“Persepolis Rising” by James S. A. Corey (2017 Orbit softcover 549pp)
And on to volume 7 in The Expanse series. Again, not a good
place to start although its more self-contained than the previous volume. This
seems to be the start of the grand final act in the whole saga and immediately
we’re hit with a 30 year time jump from where we last left our heroes. But don’t
worry, they all seem to be much the same despite all sorts of hinted at
developments in the intervening years.
Baddies who escaped
to a colony world years ago and developed advanced technology with the help of
the alien proto-molecule come back attempting to gain control over all of mankind.
Our plucky crew have to join forces with the resistance and well umm resist. At
this point I was prepared to give the book a fairly negative review – we’ve
been here before in this series and not too long ago, it was all feeling pretty
much ‘rinse and repeat’. A couple of things saved it for me however. Firstly,
the typical Expanse alternating viewpoint structure this time included one of
the baddies – a military functionary and true believer who has his world view
shaken by his experiences. The other thing happened about ¾ the way through the
book when an element of alien mystery was re-inserted into the plot. Something
I had felt was missing in the all the recent human vs human conflict. By the
end characters had actually developed and there was a certain death so I
finished thinking it wasn’t so bad after all.
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