actually planning a whole post on this so stay tuned.

And finally, I read the fourth Expanse book, Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey. After I finished the third book back in September, I said I would give this series one more book before I gave up on it, and I’m so glad I gave it one more book. Because this book was great! Now that they’ve figured out the rings, humanity has access to all these new earth-like planets, and there’s basically a land rush going on. But then there’s a group of refugees who fled Ganymede after the incident in book two and a corporation who start fighting over one of the planets, and the U.N. and the OPA send James Holden to mediate. And then of course the alien artifacts on the planet get cranky and everything goes off the rails. This was a fast easy read. I loved seeing the characters I loved from book two coming back in so many different ways, and I loved the different roles Holden and his crew were forced into in this book. It was good, and I’m pretty much sucked in for the series now, though I’m still not sure if it’s one for the favorites list.

And that’s it for November. I’ve already read a bunch of books in December, and I’ve already passed my goal of reading 100 books in 2019.  I’ll be back in a few days with a wrap up of all the crazy and great things that happened to me this year, my December reading roundup, and my favorite books of 2019. I’m also hoping to talk about the rest of the Remnant Chronicles, cliffhangers, and strong female characters soon too. In the meantime, let me know if you’ve read any of these books and what you think of them.

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.

Leviathan Wakes Review

Cover of the book Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. CoreyLast year, when I was working at NIST, one of my roommates was reading the Expanse series by James S. A. Corey. He recommended it to me as some of the best science fiction he’s ever read, so I got myself onto the waiting list at the library for the first book. Yes I know that there’s an Amazon show, and one day when I’m not in law school I will watch it, but I’ve always been a book first kind of girl.  In late 2018, I finally got the first book of the series, Leviathan Wakes, out were the library and read it. I read the second book in January, and I’m waiting on the third. Since I’m continuing this series, I wanted to write full reviews for the first two books. This week, I’ll talk about Leviathan Wakes, and I’ll talk about the second book, Caliban’s War, next week.

Leviathan Wakes is set in the far future, where interplanetary space travel is common, and it follows two main characters. Jim Holden is the XO on a big ship that hauls ice from Saturn’s rings back to the asteroid belt and the inner planets. When the ship receives a distress call, Holden takes a small crew and a small ship and goes to help. They find a derelict ship full of dead bodies. And while Holden and his crew are investigating, someone nukes the whole ice hauler. So Holden and his team, the only survivors of the original ice hauler crew, set out to figure out who destroyed their ship and what it has to do with the derelict they were investigating. Meanwhile, Detective Miller is hired by a rich family to find their missing daughter, who ran away to join the revolutionaries in the asteroid belt. Miller’s investigation leads him to the derelict ship Holden and his crew discovered. And so now they’re investigating together. But as they draw closer to the truth, things become more and more dangerous. They’re moving in on a secret that could destroy the solar system and that someone is willing to kill for. At the same time, we have a war brewing between Earth and Mars, and the asteroid belt is preparing to fight for its independence, and all of this is connected.

I liked this book. In general, I really like anything to do with space, so right off the bat I’m in a good place. I did have some problems with it though. Let’s start with what I liked.

For me, the world building in this book was by far its strongest point. It was very detailed and intricate, and all the pieces that we learned about this futuristic solar system became relevant later. I don’t know if the science is accurate, but it’s portrayed with such authority that I believe it, whether it’s accurate science or not.

The plot was pretty strong too. Once I got into the book, there was no putting it down, and the plot and the setting work so well together.

I was less enthusiastic about the characters in this book. I felt like their motivations either weren’t fully explored or weren’t fully articulated to the reader. At least from my perspective, we pretty quickly  pass the point where Holden’s quest for revenge against the people who blew up his ship and Miller’s quest to find the missing girl are the only motivating factors. Too much else is going on. Over and over again, Holden and Miller would make these decisions that just didn’t make any sense to me. Like if there’s some sort of nuclear event on the asteroid and everyone’s being ordered into shelters, but you’re pretty sure that something else is going on, YOU DO NOT GO OPEN A SHELTER TO SEE WHAT’S GOING ON! You get out of there!

Along the same lines, I felt like the characters didn’t develop over the course of the story. They keep making these same types of bad choices for bad reasons, and they just don’t learn from them.

Finally, and this is entirely a personal preference, this book managed to hit all my sci fi squik buttons, from people being thrown out of airlocks to nuclear meltdowns. Things are generally pretty grim. So if you’re looking for a light fluffy space adventure, this is not it.

Overall, as I said,I really liked the plot and the world building of this book, and while the characters got under my skin a little bit, it wasn’t enough to ruin my enjoyment in the book. It struck me as a very foundational book, and it’s the sort of book that I don’t feel like I can form a good opinion about without reading the rest of the series. If the rest of the series is excellent, I will forgive Leviathan Wakes its flaws. If the rest of the series continues to have these same flaws, we’l, then I won’t forgive Leviathan Wakes. I did go on to read the second book in the series, and as I said, I’ll talk about that more next week. But spoiler alert, I liked it a lot more than this one.

In the meantime, have you read Leviathan Wakes? What did you think?